Rising water demands from data centers may drive policy shifts towards sustainable practices and legislative actions to address scarcity.

The post US data centers’ water use to quadruple by 2028 amid scarcity concerns appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The reactivation of dormant Ethereum wallets highlights potential market shifts, as early holders may choose between selling or staking strategies.

The post Dormant Ethereum address holding 12,746 ETH wakes up after 10.2 years appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The investigation highlights the vulnerability of prediction markets to insider trading, potentially undermining their credibility and fairness.

The post Kalshi investigates suspicious trades tied to Trump’s press secretary pick appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Starknet's potential shift to layer 1 could redefine blockchain security priorities, challenging Ethereum's timeline and reshaping the ecosystem.

The post STRK rallies as Starknet weighs a move from Ethereum layer 2 to its own layer 1 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Anthropic's decision highlights the critical need for robust security measures in AI testing to prevent unintended internet access and ensure compliance.

The post Anthropic disables live internet access for internal AI evaluations appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

Here’s How Not To Screw up Your Bitcoin Privacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solana has doubled its targeted block-production frequency after activating 200-millisecond slots on mainnet, completing a months-long effort to accelerate the blockchain.

The Oct. 9 upgrade reduces Solana's original 400-millisecond slot target by half, allowing the network to create five block-production opportunities per second instead of 2.5. It also shortens the time required to complete a network epoch to approximately 24 hours from 48 hours.

Anza, the developer behind Solana's Agave validator client, confirmed the activation, declaring that the SIMD-0525 upgrade had been completed.

“Blocks land twice as often as they did at genesis. An epoch now takes about a day instead of two,” Anza stated.

Jacob Creech, the Solana Foundation's vice president of technology, also celebrated the milestone, saying the network continues to improve with successive software releases.

“Solana continues to improve release after release, proving to be the best place to build,” Creech said, before identifying Alpenglow as the network's next major upgrade.

Early performance data indicated that the change was already producing faster slots, although the network had yet to consistently reach its new target.

CryptoSlate's sampling of Solana's public mainnet RPC showed an average of approximately 222 milliseconds across 1,413 slots following activation, compared with roughly 268 milliseconds under the previous 250ms target.

The latest change completes a four-stage rollout that began in August, when Solana first reduced its slot target to 350 milliseconds. Subsequent reductions to 300ms and 250ms prepared validators for Friday's final adjustment.

Faster slots put Solana's next upgrade in focus

The shorter intervals could improve transaction responsiveness for applications operating on Solana, particularly decentralized trading platforms and market makers that depend on rapid updates to prices and orders.

Under the SIMD-0525 proposal, each validator's nominal four-slot block-production window has fallen to 800 milliseconds from the original 1.6 seconds, reducing how long individual validators can control transaction inclusion.

However, the upgrade does not automatically double Solana's transaction-processing capacity. Developers proportionally reduced the computational budget available within each slot, keeping the network's approximate execution capacity per second unchanged.

The faster cadence also introduces operational adjustments.

According to the Solana Foundation, transaction blockhashes now have an expiration window of approximately 30 seconds, compared with 60 seconds under the original configuration. That gives applications using offline signing or delayed transaction submission less time before transactions require refreshing.

Infrastructure providers must also accommodate more frequent blocks, while validators face tighter deadlines for producing and propagating them.

Those demands make sustained performance and skipped-slot rates important measures of the upgrade's success.

Meanwhile, community attention now shifts to Alpenglow, Solana's planned consensus overhaul targeting transaction finality of approximately 150 milliseconds, compared with roughly 12.8 seconds under the existing TowerBFT system.

Alpenglow has undergone deployment on Solana's testnet and devnet, but a mainnet activation date has not been announced.

The post Solana doubles block production speed to 200ms as network prepares for Alpenglow upgrade appeared first on CryptoSlate.

THORChain's TRON operations were interrupted on Oct. 9 after a USDT vault blocklist, according to reports by its co-founder Chad Barraford and researcher Khal. The researcher put the affected balance at about 1.45 million USDT.

Both accounts later reversed the restrictions, according to updates from both accounts. At 3:35 p.m. UTC, Barraford said the addresses appeared unfrozen, and trading would resume soon. At 3:58 p.m. UTC, Khal reported that TRON USDT swaps had resumed. The earlier payout queue describes the interruption before the reported resumption of swaps.

In his initial analysis, Khal reported that block 86958330 blocklisted four of THORChain's six TRON vaults. Those vaults held 93% of the protocol's TRON USDT, concentrating the disruption in the balances needed to process payments on that route.

He reported that TRON trading, transaction signing, and liquidity-provider actions halted about 27 minutes later, with roughly $363,000 in payouts queued during the freeze.

Barraford said the protocol received no communication before the action and didn't know why it happened. Khal argued that the vaults may have been caught in a broader blocklist that included roughly 30 other wallets.

The incident follows scrutiny of how the protocol handles illicit flows. On Oct. 8, THORChain's September trading surge coincided with Bitget-hack-linked activity, and the protocol refused to selectively block addresses.

Two layers of control

THORChain's vault documentation describes accounts managed by validator nodes that hold assets on external blockchains and handle incoming funds and outgoing transactions.

Distributing control of those accounts among validators determines who can authorize a payment, while the tokens inside them remain subject to their issuer's restrictions.

THORChain itself drew a related distinction in an Oct. 1 blog recap: node operators can pause a chain or the whole protocol for safety, but cannot selectively remove an individual swap.

Meanwhile, Tether says its wallet-freezing policy follows OFAC's sanctions list and extends to secondary-market wallets. Its power to restrict USDT transfers operates separately from the validator controls governing THORChain's vaults.

The operational dependency remains: distributing the authority to sign transactions does not remove Tether's ability to freeze USDT held in the accounts those transactions use.

The post Tether freezes $1.4M in TRON vaults and THORChain stalls appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum's transaction fees have burned enough ETH to offset just 2.07% of the new coins issued in 2026, according to an Oct. 9 supply ledger.

After fee burn, validator penalties, and other destruction, the network has added approximately 778,413 ETH, increasing supply by about 0.64% from the window's opening level.

A larger gas limit can spread the necessary fee spending across more activity, lowering the required fee per gas and creating a hurdle for holders that expect scalability to make ETH scarcer. Developers pursue a conditional 200 million maximum gas goal after the Glamsterdam upgrade.

Using one current finalized accounting sample, an illustration puts the execution base fee needed to offset gross issuance at about 13.85 gwei with today's 60 million gas limit, or 4.16 gwei with a hypothetical 200 million limit.

Both require roughly 2,992 ETH of daily burn under the model's assumptions.

What the 2026 ledger shows

The ethsupply.fyi retained ledger covers Jan. 1 at 00:00:11 UTC through Oct. 9 at 15:44:23 UTC. It reports 796,623.377 ETH of gross issuance against 16,524.553 ETH destroyed through execution and blob transaction fees.

A further 1,685.919 ETH was removed through consensus penalties, with 0.059 ETH in other execution destruction. Subtracting these components leaves 778,412.846 ETH in net additions.

Those categories explain why the fee-burn offset is 2.074%, while the offset from all destruction is 2.286%. The latter includes penalties that do not represent customers paying for Ethereum activity. Treating the larger figure as transaction-fee demand would overstate how much issuance users have offset.

The provider's methodology separates newly created validator rewards from execution base fees, blob fees, penalties, and rare destruction through SELFDESTRUCT. Transfers, staking deposits and withdrawals preserve supply while moving existing ETH between accounts or accounting layers.

Its same-cutoff supply snapshot reports approximately 122.116 million ETH. Subtracting the net additions implies about 121.338 million ETH at the window's opening, producing the roughly 0.64% increase.

The 2.074% offset covers the cumulative 2026 window, while a current daily burn rate would require a separate daily comparison.

Ethereum's EIP-1559 fee mechanism burns the execution base fee on gas actually consumed. Priority fees go to block producers. Blob base fees also destroy ETH, while MEV payments and application revenue do not automatically become protocol burn.

The base fee, quoted in gwei, determines the ETH burned for each unit consumed. With an elasticity multiplier of two, a 60 million gas maximum corresponds to a 30 million target. A hypothetical 200 million maximum would imply a 100 million target if that rule remains unchanged.

A finalized mainnet beacon block at slot 15,394,656 contains execution block 26,155,767, timestamped Oct. 9 at 15:31:35 UTC, with a 60 million maximum. The matching execution-block record shows a base fee of approximately 0.335 gwei.

The supply consequence depends on consumed gas multiplied by its base fee, plus blob burn and other destruction. An unused increase in capacity cannot burn ETH, nor does a larger transaction count by itself establish greater burn if the transactions require less gas or pay lower base fees.

CryptoSlate’s Oct. 1 coverage already concluded that Ethereum’s 200 million gas target is conditional, validator-dependent, and not an automatic new limit. A Sept. 23 fee comparison highlighted the missing matched-period issuance denominator.

The same burn budget at two limits

For a current illustration, ethsupply.fyi's finalized-epoch accounting snapshot for epoch 481082, as of Oct. 9 at 15:31:23 UTC, records 13.296472924 ETH of gross issuance over 32 slots. At 12 seconds per slot, that is a 384-second sample.

The calculation holds that issuance pace constant, assumes every slot produces a block and consumes gas at the target, and initially sets blob burn, penalties, and other destruction to zero. The resulting thresholds describe the execution base-fee burn needed to offset gross issuance under those assumptions.

The daily figure extends the single sample across 225 epochs, with the resulting daily burn budget applying to this hypothetical day. Daily issuance and burn would require a full day's observations, as the larger gas target lowers the required base fee because the same ETH budget is divided across more consumed gas.

The more complete zero-net-growth calculation credits the sample's 0.016575391 ETH of penalties and 0.000442673483 ETH of blob burn. Holding those amounts constant lowers the execution thresholds slightly, to about 13.83 gwei and 4.15 gwei. The corresponding total transaction-fee burn budget after penalties is approximately 2,988 ETH per modeled day.

If gas consumed stays unchanged when the maximum rises, the balancing fee does not fall. The half-target row illustrates the arithmetic sensitivity to consumed gas, but EIP-1559 reduces base fees over successive blocks when consumption remains below target.

The live provider snapshot reports approximately 43.754 million ETH in active effective stake across 853,325 active validators. Ethereum's supply explanation identifies staking participation as a determinant of issuance, so a future threshold needs a fresh issuance sample alongside gas and blob usage.

Glamsterdam is a capacity scenario

The Ethereum Foundation's May 11 protocol update described 200 million gas as a credible post-Glamsterdam target. The upgrade's proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists aim to support greater throughput, alongside changes to gas accounting.

The Foundation's testnet announcement on Sept. 28 scheduled Sepolia for Oct. 6 at 13:53:36 UTC while leaving Hoodi and mainnet activation dates undecided. The official roadmap leaves the mainnet date unconfirmed.

Changes to the gas charged for execution and state growth mean a gas unit may buy different work after the upgrade. The modeled limits cannot be translated directly into proportionally more identical transactions, users, or burned ETH.

For holders, the relevant signal is whether burned fees and other destruction approach or exceed issuance over a matched interval. More available gas creates room for activity, but the shrinking-supply case needs that activity to generate enough aggregate burned fees.

Layer-2 (L2) blockchain growth and staking balances distinguish from fresh ETH purchases and settlement spending. The same distinction applies here, since existing holders can stake, and applications can grow, without those measures alone establishing the required burn.

The October ledger shows supply increasing while developers work toward greater capacity. A sustained shift toward shrinking supply would appear in consumed gas, execution base fees, blob burn, and stake-dependent issuance together.

The post ETH fee burns cover just 2% of new coins printed in 2026 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Suspected Ledger wallet thefts are approaching $90 million as Tether freezes USDT stablecoin linked to the incident, according to blockchain investigators.

In an Oct. 9 statement, the crypto hardware wallet maker said it was investigating reports that customers lost funds after buying devices from CryptoBilis, an authorized reseller operating in Southeast Asia.

As a precaution, the company asked the distributor to immediately pause sales and shipments of its hardware wallets while the investigation continues.

Ledger also advised customers who purchased devices from CryptoBilis in the past 90 days not to initialize them if they had not yet completed setup.

Those who had already configured their wallets were urged to consider transferring their cryptocurrency to a new Ledger device initialized with a fresh recovery phrase.

CryptoBilis is a recognized Ledger reseller

CryptoBilis appears in Ledger's official reseller directory for Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Customers buying through authorized distribution channels generally rely on those relationships to reduce the risk of receiving counterfeit or compromised hardware.

The incident has drawn attention from Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who warned users to exercise caution, particularly if they had recently purchased a Ledger device.

He wrote on X:

“Based on information so far, it seems to be localized to a supply chain attack with one vendor.”

He suggested that a limited number of customers may have received counterfeit or tampered devices, while emphasizing Ledger's longstanding security reputation.

Zhao also called for cooperation across the cryptocurrency industry to identify the suspected attackers and recover the stolen assets.

He added:

“I expect and know all BNB ecosystem players (and all industry) to help trace and recover the funds.”

Meanwhile, former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès is investigating whether malicious hardware components were inserted into devices distributed to customers.

Karpelès asked CryptoBilis to open some of its unsold Ledger wallets so their internal circuit boards could be inspected for possible spying implants or other unauthorized modifications.

The concern draws attention to a limitation in Ledger's hardware authentication process.

The company's security documentation acknowledges that its Genuine Check system verifies a device's Secure Element but cannot necessarily identify physical modifications elsewhere in the hardware if the original security chip remains intact.

That means a physically altered device could pass authentication even if it contains unauthorized components.

No confirmed evidence shows that malicious hardware implants caused the reported thefts. Ledger has not disclosed how many devices may have been compromised or established whether the incident resulted from counterfeit hardware, physical tampering, or another attack method.

Tether freezes funds as investigators race to contain losses

While Ledger examines the suspected source of the compromises, blockchain investigators are attempting to trace and restrict the movement of stolen cryptocurrency.

On-chain investigator Specter said transaction analysis identified inflows from hundreds of suspected victim wallets into addresses across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron.

The researcher initially estimated the suspected thefts exceeded $86 million, but blockchain security firm MistTrack later placed the reported losses closer to $90 million.

Those estimates have not been independently verified, and investigators have not established whether every wallet included in the calculations was compromised through the same operation.

MistTrack said it observed Tether freezing USDT linked to the incident and that several affected users contacted its team for help.

The freezing activity offers a potential recovery avenue because USDT includes administrative controls that let Tether restrict transfers from designated addresses.

Once an address is frozen, users cannot move the affected USDT through ordinary blockchain transactions unless the restriction is removed.

That capability can help prevent stolen funds from moving to additional wallets or converting into other cryptocurrencies while investigators work to establish ownership.

However, the intervention has limitations.

The suspected thefts span several blockchain networks and involve assets beyond USDT. Tether cannot directly freeze native Bitcoin or Ethereum, leaving investigators dependent on cooperation from exchanges, custodians, and law enforcement if those assets move into identifiable services.

Additionally, freezing USDT does not automatically return the tokens to their original owners. Any restitution would require further verification and coordination with the relevant authorities or counterparties.

MistTrack has not disclosed the dollar value of the restricted tokens, making it impossible to determine what proportion of the nearly $90 million in reported losses could ultimately be recovered.

That uncertainty puts additional pressure on investigators to identify where the remaining funds went before they are dispersed through further transactions.

The post Ledger hack scare nears $90 million as Tether moves to freeze stolen USDT appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) now lets institutions delegate account tasks while retaining control of their primary signing keys.

The PermissionDelegationV1_1 amendment went live on Oct. 8 at ledger 107,524,865. It lets account owners assign specific transaction permissions to other accounts.

The upgrade mirrors the division of responsibilities in traditional finance. Treasury departments, compliance officers and asset managers can operate under different levels of authority.

For example, a stablecoin issuer can let its compliance team approve counterparties while a separate account executes payments. Owners can modify or revoke delegated permissions without exposing their primary signing keys during routine operations.

Vet, an XRP Ledger Foundation contributor, said the change lets asset issuers and treasuries manage account responsibilities in a way familiar from traditional finance while protecting their primary keys.

The framework does not support custom spending limits or asset-specific delegation restrictions. XRPL developers also warn against delegating PaymentBurn until fixCleanup3_4_0 activates. A flaw can let authorized accounts mint issued tokens in certain circumstances.

XRPL's tokenized asset market expands

The controls arrive as XRPL's real-world asset market grows.

An Oct. 7 RWA Foundation snapshot puts XRPL's year-to-date growth in tokenized asset value at about $3.7 billion, excluding stablecoins. It leads BNB Chain's $3.5 billion, Stellar's $2.8 billion and Solana's $2.2 billion.

The four networks account for roughly $12.2 billion of the $14.9 billion recorded across the chart's 10 blockchains, highlighting competition for tokenization activity.

The figures track changes in tokenized asset value, including issuance, redemptions and valuations.

Meanwhile, RWA.xyz's Oct. 9 network table lists about $4.54 billion of represented real-world assets on XRPL and $499 million of distributed assets, excluding stablecoins. XRPL ranks 10th by distributed asset value.

Under RWA.xyz's definitions, represented assets use blockchain records but remain on the issuer's platform. Distributed assets can move between holders outside that platform, including through permissioned transfers.

In July, Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class of its US Dollar Liquidity Fund on XRPL, following approval from the Central Bank of Ireland.

Eligible investors can access the fund through tokenized holdings. The share class retains the conventional fund's investment objective, liquidity characteristics and regulatory protections.

The launch involved institutional custodian Komainu and tokenization infrastructure provider Licuido, with the fund's underlying assets held by BNY Mellon.

Ripple subsequently announced investments in Licuido and transfer-agency technology provider ZILO. The investments expand its capabilities in digital asset issuance, fund administration and collateral management.

RippleX lays groundwork for round-the-clock collateral transfers

The next stage of XRPL's institutional infrastructure development focuses on using tokenized assets as collateral outside conventional banking hours.

In an Oct. 8 technical article, RippleX outlined five capabilities: Permission Delegation, Atomic Batch, Confidential Transfers, Dynamic Multi-Purpose Tokens and Sponsored Fees.

RippleX illustrated the idea with a hypothetical bank borrowing stablecoins against $50 million in tokenized money market funds on a Sunday evening.

The bank could pledge fund shares for stablecoins, with the collateral and payment settling together. Ripple has also positioned its RLUSD stablecoin as a cash leg for delivery-versus-payment settlement.

Atomic Batch is now live: BatchV1_1 activated on Oct. 9 at ledger 107,540,993. Its all-or-nothing mode lets linked transfers succeed together or revert together.

Confidential Transfers would hide Multi-Purpose Token transfer amounts while giving selected parties, including auditors and regulators, access to the information.

Dynamic Multi-Purpose Tokens would let issuers update designated token properties as financial instruments change. Sponsored Fees would let third parties cover charges and reserves for institutions unable to hold XRP directly.

RippleX says the combination could move tokenized assets into secured financing and liquidity management.

Permission Delegation and Atomic Batch are live, while ConfidentialTransfer, DynamicMPT and Sponsor still await validator approval. Those remaining upgrades would supply the privacy, token-update and fee-sponsorship components of RippleX's plan.

The post XRP Ledger lets institutions share account duties without sharing their keys appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Solana price stands at $108.88 on Friday evening, 5.5 percent lower than on Thursday, when we quoted it at $115.23. Over the week, 8.1 percent is missing. At the same time, the chain is reporting 1.88 million unique active addresses this Friday, the highest level in 13 months. Both hold true on the same day, and that gap is exactly the story: usage is picking up, the money is going out.

What an investor in Germany can make of that depends on three quantities, which this article works through in turn: how robust the address count is, how much money the American spot funds actually withdrew in October, and which levels will carry the price over the coming days or let it break.

Solana Price on October 9: $108.88, 97.19 Euros and a Weekly Loss of 8.1 Percent

As of October 9, SOL is quoted at $108.88, or 97.19 euros. The daily high was $111.76 and the daily low $108.42, with the daily change at minus 0.7 percent. Market capitalisation stands at around $64.0 billion, rank seven, and trading volume over the past 24 hours at $3.03 billion (source: CoinGecko).

The month looks friendlier than the week. Over 30 days there is still a gain of 5.1 percent. From the all-time high of $293.31 on January 19, 2025, the price is 62.9 percent away. Anyone who bought SOL in September is therefore ahead; anyone who entered on Monday is behind. That spread explains why sentiment in the forums diverges so sharply.

1.88 Million Active Addresses: What the 13-Month Record Measures and What It Does Not

The figure comes from SolanaFloor and the Blockworks analytics dashboard and was reported on October 9 (Crypto Briefing). A unique active address is an account address on the chain that has sent or received at least one transaction in a day. An address is not a person. One person can run ten addresses, and a trading bot can generate hundreds.

Alongside it, a second and considerably larger figure is circulating. The analytics service Santiment arrives at around 4.27 million daily active addresses, a gain of 58 percent, and puts network growth since the start of September at 124 percent with roughly 1.71 million new wallets a day. Both values stand side by side because they come from different trackers applying different filters. Add them together or set them against each other and you measure nothing. We therefore name both and smooth neither.

More robust than bare address counts are two accompanying figures from the same report. The number of funded wallets, meaning addresses with a balance, rose 38.5 percent month on month to 16.1 million. And in September more than 8,400 programs were active on Solana over the month, a record. A program on Solana is what a smart contract is on Ethereum. Those two figures are harder to inflate with empty addresses than a transaction count is.

Four Trading Days of Outflows: How Much the US Spot ETFs Lost in October

While the chain fills up, the funds are emptying. The American spot ETFs on SOL recorded a net outflow of $3.5 million on October 8, a fourth consecutive day in the red; across five trading days that adds up to $19.9 million (TokenPost). The individual days before that: $5.91 million on October 1, $3.68 million on October 6, $4.80 million on October 7. For October so far, several analyses put the total at more than $22 million.

On cumulative inflows since the products launched, the figures diverge: one source gives $1.578 billion, another $1.590 billion. The spread of around $12 million is immaterial for the overall picture, but not for precision, which is why it appears here as a range.

Why an ETF Outflow Reaches the Price: the Mechanism in Three Steps

Many readers know the headline but not the mechanics behind it. The sequence runs like this: if an investor sells units of a spot ETF and no buyer for those units is found on the market, the authorised participant redeems them with the issuer. The issuer hands over SOL it had held in custody until then. That SOL is sold on the market. Only at that point does the outflow reach the price.

Scale is what matters. A daily outflow of $3.5 million corresponds, at $108.88 per unit, to around 32,000 SOL. Measured against daily turnover of $3.03 billion, that is about 0.12 percent. Direct selling pressure is therefore small. The effect runs more through the signal: institutional addresses are pulling back, and other market participants read that as a direction indicator. If you want to follow fund flows for German products, the differences between ETF, ETN and ETP are in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

Since Yesterday: From $115.23 to $108.88, and What the Samsung Report Did Not Carry

On Thursday the news here was that Samsung is bringing USDC to 82 million Galaxy devices, and the price stood at $115.23 (our assessment of October 8). SOL has lost $6.35 since then. The $114.42 level named at the time has broken, and the upper level of $118.96 was never approached again.

This is an instructive case. The Samsung news concerned payment volume in USDC, not demand for SOL itself. That distinction was in yesterday's text, and it was borne out within a day. A report about usage of a chain is not an argument for buying its token, as long as that usage does not translate into fees or into demand for the token.

Securitize Brings Twelve US Stocks to Solana: One Driver of the Address Count

On October 8 the provider Securitize launched its tokenised US stocks on Solana (FinanceFeeds). Twelve names, among them Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Tesla and Amazon, each backed one to one with a real share, settled in USDC. Legally the tokens are what is known as security entitlements under Article 8 of the American Uniform Commercial Code; dividends and voting rights are passed through, but the holder does not become a registered shareholder unless they convert.

For the address count this matters, because every one of those positions is held on the chain and generates transactions with every trade. For an investor in Germany the point is a different one: Securitize names the United States, the EU and further permitted jurisdictions, but does not specify the circle of eligible investors. Whether you will get access from Germany is therefore not settled. That is a question to clarify with the provider itself before forming any expectation of the product, rather than from press releases.

Stablecoins on Solana: $15 Billion and 888,000 Daily Active Addresses

The part of the network growing fastest is payments. More than 14 million addresses now hold stablecoins on Solana, and total supply stands at more than $15 billion. In September an average of 888,000 addresses were active with stablecoins each day, a gain of 269 percent on the year before.

Those figures explain the address record better than any price move. At the same time they explain why the price is not following: anyone transferring USDC on Solana needs SOL only for the transaction fee of fractions of a cent. The chain earns from that traffic; the token barely does.

Levels for the Coming Days: $108.42, the 50-Day Line at 107 and $104.40

On the downside, the first support zone sits at today's daily low of $108.42, just under the current price. Below that follows the 50-day moving average at around $107.11; market observers name $104.40 as the next larger support. The 200-day average, at $86.45, lies far below and is not an issue this week.

On the upside it takes the $111.76 of the daily high, and after that the $114.42 level that broke yesterday. That the $115 zone has turned from support into resistance within a single day shows how thin the order book currently is.

Our Assessment: Usage Will Not Carry the Price While the Money Runs the Other Way

In the view of this newsroom, the address record is a good sign for the network and not a buy signal for the token. The evidence is set out above: 1.88 million active addresses at a 13-month high, alongside more than $22 million of outflows from the American spot funds in October and a price that has lost 8.1 percent in seven days. The largest driver of usage is stablecoin traffic, and that pays fractions of a cent in fees per transaction.

What argues the other way is the time axis. Network effects work over quarters, fund flows over days. Anyone thinking in years will weight the 16.1 million funded wallets and the 8,400 active programs more heavily than four red fund days. We are assessing the situation here, not a decision to buy or sell, and a total loss remains possible with any crypto exposure.

Buying Route, Custody and Staking: What You Can Check Today

On the buying route, since the MiCA Regulation came into full application a provider in the EU needs an authorisation as a crypto service provider. Before your next purchase, check whether your provider holds that authorisation and in which member state it was granted; we compare the terms and licensing status of the usual houses in the exchange comparison. Watch the gap between the buying and selling price while you are there, not only the stated fee.

With custody, the holding period decides. For short-term positions an exchange is practical; for longer holding periods, a wallet of your own shifts the provider's default risk onto you. If you stake SOL, you should also know that the activation and deactivation phases are tied to epochs and that the balance is not freely available during that time. On validator concentration we wrote up the current figures on Thursday, and the providers are listed in the staking comparison.

Holding Period, Exemption Threshold and Staking Income: What the Tax Office Expects From You

For private disposals under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, the one-year holding period applies: hold SOL for longer than a year and sell afterwards, and you pay no income tax on the gain. Within the year, the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros a year applies to all private disposals taken together. An exemption threshold is not an allowance: exceed it by one euro and the entire gain is taxable.

Staking income counts as other income and is taxable in the year it accrues, regardless of whether you keep the coins. The price at the moment of accrual forms the tax base and at the same time the acquisition cost for a later disposal. Stake regularly and you accumulate many small accrual events, which belong documented individually; which tools record that automatically is set out in the comparison of tax tools. Get tax advice for your own case; this account does not replace it.

Solana at $108.88: Usage Alone Will Not Carry the Price

Three steps that can be dealt with this evening:

1. Check your entry route. Look up whether your provider holds a MiCA authorisation in the EU and what the spread costs at your usual order size. The exchange comparison lists the houses with licensing status and fees.
2. Note the levels. Write down $108.42 and $107.11 on the downside, and $111.76 and $114.42 on the upside. If 107 breaks, the next zone named is $104.40.
3. Think staking and tax together. If you stake, check the lock-up period in the staking comparison and set up your record of accruals before the next payout arrives; the tools for it are in the tax tool comparison.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The EBA register is the directory listing the credit and payment institutions authorised in the European Economic Area. Anyone who wants to know whether a provider really holds an authorisation looks there. That very act of looking is what a scheme targets, one the German financial regulator BaFin warned about on October 9, 2026: the operators of a supposed European bank directed prospective customers to check their authorisation in a register that sat under their own domain.

BaFin's wording is this: "The register displayed on this website is not an official EBA register and appears to be forged." It also names the address where the genuine directory sits: euclid.eba.europa.eu. The lesson is an uncomfortable one, because it demands one step more than before. Searching for a provider in the register is no longer enough. You first have to know whether the register you are looking at is real.

The BaFin Warning of October 9: a Rebuilt Register Under the Operator's Own Domain

BaFin published two consumer notices on unauthorised business that day. The first concerns offers on the websites vantex-bank(.)com and vantex-bank(.)net. According to the regulator, no credit institution by the name of Vantex Bank exists in either Germany or France. The unknown operators claimed, BaFin says, that the supposed authorisation could be verified in the "public register" of the European Banking Authority on the website euclide-eba(.)com.

That domain name is the actual trick. It sits close enough to the real address to pass at a glance, and far enough away to have been freely available for registration. Follow the provider's link and you land in a directory the provider controls, where you find, as expected, an entry. The check then confirms not the authorisation, but only that somebody can build a web page.

The second notice of the same day concerns the website vaulttrades(.)co. According to BaFin's findings, its operators offer crypto-asset services without authorisation and are not supervised by it. That information rests on Section 10(7) of the Crypto Markets Supervision Act. Both are findings by the regulator, not judgments tested in court.

Euclid, the Real EBA Register: What an EEA Entry Actually Says

The European Banking Authority, or EBA, is the EU's supervisory authority for the banking sector. Under the name Euclid it maintains a central directory to which national supervisors report the credit and payment institutions they have authorised. EEA stands for European Economic Area, meaning the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. An entry there means that some national supervisor within that area has granted the institution an authorisation and passes it on to Brussels.

That directory is public and free of charge, and it sits at exactly one address. The safest way to open it is therefore the most inconvenient one: type the address into the address bar by hand instead of clicking a link a provider has sent you. A bookmark you set yourself once serves the same purpose.

Bank Register and Crypto Supervision: Two Directories That Do Not Prove the Same Thing

Here lies the second error of reasoning, and it is older than the current warning. Even a genuine entry in the EBA register says nothing about whether a house may offer crypto-asset services in Germany. The directory lists credit and payment institutions. Authorisation for the crypto business is a separate authorisation, granted nationally or under the European MiCA Regulation, and it sits in other directories.

Anyone offering banking, financial, securities or crypto-asset services in Germany needs BaFin's authorisation to do so. The obligations attached to it and the deadlines applying to providers in the EU are set out at length in our overview of the MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies. For an investor, the reverse is what counts above all: a provider advertising a banking licence has not thereby demonstrated any crypto authorisation, and the same holds the other way round.

If you want to avoid the detour through registers altogether, the direct route remains: houses whose authorisation is established in any case. Which platforms operate under supervision in Germany is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

The BaFin Company Database: How to Check the Authorisation at Source Instead of Through a Link

For Germany there is exactly one competent body, and that is BaFin's company database. It lists the institutions to which the German regulator has granted an authorisation. Three steps are enough, and none of them runs through a page belonging to the provider.

First: open the database through an address you typed yourself or saved as a bookmark. Second: search for the full company name, not the brand name of the app or the domain. Third: compare what is listed there with what the provider claims. Registered office, legal form and the type of permitted business all have to match. If a house is not listed, that does not automatically mean something is wrong, because providers from other EU states can operate under the European passport. It does mean the authorisation does not come from Germany and that you have to keep looking.

What that comparison looks like in practice, and how a missing authorisation can be spotted in a few minutes, we worked through in September against the warnings of the time: how to check in three minutes whether a crypto provider holds an authorisation. The procedure still applies unchanged. All that is new is the step before it, namely the question of whether the checking body itself is genuine.

Seven of Thirteen Warnings Concern Crypto Assets: the Figures From Eleven Days

How often the crypto business features in these warnings can be counted. Between September 29 and October 9, 2026, BaFin published thirteen consumer notices on unauthorised business. Seven of them explicitly name crypto-asset services, five rest on the Crypto Markets Supervision Act and ten on the Banking Act. The first nine days of October alone account for nine of the thirteen notices.

More interesting than the total is how the methods are distributed. Five of the thirteen notices involve identity abuse: somebody poses as a real, genuinely supervised company and uses its name or registration number. In exactly one of the thirteen, by contrast, a forged register appears, and that is the Vantex notice of October 9. On the pattern where the registration number is real and the sender is false, we described the nova-c-solutions.com case: what lies behind it when the registration number is genuine.

From the Borrowed Company Name to the Rebuilt Register: the Next Stage of the Method

Between those two variants lies a difference that changes everything about the check. Borrow somebody else's identity and you stay vulnerable: the number belongs to another firm, the name does not match the website, the registered office is wrong. Rebuild the register yourself and you escape that very comparison. What stands there is then the name the website carries, with the registered office the website names, and with a number nobody else ever issued.

A forgery that supplies the verification step along with itself is therefore harder to detect than one that merely makes an assertion. Our assessment: for readers, this shifts attention from the question "is the provider in the register?" to the question "how did I get into this register?". The evidence sits in the notice itself, in which BaFin classifies the displayed directory as apparently forged and places the genuine address beside it. Against that stands the fact that this case is so far an isolated one: one of thirteen matters in eleven days. It only becomes a method once the blueprint is repeated. That it is cheap argues it will be.

Recovery Scam: the Method Involving Recovered Crypto Holdings

In the same notice, BaFin records that the supposed bank may also be used for what is known as a recovery scam. In it, perpetrators approach previous victims of fraud again and hold out the prospect of recovering lost money or crypto holdings. For crypto investors this is the most dangerous variant, because it targets precisely those people who have already lost money and whose loss is publicly traceable on a blockchain.

The sequence follows a fixed pattern, according to the regulator. First a copy of an identity document is demanded, supposedly for identification. The perpetrators then use those copies for further offences. Next, payment of supposed fees or taxes is made a condition of the payout. No payout follows. BaFin reports that people who have lost no money at all are now being approached too, in that case under the pretext of a gift or a grant. A genuine authority demands no advance payment for the recovery of assets, and a reputable body does not ask for a copy of your ID by email.

MiCA, the KMAG and the Authorisation Requirement: the Legal Framework Behind the Two Warnings

That BaFin may publish such notices at all is set out in law. For the Vantex notice it relies on Section 37(4) of the Banking Act, and for vaulttrades(.)co on Section 10(7) of the Crypto Markets Supervision Act. The KMAG is the German act that supplements the European MiCA Regulation and governs the supervision of crypto-asset service providers. What role it plays in the warnings of recent weeks we broke down here: five of nine BaFin warnings rest on the Crypto Markets Supervision Act.

In practice that means a BaFin publication is not a criminal verdict but information for the market. Such a notice records that the regulator does not supervise a company and that, according to its findings, the company conducts business requiring authorisation. For practical purposes that is entirely sufficient, because without an authorisation none of the protective mechanisms attached to one exist either.

Money With an Unauthorised Provider: Deposit Guarantee Does Not Apply Here

That is where the actual damage lies. At an authorised institution in the EU, bank deposits are protected by law up to 100,000 euros per customer. That protection attaches to the authorisation, not to the company name, and certainly not to an entry in a directory somebody runs themselves. A house without an authorisation belongs to no protection scheme.

For crypto assets there is the added point that they fall outside deposit guarantee in any case, even with an authorised provider. There, supervision protects differently, through requirements on custody and on the segregation of client holdings. Where the authorisation is missing, those requirements are missing too. What then remains is the civil route against operators who are regularly listed as unknown in BaFin's notices. A total loss is the normal outcome in such cases, not a risk at the margin.

The same logic will meet you in other methods wearing other disguises, incidentally. How fraudsters invent a supposed mandatory check in order to obtain wallet approvals is shown in our piece on the fake AML check for crypto wallets.

EBA Register: Two Addresses Decide Whether a Licence Is Real

In the end it takes no long checklist, but two self-typed addresses and the willingness not to follow a convenient link.

1. Check the authorisation where you went yourself. For Germany that is BaFin's company database, and for the EEA the register at euclid.eba.europa.eu. If you would rather save yourself the search, start with houses whose authorisation is established: comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Withdraw your balance while you still can. With a provider that has no authorisation, every day is a day too many. If you do not want to leave your coins with a third party, hold them yourself: hardware wallets compared.
3. Never pay in advance to get at your own money. Fees, taxes or deposits as a condition of a payout are the hallmark of the recovery scam. For a fresh start with an authorised provider, the exchange comparison helps.

The two notices in question can be read at the regulator itself: the warning about the supposed Vantex Bank.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The XRP price stands at $1.39 on Friday evening, around 1.9 percent higher than 24 hours earlier. The day's news, though, is not in the chart. Ripple has recently begun earning fees for funding leveraged funds on Wall Street, in a business that belonged to the banks for decades. If you hold XRP, there is one figure to know first: none of those fees reach the token itself.

Ripple Prime Funds Leveraged Funds Through Total Return Swaps

Ripple Prime is the company's investment banking arm, and it provides funding to several issuers of leveraged ETFs through what are known as total return swaps. The service is set to be extended to hedge funds and other asset managers. The Wall Street Journal reported it first on October 7, and CoinDesk picked it up on October 8.

A total return swap is an exchange between two parties. One side promises the other the entire performance of an underlying asset, meaning price gains plus distributions, and receives a running payment in return. A fund that wants to track twice the daily move of a stock therefore does not have to buy the stock itself at twice the size. It buys the performance and pays a financing fee for it. The counterparty usually hedges its own risk through share purchases or other trades and keeps the fee.

Ripple Prime is now exactly that counterparty. The business has nothing to do with payments, with stablecoins or with the XRP Ledger. It is classic prime brokerage for American equity funds.

The Tradr 2X Long SNDK Pays Four Percentage Points Above the Overnight Rate

One specific set of terms appears in the report. The Tradr 2X Long SNDK Daily ETF, designed to track twice the daily move of the memory chip maker Sandisk, pays Ripple the Overnight Bank Funding Rate plus four percentage points. At today's level of interest rates, that works out at roughly eight percent a year.

That figure applies to a single fund and is not a company average. The terms nevertheless show how comfortable the margin is in this niche business. For comparison: a German saver on an overnight deposit currently receives a fraction of it, and the fund is not paying that rate out of distress, but because its own product construction does not work without outside funding.

593 Leveraged ETFs and $256 Billion, the Market Behind the Business

According to Morningstar data cited in the coverage, there are 593 leveraged ETFs in the United States with more than $256 billion in assets under management between them. All of these products need funding on a rolling basis, and all of them pay for it.

For a long time the large banks handled that. Tighter capital and risk requirements made the business more expensive for them, and non-banks such as Jane Street, Clear Street and now Ripple Prime are moving into the gap. Ripple laid the groundwork a year earlier: the acquisition of the prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion was announced in April 2025 and completed in October 2025. Hidden Road has traded as Ripple Prime since then, covering foreign exchange, derivatives, bonds, equities and digital assets. Since May the unit has raised up to $475 million through credit lines and corporate bonds, according to reports, with the bonds carrying a BBB rating. The hedge fund Brevan Howard was among the clients named.

The Swaps Run in Dollars, Not Over the XRP Ledger

This is where the company story and the token story part ways. A total return swap on an American stock is priced in dollars, collateralised in dollars and settled in dollars. No step in that chain requires XRP, and none of it creates demand for the token. Ripple the company earns. The token is left out.

That can be put in rough numbers. Apply the eight percent documented for the one fund to the up to $475 million in funding that Ripple Prime has raised since May, and you arrive at a rough ceiling of about $38 million in gross annual revenue. This is a back-of-the-envelope calculation with the method disclosed, not a company figure: there is no evidence that all of the funds are lent out at that rate, and refinancing costs are not deducted. Measured against XRP's market capitalisation of around $87 billion, even that upper figure would amount to roughly 0.04 percent. The leveraged ETF market, with its $256 billion, is on its own almost three times the size of the entire XRP supply as valued on the market, and it still does not move the token price.

One confusion is worth avoiding at this point: the American spot ETFs on XRP are an entirely different matter. There, a fund actually buys XRP and holds it in custody. Ripple Prime funds equity funds. Both stories carry the word ETF, and only one of them touches demand for the token.

XRP Price at $1.39, With $1.36 and $1.41 Framing the Day

On Friday evening XRP is quoted at $1.39. The daily low was $1.36 and the daily high $1.41, so the day's range covers less than four percent. Trading volume over the past 24 hours comes to around $1.88 billion, and market capitalisation stands at about $87.4 billion. That leaves the price some 62 percent below the all-time high of $3.65. The figures come from CoinGecko, as of the evening of October 9.

Those two levels are not analyst targets but the actual turning points of the current day. As long as $1.36 holds, the recovery after this week's slump stays intact. If the price drops below it, the next evidenced reference is the overnight low from Thursday into Friday, which sat between $1.32 and $1.33 depending on the data source.

Since Yesterday's Delegation Report, $1.34 Has Held

On Thursday this column looked at permission delegation on the XRP Ledger and at the question of whether the $1.34 level would hold. It held. When that piece was published the price was in the same range as today, and it did not fall through $1.34 on any sustained basis during the day, not even during the overnight weakness.

Two things have changed since. Delegation has been live since October 8, so the feature update is done and no longer works as a price driver. And the funding story now puts a narrative on the table that lifts Ripple as a company without touching the token. If you took away from Thursday's piece the expectation that protocol progress carries the price, today delivers the counterpart to it.

One date remains in the calendar. Evernorth, the vehicle holding around 473 million XRP, is due to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN on October 12. cryptoticker reported that on October 2. That date affects the token directly; the swap funding does not.

Our Assessment of Revenue and Token Price

In the view of this newsroom, the funding story is strong for Ripple as a company and all but meaningless for XRP as an investment. The evidence is set out above: the swaps are settled in dollars, the documented revenue sits in the tens of millions and therefore at about 0.04 percent of the token's valuation, and no stage of the transaction chain calls for XRP.

There is one counterargument that deserves to be taken seriously. Ripple itself holds a substantial amount of XRP in escrow and has historically financed itself partly by selling it. A company with running fee income from a banking business is under less pressure to release tokens. That affects supply and thereby, indirectly, the price, only weakly and with a delay, and it can only be evidenced in future escrow reports. Trading the news as a direct price driver means trading against your own arithmetic.

US Spot ETFs Lack the Key Information Document for German Retail Investors

Whenever American crypto ETFs are in the news, readers in Germany face the same practical question, and the answer is a sober one. The PRIIPs Regulation, Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014, requires a standardised key information document for distribution to retail investors in the European Economic Area. American fund companies generally do not produce that document for their domestic products, because European retail distribution plays no part for them. Without it, a broker supervised in the EU may not sell the security to a retail client.

In practice that means the American spot ETFs on XRP are not available to German retail investors through ordinary brokers. Individual houses open them up to professional clients; for everyone else two routes remain, direct purchase on an exchange and the European ETP. Which products are actually tradable in Germany is set out at length in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

Exchange-listed XRP products from Europe are called ETPs, ETNs or ETCs and are legally, in most cases, collateralised debt securities rather than funds. The 21Shares XRP ETP with the ISIN CH0454664043, for example, is fully physically backed with XRP according to the issuer and is held in cold storage at an institutional custodian. Its total annual cost ratio is 2.50 percent. Market overviews list further issuers as tradable via Xetra and SIX.

The Delivery Claim Separates Section 23 From Section 20

For tax purposes, direct purchase and an ETP are two different worlds in Germany, and the difference costs or saves a great deal of money depending on how long you hold. A direct purchase falls under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Hold XRP for more than a year and the gain is sold tax-free. Under a year, your personal tax rate applies, along with an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros a year. Lawmakers recently confirmed this twelve-month rule after an attempt to abolish it was rejected.

With an ETP, the classification hangs on a single contractual question, namely the delivery claim. If the product grants the right to have the underlying coins delivered, there is a strong case for treating it like direct ownership, that is, under Section 23 with the twelve-month period. Without that claim, it looks more like another form of capital claim, and then Section 20 applies, with 25 percent withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge, with no holding period at all, but with the saver's allowance and with loss offsetting against other investment income.

This classification is a tax assessment, not settled case law. Whether a particular XRP product grants a delivery claim is stated in the prospectus and in the key information document and nowhere else. For meaningful sums, the question belongs with a tax adviser, not in a forum.

For a decision, that translates into something concrete: if you are planning on a horizon of more than a year, direct purchase with your own custody is usually the better route for tax. If you think in shorter terms, or value the withholding tax as a cap, the ETP can be the quieter solution despite its running fee. The 2.50 percent a year is no minor item: over a holding period of three years it already amounts to around seven percent of the capital deployed.

Ripple Prime: Fees Flow to the Company, Not to the Token

The day's news is a company story. The price at $1.39 still depends on supply of and demand for the token, not on the margins of a prime brokerage unit. Three steps follow from that for the days ahead.

1. Settle your access route before the next impulse arrives. American spot ETFs are not open to you as a retail investor. Check instead which broker prices the European ETP and which prices direct purchase more cheaply; the terms and spreads are in our broker comparison.
2. Read up on the delivery claim and weigh your holding period against it. Get the product's key information document and look for the passage on the right of delivery. Which software documents the deadlines and acquisition dates cleanly is shown in our overview of tax tools and portfolio trackers.
3. With a direct purchase, settle the custody question. The twelve-month period is of little use if the coins sit on an exchange and an incident intervenes there. Which devices are suited to the job is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

October 12, with Evernorth's Nasdaq listing, is the next date that affects the token directly. Until then, $1.36 and $1.41 remain the levels against which the day is measured.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Wallets attributed to the US government moved 17,733 Bitcoin worth roughly $1.48 billion into accounts at Coinbase Prime over three days. Not one of those coins has been sold, as far as the public record goes. The gap between those two sentences is what the market tripped over on Thursday and Friday: Bitcoin fell to its October low and recovered again, and in between, leveraged positions worth more than a billion dollars were wiped out.

Here is the sequence, with the figures that are documented and the points where the counts contradict each other.

17,733 Bitcoin at Coinbase Prime: What the On-Chain Data Shows

According to an analysis by TokenPost, 17,733 BTC worth about $1.48 billion reached Coinbase Prime by October 9, spread over three days. A further 750 WBTC worth around $62 million went the same way. Caution is warranted already at this point: the WBTC figure ranges between 50 and 750 coins depending on the analysis, and anyone who attributes wallets differently arrives at different totals. A second count, based on addresses ascribed to the Bitfinex seizure complex, puts the figure at 12,267 BTC, or roughly $1.01 billion.

The range from 12,267 to 17,733 BTC is not sloppiness. It follows from an attribution that always remains an interpretation. Analytics firms label addresses using patterns, court records and earlier movements. A tag such as "US government" on an address is a reasoned assumption with a good hit rate, not an entry in an official register. Pass on either number as the single truth and you leave out the part that is disputed.

Where These Holdings Come From

The holdings ascribed to such wallets trace back to seizures, among them the one connected to the Bitfinex hack. They are disposed of through the regular channel, the US Marshals Service, the enforcement arm of the Justice Department. Coinbase Prime has been its custody and trading provider for years. That is what makes the movement both worth explaining and unspectacular: an owner who already custodies there will move coins there for reasons that have nothing to do with a sale.

Coinbase Prime Is a Custodian, Not a Sales Desk

A transfer to a custody address looks exactly like the first step of a sale in on-chain data. It is not one. Coinbase Prime bundles custody, settlement and trading for institutional clients. A deposit there can be a reshuffle between an owner's own accounts, preparation for an auction, a change in the technical form of custody, or indeed the opening move of a sale. Which of those applies only becomes visible once coins move into trading books or an agency says so.

TokenPost states this explicitly in its own report: the movements do not prove that the government sold Bitcoin or caused the price decline. That caution has often been lost in the coverage of recent days. What remained was a narrative in which a state pushes the market down, and a narrative moves prices faster than a fact does.

$1.09 Billion in Liquidations Within 24 Hours

What moved the price is better documented than the reason assigned to it. According to CoinGlass data reported by The Cryptonomist, positions worth $1.09 billion were force-closed in the 24 hours to Friday morning. Long positions accounted for $1.05 billion of that, a little over 96 percent. Other counts covering overlapping windows give $1.06 billion to $1.14 billion; the direction is the same in every set, while the size depends on the window and on which exchanges are captured.

A 96 percent share on the long side does not describe an attack from outside. It describes positioning that was too one-sided. When almost everyone is betting on rising prices, and almost all of them with borrowed money, a moderate pullback is enough to set off a chain.

How a Liquidation Chain Builds: Margin, Funding Rate and Forced Selling

A leveraged position is a loan against collateral. You post an initial margin and trade a multiple of it. If the price falls, the collateral shrinks; once it drops below a threshold, the exchange closes the position automatically and sells the collateral into the market. That forced sale pushes the price down a little further, which brings the next position to its own threshold. This is how the cascades form in which hundreds of millions of dollars disappear within minutes.

The funding rate is the price one side pays the other for holding a perpetual futures position. When it stays clearly positive over a longer stretch, buyers are the ones paying, and that reveals an overweight on the long side. The liquidation price is the level at which your collateral no longer suffices. Both are fixed before you enter and can be calculated, and both are more often estimated than recalculated in day-to-day trading.

In practice, that means traders in perpetual futures carry a risk that does not depend on the price alone, but on how everyone else is positioned. Our comparison of perp DEX platforms shows how fees, leverage tiers and liquidation rules differ between venues. The gaps are wider than the advertised leverage suggests.

The October Low Sits Between $80,350 and $80,475

This week's low is quoted differently depending on the venue, and that spread is part of the picture. The Cryptonomist cites $80,350 on Bitstamp, the weakest level since September 18. TokenPost gives $80,420 as the October low. Our own analysis of the daily range on the Kraken exchange puts the BTC/USD pair at a daily low of $80,474.70 and a daily high of $83,462.90. cryptoticker.io collected that data itself on October 9, 2026; the basis is one verified trading pair at one venue.

The spread of roughly $125 between the figures is irrelevant for a decision and important for understanding it: there is no single Bitcoin price, only as many as there are venues. If a stop level sits exactly on a reported low, it may have been triggered on your exchange and not on another.

By Friday afternoon Bitcoin traded at around $82,650, about 1.2 percent above its level 24 hours earlier (as of October 9, 2026, Kraken). That leaves a good $2,100 above the low and some $800 below the daily high.

How to Check the Movements of Government Wallets Yourself

You do not have to rely on anyone else's reading. The addresses in question are public, and their movements are in the blockchain. A block explorer or one of the labelling services shows inflows and outflows for an address with a timestamp and an amount. Four things are worth a look before you follow a headline:

• Direction and destination. Does the balance go to an exchange's custody address or to a trading address? The two look similar and mean different things.
• The label and its age. Since when has the address carried the attribution, and which source does the service cite? A label without a reason is an assertion.
• The offsetting entry. Does the amount show up in the exchange's reserves, or does it spread across new addresses? The latter argues against a sale.
• The comparison with trading volume. A billion dollars sounds enormous and is a small share of daily Bitcoin volume. Without that yardstick, every large number looks like an event.

This second route through the on-chain data is why the story of a state selling off its holdings is so hard to sustain. The price recovered on Friday while the holdings sat at Coinbase Prime. A seller pushing 17,733 Bitcoin into the market leaves a different picture behind.

ETF Outflows of $244.13 Million on a Second Straight Day

The week's pressure had a second, more sober source. The US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $244.13 million on October 8, according to SoSoValue; Farside Investors arrives at $244.1 million. It was the second day of outflows in a row. For October 7, Farside gives $484.9 million and SoSoValue $487.07 million, putting the two days together at roughly $729 million.

Most of it came from a single fund: Fidelity's FBTC lost $197.1 million on October 8. BlackRock's IBIT gave up $5.5 million after $207.7 million had left in the session before. Franklin's EZBC was the only fund with a gain, taking in $4.71 million. Total assets across the product group stand at $104.91 billion.

ETF outflows work differently from futures liquidations. They run more slowly, they involve real holdings rather than borrowed positions, and they last longer, because allocation decisions sit behind them rather than margin thresholds. Investors in Germany who want to hold such products will find the routes and their limits in our overview of crypto ETFs for German investors.

Holding Period, Leverage and Custody: What Concerns Investors in Germany

For tax purposes, this week's drop is above all a question of the calendar. In Germany, gains from selling crypto assets are tax-free after a holding period of one year; within that year they are taxable as a private disposal. The logic cuts both ways: a loss you realise inside the one-year window can be offset against gains from other private disposals. Once the deadline has passed, the gain is tax-free and the loss is worthless for tax purposes. If you are weighing a sale in a slump, the purchase date is therefore the first thing to look at.

With Leverage, the Supervisory Framework Decides

With leverage, the difference between the trading routes is bigger than the difference between the providers. CFD brokers under German supervision have been subject to a hard cap on crypto leverage for retail clients since BaFin's general administrative act of July 23, 2019, together with a ban on additional margin calls: you cannot lose more than your deposit there. The specific tier is set out in your broker's contract terms, and it sits well below what unsupervised platforms offer.

On perp DEX platforms without European authorisation, those protections do not apply. Double-digit leverage is common there, supervisory law imposes no loss limit, and in a dispute there is no route to a German regulator. A large share of the $1.05 billion in closed long positions originated on such venues.

Custody: The Difference Between Possession and Claim

The episode at Coinbase Prime leads to a question that outlasts the day. Coins in an account at a custodian are not ownership of keys but a claim against a company. For large institutions that is a deliberate choice, because audit duties and insurance depend on it. The same choice has different consequences for a private holder: if your holdings sit at an exchange, you carry its default risk. If they sit on your own hardware wallet, you carry the risk of a lost key. There is no third option, and anyone presenting it otherwise is selling something.

Our Assessment: The Price Reacted to Leverage, Not to the State

In the view of this newsroom, the narrative of state selling pressure does not bear the weight placed on it this week. Three documented points argue against it. First, no sale is on the record; the source reporting the transfer says so explicitly. Second, long positions accounted for $1.05 billion of the $1.09 billion in liquidations, which points to one-sided positioning rather than to supply from outside. Third, the price recovered on Friday to around $82,650 even though the holdings sit unchanged with the custodian.

What argues the other way is what we do not know. Nobody outside the responsible agencies knows the purpose of these transfers, and a disposal in the coming weeks remains possible. A sale that is not documented is not a sale that is ruled out. Deriving a price forecast from this replaces one unproven narrative with a second. The only robust observation is that the market suffered this week from its own leverage structure.

What Has Changed Since the October 8 Slump

The link to the previous day matters, because the situation has shifted. On October 8 we described the drop below $81,000 and its causes (Crypto crash: why Bitcoin fell below $81,000). Three things have changed since then. The price has won back the $81,000 mark and trades above it again at around $82,650. Liquidations crossed the billion-dollar line at $1.09 billion in 24 hours, exceeding the previous day's magnitude. And the explanation has switched: macro pressure became, overnight, the state as seller, without any evidence being supplied for it.

Two dates are concrete for the days ahead. The US consumer price index on October 14 will move rate expectations and with them risk appetite across the whole market. And the daily ETF figures will show whether the outflows break off after two days or continue; a third day in the series would be the more telling signal than any wallet movement.

Government Bitcoin at Coinbase Prime: 17,733 BTC, No Documented Sale

What remains of this week can be worked through in three steps:

1. Separate the transfer from the interpretation. 17,733 Bitcoin sit with a custodian, and nothing has been sold. If you are reviewing your buying route anyway, compare fees, custody models and supervision across venues in our overview of the best crypto exchanges rather than reacting to a headline.
2. Recalculate your liquidation price before the next pullback comes. With a 96 percent long share in the forced closures, the initial margin decides the outcome. If you trade with leverage, the hardware wallet comparison will not give you the platform terms, but it will answer the question of where the rest of your holdings sits more safely than in a margin position.
3. Sort out your purchase date, not your mood. Whether a sale in this slump makes sense for tax purposes hangs on the one-year deadline. The tools in our comparison of crypto tax tools give you a clean overview of your acquisition dates.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Winklevoss Asset Services filed an S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 6, 2026 for a spot ETF on Zcash. The fund is to run on the Nasdaq under the ticker WINK and cost 0.25 percent a year. That is one tenth of what the only US Zcash ETF so far charges. For a portfolio in Germany the fund stays closed all the same, and the date that really lies ahead for ZEC holders here is not in this filing but in European anti money laundering law.

An S-1 is the registration form with which an issuer in the United States submits new securities for approval. It is an application, not a permission: the prospectus states explicitly that the information may change and that no shares may be sold while the registration is not yet effective.

An S-1 at the SEC: Winklevoss Asset Services applies for a spot ETF on Zcash

The applicant is Winklevoss Asset Services, LLC as sponsor. The issuer itself is a Delaware statutory trust, appearing in the prospectus as the Winklevoss Zcash ETF. The filing carries the SEC accession number 0001104659-26-113940 and is held in the register under identifier 0002158471, with a business address in Wilmington, Delaware.

Spot means the fund holds the cryptocurrency itself instead of tracking its price through futures contracts. The prospectus describes exactly that: the trust holds ZEC directly and works with neither leverage nor derivatives. The distinction matters for the price, because a spot fund has to take real coins off the market on an inflow, while a futures fund merely swaps contracts.

The exchange is named in the filing as the Nasdaq Stock Market, LLC, subject to notice of issuance. That too is a statement of intent and not an approval. The prospectus at the SEC is open to inspection.

0.25 against 2.5 percent: the fee gap to the Grayscale Zcash ETF

So far there is exactly one spot ETF on Zcash in the United States. Grayscale listed it on August 25, 2026 under the ticker ZCSH on NYSE Arca, converted from an existing trust that began as a private placement in 2017. It charges 2.5 percent a year. Grayscale has announced that it will channel the revenue from that fee back into the Zcash ecosystem in the first year, for instance into marketing and education.

The Winklevoss fund as filed sets 0.25 percent. The prospectus states that the trust pays the sponsor "an annual unified fee of 0.25% of the Trust's ZEC Holdings". Unified fee means that this single charge covers the running costs instead of billing custody, administration and auditing separately.

Convert the gap into a sum and it becomes tangible. On $10,000 invested, ZCSH costs $250 a year and the fund as filed $25. Over five years and with no change in price that is $1,250 against $125. On a product that does nothing beyond holding a cryptocurrency, the fee is the only item an investor knows for certain.

Unified fee: what a sponsor charge takes out of fund assets

The sponsor fee is not debited separately. It is taken out of the fund's assets, usually by the fund selling a small share of its coins on a running basis. An ETF with a 2.5 percent fee therefore holds around 2.5 percent fewer coins per share after a year than at the start, even if the price were unchanged. The share price follows the market, while the backing per share falls.

That is where the real leverage of this filing sits: a competitor ten times cheaper works on existing holdings and not only on new investors. A holder of ZCSH who sees WINK approved has a calculable reason to switch, and a switch between two spot funds runs through redemption at one and subscription at the other. That is precisely what produces outflow figures which look like selling pressure without a single coin leaving the market on balance.

Gemini Trust Company as custodian: a custodian from the same house

The custodian is to be Gemini Trust Company, LLC. The prospectus describes it as an affiliate of the sponsor. The ZEC are to sit in segregated cold storage, meaning custody with no connection to the internet.

That proximity is not an accusation, and it stands openly in the filing. It is, however, a point the regulator examines regularly in ETF applications, because sponsor and custodian then belong to the same circle of owners. What matters most here is the direction of travel: a house that runs both the exchange and the custody can offer a fund more cheaply than a sponsor who has to buy both in. The 0.25 percent are therefore a fighting price and a consequence of the firm's own structure at once.

A $100 million indication of interest: what a non binding undertaking is worth

The prospectus states that the Winklevoss Capital Fund, LLC has, through one or more affiliates, indicated an interest in purchasing shares worth up to $100 million. An indication of interest of this kind is expressly not binding. The prospectus itself says the buyers may acquire more shares, fewer, or none at all.

Undertakings like this appear in prospectuses because a fund with no starting volume is barely tradable on an exchange. As evidence of future demand the figure is of no use. It says the sponsor is willing to place its own money alongside the product, and it names an order of magnitude. It carries nothing beyond that.

ZEC at $1,219: the October 6 filing has not carried the price

Zcash trades at $1,218.82 on the OKX spot market and at $1,216.60 on Coinbase Exchange on October 9, 2026. Against the rolling 24 hour window that is a gain of 8.5 percent (OKX) to 9.1 percent (Coinbase). The day's range runs from $1,112 to $1,247, and market value stands at around $19.9 billion, putting it tenth.

That gain is no reaction to the filing, however, and reading it that way draws the wrong conclusion. On October 6, the day of submission, ZEC closed at $1,367.26. The price has lost 10.8 percent since. The daily gain is a recovery from the slide of October 8, when the price fell from $1,327.62 to $1,186.61 and touched $1,112.27 along the way.

Over seven days Zcash is therefore down while the broad market recovers on this day: Bitcoin adds 2.2 percent, Ether 2.1 percent. An application for a cheaper investment product is evidently no driver of the price while the approval remains open.

Since our report of October 5: 8.8 percent lower, a daily low of $1,112

On October 5 we reported on the first weekly outflow from the Grayscale Zcash ETF, $93.56 million in one week at the time. Against that day's close of $1,337.45, ZEC sits 8.8 percent lower today. The fourteen day high of $1,697.45 from September 26 now stands 28 percent above the current price.

The order of events produces a picture that neither report yields on its own. First money left the expensive fund, then the price fell to a multi week low, and only after that did a competitor file a product at a tenth of the fee. An issuer filing into a weak phase is aiming at tomorrow's fee market, hardly at today's price.

WINK on the Nasdaq: for a German portfolio the fund stays out of reach

A US spot ETF on crypto assets is practically unbuyable for retail investors in Germany. The reason sits in the European distribution rule: a fund may only be distributed to retail clients in the EU if a key information document under the PRIIPs Regulation exists in the relevant national language. US issuers do not produce that document, because they do not serve the EU retail market. Brokers in Germany therefore block such securities from trading.

The same applies to ZCSH, and a second, cheaper US fund will change nothing about it. The fee question currently being settled in the United States touches a German portfolio only if you are considering a route around that block. That is not advisable, because it removes the investor protection on which the block is founded.

The route via ETPs and crypto exchanges: holding period, custody and market access

Two other routes are open in Germany. The first runs through an exchange traded crypto security, usually called an ETP or ETN. This is a debt instrument that tracks the price of a cryptocurrency and is tradable on a European exchange, but legally it is not a fund. Whether you can buy one depends on which trading venues your broker offers. How the product categories differ is set out in our overview of crypto ETFs for investors in Germany.

The second route is buying the coin itself through a crypto exchange with MiCA authorisation. MiCA is the EU regulation on markets in crypto assets; since it took effect, providers need a permission from a European supervisor to offer services in the EU. Which houses can show that permission is set out in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Tax treats the two routes very differently. With a directly held coin the speculation period under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies: after a holding period of one year a gain on sale is free of tax, while within the year it counts as a private disposal. With a security the flat rate withholding tax on investment income applies, regardless of the holding period. Holding the coin yourself means keeping it either at the exchange or in your own hands; the device types for self custody differ considerably in handling and in how they are secured.

Article 79 of the EU anti money laundering regulation: regulated trading ends on July 10, 2027

Here lies the date that carries more weight for ZEC holders in Germany than any US approval. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, the European anti money laundering regulation, prohibits credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto asset service providers in Article 79(1) from keeping anonymous accounts. The wording expressly covers accounts allowing the concealment of transactions, "including through anonymity enhancing coins".

Under Article 90 the regulation applies from July 10, 2027, with an exception for certain obliged entities for which July 10, 2029 is the relevant date. The text of the regulation in the Official Journal is freely available. Our report of October 5, 2026 gave July 1, 2027 at this point; the date in Article 90 is the one that governs.

The regulation addresses providers, not you. Private ownership of Zcash is untouched by it. What falls away is orderly market access: an exchange authorised in the EU will not be able to carry ZEC in trading or in custody after that date. The point at which selling or moving is still practically easy therefore lies before that date, not after it.

What the filing does not say: timetable, approval and the risk of a withdrawal

Three pieces of information are missing from the prospectus, and with a first filing that is normal. There is no date for approval, no launch date and no commitment from the Nasdaq on the listing. An S-1 can be amended, withdrawn, or commented on by the regulator over months before it becomes effective. The Grayscale fund needed the route through an existing trust and a conversion rather than a fresh registration.

It is also open whether the SEC will assess a second spot fund on a cryptocurrency with a shielding function differently from the first. The filing says nothing on that question, and an assessment at this point would be a guess without foundation.

Our assessment: a fee fight without approval stays a paper application

In this newsroom's view, this filing is significant for the American fund market and for the moment a footnote for German investors. Three pieces of evidence from this text support that: the fee difference from 2.5 to 0.25 percent is calculable and reaches existing holdings; the price reaction is absent, since ZEC sits 10.8 percent lower than on the day of filing; and the PRIIPs block keeps US funds out of German portfolios regardless of their fee.

One argument stands against it that we do not wish to play down: if fee competition in the United States draws capital into Zcash products, that works through the spot market onto the price paid in Europe as well. Only that route is indirect and tied to the approval, which is still outstanding. We derive no recommendation to buy or sell from it; crypto assets can lose their value entirely.

Zcash ETF: without approval, July 10, 2027 remains the harder date

Three steps follow from the situation:

1. Settle the product category before you place an order. ZCSH and the filed WINK are US funds and blocked for you; what is tradable are European securities and the coin itself. The differences are in our overview of crypto ETFs for investors in Germany.
2. Settle the venue's authorisation. If you buy or hold ZEC directly, take a provider with a European permission; the state of play is in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Take July 10, 2027 into your planning. From that date, authorised EU providers may no longer trade or hold Zcash. Anyone moving the coins into self custody before then will find the device types in our overview of hardware wallets.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Executives are war-gaming the political fallout of a major AI-driven cyberattack and preparing to brief Congress fast if and when necessary.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal wants Cantor Fitzgerald to open its records on Tether and on how much Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family has earned from its business deal.

The crypto platform filed for designated contract market and futures commission merchant licenses, which would let it run its own regulated event-contract venue instead of relying on overseas partners.

Bitcoin bounced after dipping to around $80,000. Traders are placing increasingly high odds BTC slips further before October is over.

Starknet is "actively considering" becoming its own blockchain, a move it says would make it the first fully quantum-resistant network by 2027.

Crypto majors and large-cap altcoins are consolidating after sharp pullbacks, with traders watching key moving averages for the next directional move.

A dangerous iPhone exploit continues to threaten crypto holders, with hackers targeting popular wallets such as Coinbase, MetaMask and Trust Wallet to steal sensitive data and recovery phrases.

Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer has warned that AI could uncover critical vulnerabilities in the XRP Ledger.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao advises a two-week freeze on new devices after an $86 million exploit hits Ledger.

Ethereum reserve on Binance drops to its six-month low with over 10 million ETH withdrawn from the exchange in just three days.

TLDR

• Eli Lilly stock gains 0.62% as new Phase 3b findings highlight treatment gains.
• Combined therapy changes 482 proteins versus 140 with Taltz alone by Week 36.
• Gene activity shifts span 467 genes with both drugs, versus 16 on Taltz alone.
• Taltz and Zepbound deliver improved skin clearance and weight loss at Week 36.
• Researchers report consistent safety findings, but no new approved indication.

Eli Lilly and Company stock rose 0.62% to $1,176.80 on Friday, gaining $7.20 during the trading session. The company announced new Phase 3b findings showing broader biological responses from combined Taltz and Zepbound treatment. The results expand earlier evidence of improved psoriasis symptoms and weight reduction among adults living with psoriasis and obesity.

Eli Lilly and Company, LLY

Eli Lilly Reports Stronger Phase 3b Results for Taltz and Zepbound

Eli Lilly released new exploratory findings from its TOGETHER-PsO Phase 3b clinical trial examining two existing prescription medicines. Researchers compared the combined use of Taltz and Zepbound against Taltz alone in adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. The study also included participants with obesity or overweight alongside at least one additional weight-related medical condition.

The latest analysis identified broader changes in proteins and genes among participants receiving both medicines compared with Taltz alone. By Week 36, researchers identified changes involving 482 proteins in the combination group, compared with 140 in the other group. Similarly, gene expression changes affected 467 genes with combined treatment, against only 16 genes with Taltz alone.

These biological differences appeared as early as Week 12, according to the pharmaceutical company’s newly released findings. Researchers also identified stronger reductions in inflammatory immune activity among participants receiving both treatments over the study period. Eli Lilly presented the findings at the 2026 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas.

Combined Treatment Improves Skin Clearance and Weight Reduction

The latest findings build on earlier clinical results showing better treatment outcomes among participants receiving Taltz alongside Zepbound. At Week 36, the combination delivered superior skin clearance and meaningful weight reduction compared with Taltz alone. Furthermore, participants maintained or improved these clinical benefits through Week 52, according to Eli Lilly’s previously reported findings.

The analysis also examined neutrophils, which play an important role in the body’s inflammatory immune response. Researchers found that combined treatment produced greater changes in inflammatory pathways associated with these immune cells. Changes in certain neutrophil-related markers partly explained the additional improvement in psoriasis severity scores among combination-treatment participants.

The TOGETHER-PsO trial included 274 adults across multiple clinical research centers, with participants divided equally between two treatment groups. One group received Taltz alone, while the other received Taltz and Zepbound through injections under the skin. Both groups also received guidance on reducing calorie intake and increasing physical activity throughout the clinical study.

Eli Lilly Expands Research Into Psoriasis and Obesity

Eli Lilly designed the study to examine the relationship between metabolic health and inflammatory skin conditions. Approximately 61% of Americans with psoriasis also experience obesity or overweight alongside another weight-related medical condition, according to Lilly. The findings provide additional research into how treatments targeting different biological processes may influence both conditions.

Taltz works by blocking interleukin-17A, an immune signaling protein involved in inflammation and several related inflammatory conditions. Zepbound targets GIP and GLP-1 receptors, helping regulate appetite and support weight management in eligible adults. The two medicines therefore act through different biological pathways, providing the basis for investigating their combined clinical effects.

Eli Lilly reported that the combination’s safety findings matched the established safety profiles of the individual medicines. The exploratory results do not establish a new approved indication for using the medicines together. The company continues examining the relationship between immune and metabolic processes as researchers assess broader approaches to psoriasis management.

The post Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) Stock: Rises as Taltz and Zepbound Show Promising Results appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• ASTS stock plunges 12.01% as BlueBird satellite deployment remains a key focus.
• AST SpaceMobile targets 45 satellites by early 2027 to expand mobile coverage.
• The company needs 45 to 60 satellites for continuous service in key markets.
• AST SpaceMobile reports $3.7 billion in funding to support satellite expansion.
• Commercial satellite service could generate nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc. stock dropped 12.01% to $50.10 on Friday, losing $6.83 during the trading session. The decline comes as the company works to expand its BlueBird satellite network and prepare commercial broadband services. Its satellite deployment targets remain central to future revenue growth and the company’s long-term business plans.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc., ASTS

AST SpaceMobile currently operates 13 spacecraft in orbit, according to its second-quarter 2026 update. The company needs a substantially larger constellation to provide continuous mobile coverage across its target markets. Management expects to reach approximately 45 satellites by early 2027, supporting its planned commercial network expansion.

AST SpaceMobile Targets 45 BlueBird Satellites by Early 2027

AST SpaceMobile reported 13 spacecraft in orbit during its August 10, 2026, earnings call. The company estimates that continuous broadband coverage requires between 45 and 60 satellites across major international markets. These markets include the United States, Europe, and Japan, where the company plans to introduce satellite-based mobile connectivity.

The BlueBird network aims to provide broadband services directly to standard smartphones without requiring special equipment. AST SpaceMobile plans to extend mobile coverage into areas where traditional cellular infrastructure remains limited. Its technology could support telecommunications providers seeking broader network coverage without building additional ground infrastructure across remote regions.

The company has established partnerships with more than 60 mobile network operators across different international markets. These telecommunications partners serve more than 3 billion subscribers, creating a substantial potential customer base. Commercial availability depends on satellite deployment, network integration, regulatory approvals, and agreements with participating mobile operators.

AST SpaceMobile Revenue Targets Depend on Network Expansion

AST SpaceMobile generated $31.5 million in revenue during the second quarter of 2026, according to its financial results. Government contracts and infrastructure projects for commercial partners provided revenue during the reporting period. The company continues developing its satellite network before launching commercial mobile broadband services at a larger scale.

Over the previous twelve months, AST SpaceMobile recorded approximately $100 million in revenue from its existing operations. Management has outlined an ambitious target of nearly $1 billion during its first year of commercial service. Achieving that target requires substantial network capacity and successful service agreements with telecommunications companies across multiple geographic regions.

The company’s valuation also reflects expectations surrounding its future commercial operations and satellite deployment progress. AST SpaceMobile trades at approximately 147.7 times sales, compared with around 3.0 times sales for the S&P 500. Is approximately $600 million annual net loss highlights the financial demands of developing a global satellite communications network.

AST SpaceMobile Funding Supports BlueBird Satellite Deployment

AST SpaceMobile estimates that each satellite will cost approximately $21 million to $23 million, including launch expenses. The company intends to develop a constellation exceeding 90 satellites, extending beyond its initial continuous coverage requirements. Based on those estimates, 90 satellites would require approximately $1.89 billion to $2.07 billion in combined satellite and launch costs.

The company reported more than $3.7 billion in pro forma cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash following recent financing. This figure incorporates $1.15 billion in gross proceeds from convertible senior notes issued during July 2026. Management expects those financial resources to support additional satellite launches, manufacturing expansion, and the broader network development program.

AST SpaceMobile continues to face financial and operational challenges as it expands its satellite infrastructure. A shareholder class action alleges that the company misrepresented aspects of its capital resources and liquidity position. Satellite manufacturing schedules, launch execution, and commercial network activation remain important factors influencing its future financial performance.

The post AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (ASTS) Stock: BlueBird Launches Hold the Key to Future Gains appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Amazon (AMZN) stock surges 2.70% to $260.92 despite another round of job cuts
• Amazon reportedly cuts fewer than 1,000 jobs across the US, UK, and India
• Fresh layoffs affect customer service, marketplace support, and engineering teams
• Amazon’s earlier restructuring plans covered approximately 30,000 job cuts
• Amazon targets former employees for AI and cloud roles despite fresh layoffs

Amazon (AMZN) stock surged 2.70% to $260.92 during Friday’s intraday trading, gaining $6.86 despite reports of fresh workforce reductions. The company reportedly eliminated fewer than 1,000 positions across several business units in three countries. The latest layoffs extend Amazon’s restructuring efforts following approximately 30,000 previously announced job cuts.

Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

Amazon Announces Fresh Layoffs Across Retail Operations

Amazon employees in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom reported receiving job termination notices this week. According to Business Insider, workers received emails Tuesday confirming the elimination of their positions. The reductions affected several departments, including customer service, marketplace support, and engineering teams within retail operations.

Employees shared information about the layoffs through an internal Slack channel containing nearly 37,000 members. Their messages identified affected departments and raised questions about the company’s ongoing restructuring process. Workers also sought clarification about severance packages, internal job opportunities, and the possibility of further reductions.

Amazon confirmed to Business Insider that it eliminated a limited number of positions, primarily within its Stores division. The company linked the changes to organizational restructuring and efforts to improve operational efficiency. Amazon also said it would provide support to affected employees during their employment transitions.

Amazon’s Previous Job Cuts Total Approximately 30,000

The latest reductions follow Amazon’s January announcement of approximately 16,000 job cuts across its global operations. Company leadership outlined plans to simplify management structures and reduce unnecessary administrative processes. The restructuring also aimed to increase employee ownership and improve decision-making across business divisions.

Amazon previously announced another 14,000 corporate job reductions in October 2025, expanding its workforce restructuring program. Together, those two announcements covered approximately 30,000 positions, representing nearly 1% of its reported 1.56 million employees. The reductions reached Amazon Web Services, retail operations, Prime Video, and corporate human resources functions.

The company also targeted its People Experience and Technology division during the broader workforce adjustments. These changes affected several major operations rather than concentrating reductions within one business segment. Amazon continued reorganizing departments while maintaining investments in technology and other priority business areas.

Amazon Expands AI Hiring Despite Workforce Reductions

Amazon has also pursued recruitment initiatives targeting specialists in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Last month, reports indicated that the company sought former employees, including workers affected by earlier layoffs. The recruitment effort focused on professionals with experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and related technologies.

AWS Vice President Swami Sivasubramanian leads the company’s artificial intelligence agent organization and its recruitment initiative. The program, called Swami’s Boomerang Reengagement Initiative, aims to reconnect Amazon with former technical employees. Its recruitment efforts operate alongside the company’s broader restructuring and workforce reduction measures.

Amazon’s latest layoffs and specialized recruitment efforts reflect separate changes across its business operations. The company continues adjusting staffing within retail while pursuing technical expertise for artificial intelligence development. Meanwhile, its recent workforce changes span multiple countries and several divisions across its global operations.

The post Amazon (AMZN) Stock: Surges as Company Announces Fresh Layoffs appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• IonQ shares fall 0.33% to $39.32 despite a major quantum networking breakthrough.
• Researchers achieve over 1,000 entanglement events per second using light links.
• The new quantum interconnect surpasses the earlier trapped-ion record fourfold.
• IonQ’s breakthrough supports DARPA research into faster quantum hardware links.
• New system sales in Maryland and South Korea highlight early commercial demand.

IonQ (IONQ) stock slipped 0.33% to $39.32 during Friday’s intraday session, losing $0.13 despite a new quantum computing breakthrough. The company achieved more than 1,000 entanglement events per second between two different quantum systems. The development advances IonQ’s efforts to connect quantum processors and build larger computing networks.

IonQ, Inc., IONQ

IonQ Achieves Major Quantum Interconnect Milestone

IonQ announced that its researchers achieved entanglement rates exceeding 1 kilohertz through a photonic connection. The experiment linked a trapped ion qubit with solid-state quantum memory using light to transfer quantum information. This connection allows separate quantum components to share information and operate within a larger computing system.

The company reported that its demonstration exceeded the previous trapped-ion interconnect record by more than four times. IonQ researchers worked with collaborators from Duke University, including research associated with company co-founder Chris Monroe. The results establish a new performance benchmark for connecting trapped ion systems with other quantum hardware.

IonQ Chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi identified quantum interconnects as essential infrastructure for larger computing networks. He compared future quantum systems with traditional data centers that connect processors, memory, and networking equipment. The company aims to use similar architecture to expand quantum computing capacity beyond individual processors.

IonQ Advances Quantum Memory and Networking Technology

IonQ conducted the experiment using an end-to-end connection between a trapped ion system and a silicon vacancy qubit. The setup incorporated its existing quantum memory technology and transmitted quantum information through a photonic interconnect. This approach combines the coherence advantages of trapped ions with efficient light connections from solid-state memory.

The achievement also supports IonQ’s participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s HARQ program. DARPA seeks to develop high-speed quantum connections that support different types of quantum computing hardware. IonQ expects its technology to support trapped ions, neutral atoms, and superconducting systems using suitable conversion devices.

Meanwhile, IonQ continues to expand commercial applications for its quantum memory and interconnect platform. The company announced its first commercial system sale to the University of Maryland in April. It followed that agreement with a second system sale to South Korean technology company SDT in September.

IonQ Stock Performance Meets Expanding Commercial Operations

The latest announcement adds to IonQ’s research activities as the company develops quantum networking products. Its technology targets connections between separate quantum devices rather than relying entirely on individual processors. Such connections form part of the infrastructure needed to distribute computing tasks across multiple quantum systems.

IonQ also develops hardware that supports different approaches to quantum computing through its interconnect architecture. The company expects this flexibility to create applications in modular computing and networked quantum sensing. However, commercial deployment depends on further engineering, system integration, and performance testing across supported hardware platforms.

The latest technical results strengthen IonQ’s quantum networking roadmap and add evidence from operational hardware testing. Its commercial agreements also demonstrate early demand for the company’s memory and interconnect systems. Friday’s stock decline occurred despite these developments, reflecting a weaker intraday performance following the announcement.

The post IonQ (IONQ) Stock: Quantum Breakthrough Hits 1,000 Entanglements Per Second appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Hinkal joins Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program to advance privacy-focused digital asset payment applications.
• Zero-knowledge proofs help verify transfers without publicly exposing transaction amounts, senders or recipients.
• Existing integrations include Polygon Wallet, Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, Turnkey and Avvio.
• Screening and viewing keys aim to balance transaction confidentiality with regulatory and audit requirements.

Hinkal has joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program, bringing blockchain privacy infrastructure into a global payments initiative focused on digital assets. The partnership connects Hinkal with Mastercard’s ecosystem as stablecoins expand into payments, settlements, and commercial transactions.

Hinkal provides infrastructure that allows platforms to process private stablecoin transfers without exposing transaction amounts or counterparty relationships publicly. Its technology uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify transfers while keeping sensitive transaction details confidential. 

The integration could help businesses explore onchain payments without making their financial activity visible to everyone on public blockchains.

Hinkal Brings Privacy to Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program

Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program connects blockchain companies with its payments teams and a broader network of industry participants. Members include stablecoin issuers, blockchain infrastructure providers, crypto card enablers and companies supporting digital asset transactions.

According to an announcement, the initiative supports practical digital asset applications through partner collaboration, industry connections and go-to-market opportunities. Selected members can also access financial institutions across Mastercard’s issuing and acquiring network, alongside regulatory and compliance support.

For Hinkal, joining the program creates an opportunity to bring confidential transaction infrastructure into payment products. Rather than requiring companies to build privacy systems independently, Hinkal allows wallets and platforms to integrate its technology through software development kits (SDKs) and APIs.

The infrastructure supports private settlements and payouts across fintech platforms, payment providers and wallets. Hinkal operates across Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, TRON and other major EVM-compatible networks.

Existing integrations demonstrate how the technology can fit into products already serving users. 

Polygon Wallet offers Private Send powered by Hinkal, while Tether’s Wallet Development Kit includes its private-send functionality. Turnkey wallets can also integrate privacy through Hinkal’s SDK, and Avvio operates private payments through its interface.

These integrations allow partner platforms to maintain their products while adding transaction confidentiality as a feature.

Why Does Stablecoin Payment Privacy Matter?

Stablecoins can transfer value around the clock, but public blockchain transactions can expose financial relationships and payment amounts. That transparency may create challenges for businesses handling payroll, supplier payments, treasury movements and other commercially sensitive transactions.

Hinkal addresses this issue through zero-knowledge proofs, which allow a network to verify transfers without publicly revealing their underlying details. Its system keeps transaction amounts, senders and recipients confidential from public observers.

However, privacy does not mean eliminating compliance oversight. Hinkal says funds undergo screening before entering its system, while viewing keys allow users and businesses to share transaction histories with authorized auditors or regulators.

This approach aims to balance confidentiality with the oversight required for regulated financial activity. It could prove useful as payment providers explore stablecoins for cross-border transfers, business transactions and settlement flows.

Mastercard’s program provides a framework for connecting these technical capabilities with established payment infrastructure. However, Hinkal’s membership does not itself confirm a direct Mastercard product integration or a commercial launch.

The post Mastercard Adds Hinkal as Stablecoin Privacy Takes Center Stage appeared first on Blockonomi.

The UK sanctioned crypto payment processors Cryptomus and Heleket and Kyrgyzstani exchange TokenSpot on October 8, after blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis linked the services to illicit financial flows and networks associated with Russia’s sanctions evasion.

The designations target parts of the infrastructure used to move money through crypto, including payment services that received funds from thousands of illicit counterparties and exchanges connected to a ruble-backed token network.

Chainalysis Traces Illicit Funds Through Three Crypto Services

In an analysis published alongside the announcement, Chainalysis reported that Cryptomus and Heleket, both operated by Xeltox Enterprises Ltd., had received funds from more than 15,000 distinct illicit counterparties across every criminal category tracked by the firm.

In several categories, including scams, sanctioned jurisdictions and terrorist financing, their illicit inflows exceeded those received by all mixing services in its dataset combined.

Illicit counterparties linked to the two processors increased to more than 900 in a single month in late 2025. Chainalysis suggested the closure of Russian exchange Garantex may have contributed, as some users already held accounts with Cryptomus or Heleket. The firm cautioned that new sanctions designations can also cause historical transactions to be reclassified as illicit exposure.

Cryptomus had also advertised crypto payments and conversions without know-your-customer (KYC) or know-your-business (KYB) checks on Russian-language cybercrime forum BHF and the Nulled forum, Chainalysis reported. In October 2025, Canada’s financial intelligence unit imposed a CAD 177 million penalty on Cryptomus for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing violations.

TokenSpot’s connections followed a different route. Chainalysis traced funds from the Kyrgyzstani exchange, alongside those from previously sanctioned exchanges Grinex and Meer, to a shared HTX deposit address that received more than $308 million.

The firm identified links to addresses associated with Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor and the A7A5 instant swapper, which exchanges ruble-backed tokens for dollar-backed stablecoins.

Earlier Cases and the Wider Package

As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Grinex was set up in Kyrgyzstan in December 2024 and presented as a replacement for Garantex, which processed over $100 billion in transactions while sanctioned.

In April, Grinex suspended operations after a hack that took more than 1 billion rubles, about 13.74 USDT, and TokenSpot reportedly went offline around the same time. HTX, formerly Huobi, was sanctioned by the UK in May for channeling more than $1.5 billion to Russia.

The UK also sanctioned oil companies Zarubezhneft and INK Capital, bringing its coverage to more than 90% of Russia’s oil production capacity, along with the bank Stolichny Kredit and twelve shadow fleet tankers.

Seventeen individuals and entities importing machine tools, electronics and materials allegedly used in ballistic missiles and drones were named too.

The post UK Sanctions 3 Crypto Firms Over Russia Ties appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Binance will restrict eight products and services and delist 22 tokens for users in Brazil from October 27 as it restructures its local operations to comply with Central Bank regulations.

The changes also move customers’ Brazilian-real operations to a locally authorized payment account, while new reporting requirements for international crypto transfers take effect on November 1.

Binance Sets October 27 Deadline for Product Restrictions

In an announcement published on October 8, Binance Brasil explained that customers in Brazil will have individual payment accounts with Binance Brasil Corretora de Câmbio e Valores Mobiliários SA by October 29.

Virtual asset services will be provided by BBrasil Sociedade Prestadora de Serviços de Ativos Virtuais Ltda., another company in the Binance Group. The exchange listed eight services that will be restricted from October 27: Loans, Binance Pool. Cloud Mining, Margin, Launchpool, Megadrop, HODLer Airdrops and Alpha 2.0.

Users with existing positions in affected products will generally be able to close or reduce them and transfer remaining balances to their Spot accounts, but they will not be able to open new positions. Binance also listed 22 tokens for delisting in Brazil: XVG, USDE, USTC, DCR, DUSK, PIVX, BB, MANTRA, ONE, GMT, TFUEL, ZIL, ONT, RVN, ACX, HIT, PYR, VANRY, VIC, ICX, SCRT and STORJ.

Trading will remain available until October 27. After that, holders can withdraw or reinvest their remaining balances. The exchange added that bStocks will remain restricted.

The changes do not require customers to repeat identity verification, although users with outdated registration details may be asked to update them. Furthermore, deposit addresses for crypto assets will remain unchanged, and Binance says transaction histories from before and after migration will still be available.

Futures users face a separate decision, with customers who already have an international account with Binance’s Abu Dhabi entity being able to choose to move existing futures positions there. Otherwise, those positions will switch to reduce-only mode in the Brazilian account.

Binance also cautioned that crypto derivatives traded through the overseas entity are not regulated by Brazil’s Central Bank or securities regulator, the CVM.

International Transfers Face New Reporting Rules

A separate change begins November 1, with Binance explaining in an October 2 FAQ that users sending crypto abroad or receiving it from overseas must provide the transfer’s purpose and confirm details about the other party.

Binance will report the information to Brazil’s Central Bank monthly, and withdrawals cannot proceed until the required details are submitted, while incoming transfers may remain pending.

The October 8 announcement also confirms that Brazilian residents must migrate to the local service if they want to keep using Binance. Customers who do not want to migrate can withdraw their assets and end their relationship with the exchange before October 27, while users based outside the country with valid proof of residence will stay on the global platform.

The post Binance to Restrict 8 Services and Delist 22 Tokens in Brazil appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s on-chain regime model from BIT has returned to a 67% net-long position for a second consecutive month, with five indicators now in territory historically associated with bull markets.

The reading suggests a potential recovery in Bitcoin’s cycle, although a recent $7,000 price decline and two important on-chain price levels leave room for further weakness.

Five Bitcoin Indicators Turn Bullish as Model Raises Exposure

In an October 9 post, BIT explained that its rules-based model moved from 100% net long on October 1, 2025, to 33% on November 1, before dropping to zero on December 1. It remained there through most of the subsequent drawdown before returning to 67% on September 1, 2026.

The model has now maintained that allocation for two consecutive months, with BIT noting that five indicators have simultaneously entered historically bullish territory, a combination last seen in October 2025.

First is Bitcoin’s short-term realized price, which provides an estimate of the average cost incurred in buying units recently. BTC dipped below this level to $112,300 in October 2025 but jumped above it to $68,800 in August 2026, and this measure is now at $74,319, taking Bitcoin above its cost basis.

The second measure, the True Market Mean, tracks the cost basis of active capital. It stands at $77,460, compared with BTC’s price of approximately $82,000 in the latest CoinGecko data. BIT argues that sustained trading above this threshold would strengthen the bullish interpretation.

The other three are Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV), which compares market value with realized value, and stands at 0.20; the Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL), which measures investors’ paper gains and losses, and has turned positive for the first time since October 2025; and the Value Days Destroyed (VDD), which tracks the movement of coins based on their age and value, which has also turned bullish.

However, BIT cautioned that the model is not fully invested because some indicators have yet to turn bullish and others have only recently crossed their thresholds. Furthermore, the firm pointed out that a sustained break below both the short-term realized price and True Market Mean would be an early warning that recovery is losing track.

Bitcoin Retreat Tests the Bullish On-Chain Reading

The model’s improving signals contrast with Bitcoin’s recent price action. As mentioned earlier, CoinGecko data put the OG cryptocurrency at around $82,000 at the time of writing, down 4.5% over seven days and more than 32% in the past year.

Bitcoin fell nearly $7,000 after failing to break above $87,000, with the decline coinciding with substantial US government BTC transfers to Coinbase Prime, spot ETF outflows totaling $731 million on October 7 and 8, and profit-taking exceeding $1 billion in realized gains.

The post These 5 Bitcoin Indicators Have Turned Bullish for the First Time Since 2025: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet has rebuffed fears that AI could break Bitcoin’s cryptography in the coming months.

He said there is no sign of an imminent breakthrough that could break the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), the cryptographic system used to secure Bitcoin transactions.

Is Fear Overblown?

Guillemet went on to explain that if asymmetric cryptography were broken, “Bitcoin will be the least of our problems.” Internet security, banking systems, secure communications, and critical infrastructure could all face serious problems. While he admitted that recent mathematical advances are impressive, the exec said they do not represent a practical breakthrough against ECDSA.

“And if your logic is that nothing can be trusted until it’s proven unbreakable, congratulations. By that standard, nothing is safe, including hashes.”

Guillemet urged people to follow cryptography research and take potential risks seriously. But he warned against treating theoretical progress as a sign that a cryptographic crisis is just months away.

The comments come after Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake made a startling warning about the potential risks AI poses to cryptography. Drake urged the industry to calmly prepare for “bunker mode” and said crypto holders should consider moving funds to fresh addresses whose public keys have never been exposed. He believes ECDSA could potentially be broken within months rather than years.

Drake cited recent mathematical breakthroughs and OpenAI’s latest release as reasons to take the risk seriously. However, he added that holders should not rush into moving their assets, while warning that a hurried migration could do more harm than good. The researcher called on major crypto platforms to strengthen their cold storage security and urged the industry to accelerate its shift towards hash-based cryptography. He said the industry should prepare without panicking.

Theoretical Threats Can Wait

While Vitalik Buterin also believes that the rapid progress in AI-assisted mathematics could pose new risks to existing cryptographic systems, he warned against rushing into wallet migrations. The Ethereum co-founder asserted that moving funds without proper planning could create fresh risks for users.

Meanwhile, prominent Bitcoin developer and Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp said that worrying about cryptographic breaks is getting ahead of ourselves. He added that the industry has “much more pressing actual issues to deal with.”

“Theoretical future problems can wait.”

The post AI, ECDSA, and Bitcoin’s Endgame? Ledger CTO Pushes Back Against Cryptographic Apocalypse Predictions appeared first on CryptoPotato.

What goes up must come down, right? Bitcoin and the crypto market certainly proved that thesis right in the past week after gaining serious traction in late August and September.

Our Market Update from last Friday showed a 2% increase in the largest cryptocurrency, which traded near $86,000 at the time. The first signs of weakness occurred later that night when the asset tumbled below $84,000. Nevertheless, it recovered to over $84,000 on Saturday and climbed to $85,000 on Sunday. It even tried to take down the familiar yet stubborn resistance level at $87,000 on Monday morning, but to no avail.

That’s where the actual troubles began. In the following hours, bitcoin dipped to $85,000 but quickly rebounded to $86,600. However, that was another fake-out, and the cryptocurrency slumped again: this time, to under $84,000. After another unsuccessful bounce-off, BTC experienced its most severe crash since the mid-August breakout.

In the span of just a day or so, it crumbled to under $80,400, reaching its lowest price tag since September 21. We dived into what could have brought this decline and found at least six reasons, which you can read in this article. Some of them include substantial profit-taking, ETF outflows, macro developments, and the FUD started by major transfers from wallets linked to the US government.

After losing nearly $7,000 in days, BTC was due for a more profound rebound, which took place today, with the asset climbing to over $83,000 as of press time. However, it remains to be seen whether this is another dead-cat bounce or an actual recovery.

The weekly scale is still in the red, though, with BTC dropping by over 3%. ETH has slumped by more than 8%, XRP is down by 8.6%, while ZEC, DOGE, LINK, RAIN, XLM, and BCH have marked double-digit declines. Naturally, the total crypto market cap has plummeted by over $150 billion since last Friday.

Next week is expected to be even more volatile as the CPI numbers for September will be announced on Wednesday.

Market Data

Market Cap: $3.050T | 24H Vol: $113B | BTC Dominance: 56.6%

BTC: $85,670 (+1.9%) | ETH: $2,710 (+0.4%) | XRP: $1.51 (-4.8%)

This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

These 3 Factors Could Shape Bitcoin’s Post-Midterm Performance. The US midterm elections are right around the corner, and history shows BTC has overperformed in the first 12 months after they conclude. However, XWIN Japan warned that past gains do not necessarily translate into a repeat.

Charles Hoskinson Disputes Vitalik Buterin’s Warning Against Lattice Cryptography. In a verbal debate on X, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson disputed Vitalik Buterin’s concerns over lattice-based cryptography, suggesting that there’s no credible attack that has been identified against it. Hoskinson argued that hash-based cryptography is not inherently safer.

While America’s CLARITY Stalls, Russia’s Crypto Market Gets Official Operators. Although the US failed to move forward with the CLARITY Act, Russia has registered its first digital asset operators, marking a significant move toward a more regulated crypto market overseen by the local central bank.

Arthur Hayes: AI Is Overbuilt, and Bitcoin Could Benefit From It. The former CEO of BitMEX doubled down on his belief that the AI industry is overcrowded and predicted a crash in data centers that can ultimately benefit BTC.

Metaplanet Sold 10,000 BTC – Then Bought Back Even More: Here’s Why. In its Q3 filing, the largest Asian corporate holder of BTC said it had sold 10,000 units during that period. However, it bought back 11,000 (at slightly higher prices) and said the idea was to prove that its treasury can be easily converted to cash if necessary.

3 in a Row: Strategy Ramps Up Bitcoin Purchases as Holdings Hit 848,000 BTC. The overall largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency announced its third purchase in a row and, perhaps more importantly, its bitcoin stash reached a new all-time high of 848,000 units.

Charts

This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid – click here for the complete price analysis.

The post Bitcoin Crashes, Strategy’s BTC Stash Hits Record High, CPI Looms: Weekly Crypto Recap appeared first on CryptoPotato.