Bitcoin's reduced average volatility masks frequent extreme swings, posing increased risks for traders and altering investment strategies.

The post Bitcoin’s volatility is falling, but its extreme price swings now outpace 2018 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The potential rise in stablecoin usage in Asia-Pacific could drive financial innovation but also highlights the need for better consumer education.

The post Visa survey finds nearly half of Asia-Pacific consumers likely to use stablecoins appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The decline in Robinhood Chain transactions highlights the volatility of memecoin markets and underscores the need for diversified blockchain applications.

The post Robinhood Chain transactions fall more than 40% as memecoin trading cools appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Ripple's bug fix enhances XRP's stability, potentially boosting investor confidence and influencing future price dynamics amid regulatory challenges.

The post Ripple fixes 2015 bug preventing unauthorized XRP minting appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

BlackRock's ETF inflows highlight growing institutional interest in Bitcoin, potentially stabilizing its market and influencing broader adoption.

The post BlackRock ETF clients buy $22.38 million worth of Bitcoin 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.

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky has agreed to a permanent ban from the securities, commodities, and crypto business under a New York settlement announced on Oct. 9.

The agreement also sets conditional state payment obligations of up to $35 million, without creating a new payout to Celsius creditors.

The deal resolves New York’s civil suit, filed in January 2023, and adds state obligations to a separate federal criminal case. Mashinsky is serving a 12-year prison sentence.

What the $35 million figure means

The first obligation is $25 million in damages to New York. Under paragraph 2 of the annexed consent order, that obligation is deemed satisfied by a qualifying $10 million payment to the US Department of Justice under paragraph 11 of his federal forfeiture order.

DOJ payments made after May 20, 2025, may count dollar for dollar toward that $10 million. If the specified payment is not made, New York's Attorney General is due the entire $ 25 million.

The second obligation is a separate $10 million monetary judgment payable to New York. Paragraph 3 says it is deemed satisfied by completion of Mashinsky’s imprisonment under the federal judgment entered May 12, 2025, subject to express exceptions.

Those exceptions cover a sentence overturned or reduced by a court, including through a Section 2255 challenge. The clause also lists compassionate release, good-time credits, earned-time credits, First Step Act early release, and home confinement through a Bureau of Prisons program.

Beyond the payment conditions, New York describes the industry ban as permanent. The agreed restrictions cover securities and commodities businesses, including crypto, and roles such as broker, investment adviser, manager, officer and consultant. They also prohibit investment advice distributed for compensation or economic benefit.

The terms retain an exception for Mashinsky’s own personal purchases or sales. The stipulation also records his admission that he misled investors about Celsius’s regulatory approval and his own sales of Celsius’s CEL token.

The court sentenced Mashinsky on May 8, 2025, and the stipulation records federal forfeiture ordered at $48.4 million.

The New York Attorney General says Celsius distributed more than $3.4 billion to creditors as of August 2026. Qualifying DOJ payments would establish compliance with one settlement condition, but wouldn't establish another creditor distribution.

The post Celsius founder faces lifetime ban, but can trade his own crypto appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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.

When we opened Abstract's migration page on 9 October 2026, a counter was running there: "Chain Shutdown in 66d". Below it, the sentence that anyone who does not get their funds off the chain by 15 December will lose access to them. It is worth picturing that calmly. Someone has an accident and spends eight weeks in hospital. Someone takes a sabbatical, is on parental leave, or is so deep in a crisis at work that they do not open a crypto app for two or three months. At a bank or a regulated exchange, the money is still there afterwards. On Abstract it is gone.

That is not bad luck for a few individual users but a property of the system. And it is reason to ask again a question the crypto market likes to treat as settled: what exactly is decentralised, if a single company can decide in a post on X that a blockchain ends?

66 Days to Act: Why Even a Sabbatical Can Cost You Your Abstract Balance

Abstract is the Ethereum layer 2 of Igloo Inc., the company behind Pudgy Penguins. On 6 October the project announced the shutdown, by its own account because the chain was not growing and did not sustain itself as a pure network for everyday applications. Igloo chief Luca Netz wrote that the company had lost a double-digit million sum in US dollars over two years. That is understandable. Companies are allowed to fail.

What nobody has to accept is the way the risk of that failure is distributed. Counted from the day of the announcement, the deadline runs 70 days. Anyone who misses it expressly loses every claim under the new Migration Hub terms of service, and anyone unlucky while withdrawing is granted liability of at most $100 under the same contract. An obligation to notify users personally appears in the contract only where laws require it. Information goes out mainly via X and Discord. Anyone not reading along there may find out too late.

An Ethereum Layer 2 Without an Emergency Exit: What L2BEAT Shows About Abstract

The promise of a layer 2 is that it inherits its security from Ethereum. Ideally that means even if the operator disappears, every user can get their funds out via the main chain. The independent review site L2BEAT, by contrast, rates Abstract at Stage 0, the lowest maturity level. By its assessment, users can place transactions in a queue on Ethereum but cannot force their inclusion. Only authorised parties may report the state of the chain to Ethereum, and in an emergency a committee can change the contracts with no waiting period. If the operator fails, withdrawals freeze.

Put differently: the label "Ethereum layer 2" sounds like Ethereum, but the switches sit with a handful of participants. How quickly users are grasping that is shown by one figure from L2BEAT: the value secured on Abstract stood at around $30 million on 9 October, 44.5 percent less than a week earlier.

Centrally Regulated Against Decentrally Unregulated: What MiCA Demands When a Platform Winds Down

In Europe the central part of the crypto market has been governed since the end of 2024 by the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short. An exchange or a custodian with MiCA authorisation has to hold its clients' crypto-assets separately from its own (articles 70 and 75); in an insolvency they do not form part of the estate. Anyone custodying or trading crypto-assets also needs a plan for an orderly wind-down (article 74). A supervisor such as BaFin checks that. And if a client dies or is unreachable for months, their account continues to exist, and heirs reach the assets with a certificate of inheritance. How that works in practice is in our article on passing on crypto-assets.

On Abstract none of that applies. The counterparty when withdrawing is a Delaware company, disputes go to arbitration seated in Miami, and there is no supervision of the wind-down. That is the real difference, and the market likes to blur it: the central part is now strictly regulated in Europe. The part that calls itself decentralised is often steered just as centrally, only without the rules. A wild west with a registered office.

Truly decentralised is whatever nobody can switch off. Bitcoin in your own wallet and ether on the Ethereum main chain are still where you left them after two years of silence. So anyone who wants self-custody should run it on a main chain. Anyone who does not want that is in better hands with a regulated provider holding MiCA authorisation than on a small layer 2 that calls itself decentralised.

Abstract, Pudgy Party, 9dcc: The Pattern of the Quick Wind-Down

Abstract is no isolated case, and the pattern behind it is what bothers us most about this one. Three examples from the past eighteen months:

• Pudgy Party: the mobile game from the Pudgy Penguins orbit launched in August 2025 and was discontinued in June 2026 after less than a year, with no wind-down phase. According to reports by Decrypt and other trade outlets, there were initially neither refunds nor any migration of purchased items. That in particular contradicts the core promise of Web3 games, that players own their items.
• 9dcc: the crypto fashion brand of the well-known NFT collector gmoney announced its end on 27 May 2025, effective at the end of that month, with a "heavy heart", headwinds in the market and the line that it had perhaps simply been too early. Holders got 90 days to redeem stored goods. The benefits of the "Admit One" membership NFTs ended at the same month end, on 9dcc's account at the third anniversary and thus as originally promised.
• Blast: the layer 2 that collected billions in 2024 with points and airdrop hopes announced its end on 2 October 2026. We wrote up the deadlines at Blast separately.

The script is similar every time: a letter of regret, a reference to the market, a short deadline, and responsibility for everything that follows rests with the user.

Our Own Experience With the Abstract Team: We Should Have Warned Earlier

We are not writing this comment from the outside. Cryptoticker applied to Abstract as a media partner and for the creator programme, we were active on the chain, and tokens we now have to move still sit in our own wallet there. Our experience with the team was the same throughout, on X as in meetings in person: commitments with no follow-through, contacts who did not reply, approvals for video applications that were never granted. Anyone wanting to apply as a creator did not even find Germany in the country list.

At the time we put that down to the teething troubles of a young project. Knowing what we know today, we see it differently, and we should have pointed our readers to it earlier. A team that already treats partners this way does not handle its users' money any more carefully. Our view after this autumn: many who present themselves as founders in this market are not building companies but taking opportunities. As long as the market is running, the difference is invisible. You see it at the end, in the deadline, in the contract, and in who carries the damage.

No blanket condemnation follows from that. What follows is a working rule we are setting ourselves and recommending to you: how a founder ends one project belongs in the assessment of every next project by the same people. Anyone who wants to know the history of Igloo and Luca Netz in more detail will find it in our profile, which we will publish in the coming days.

What to Take Away From the Abstract Shutdown for Your Crypto Holdings

1. Take an inventory across all chains. Write down which networks you have ever bridged anything to, and check every address. Blast, Mint Chain and Abstract have shown within a few weeks that residual balances on small networks are a risk of their own. For Abstract, the route is in our guide to withdrawing your balance.
2. Park nothing unused on small layer 2 networks. Whatever you do not actively need there belongs back on a main chain.
3. Move long-term holdings into self-custody or to a regulated provider. For self-custody a hardware wallet is suitable, and you will find an overview of the models in the comparison of hardware wallets.
4. Set up an emergency plan. Someone you trust should know where your crypto-assets are and how to reach them if the worst happens. Deadlines like the one at Abstract show why that counts not only in the event of death, but already during a longer stay in hospital.
5. Check the founders' track record. Before going into a project, look at how the people behind it ended their earlier ones.

Disclosure: our newsroom itself holds PENGU and other tokens on Abstract and is currently withdrawing them. This article is a comment and not investment or legal advice. (As of October 9, 2026)

Anyone who wants to withdraw funds from the Abstract Chain at migrate.abs.xyz first gets a window with a green background and one sentence: Abstract is being shut down. Below it sits a box reading "I have read and agree to the Terms of Service", with a black "Continue" button beside it. It looks like a formality. Behind that checkbox, though, lie the "Migration Hub Terms of Service" dated 6 October 2026, an English contract with 21 sections and an attached privacy policy. We read all of it. Here is what you are signing, how to object to it, and how to get your funds off the chain without that checkbox at all.

The background: Abstract, the Ethereum layer 2 run by Igloo Inc., the company behind Pudgy Penguins, will be shut down on 15 December 2026. Whatever has not been bridged down by then will be unreachable, according to the project. We described the routes off the chain in our guide to withdrawing your balance from Abstract. This article adds the contract that comes with the most convenient route.

Who Your Counterparty Is at the Abstract Migration Hub

The counterparty is neither Igloo nor Pudgy Penguins, but Cube, Inc., a company under the law of the US state of Delaware (section 1.1). Alongside it the contract names the Abstract Foundation, a foundation company in the Cayman Islands, and the Abstract Protocol Security Council, a body that steers upgrades and security functions of the chain. Both are expressly not parties to the contract.

They benefit from it all the same. Section 1.2 gathers under the term "Cube Parties" Cube itself, the foundation, all current and former members of the Security Council including trustees and signers of the multisig wallets, plus affiliated companies, directors, employees and contractors. The liability exclusions you accept with the checkbox apply to all of those people and firms. Section 20.4 makes them third-party beneficiaries who can invoke the contract themselves.

Section 1.4 matters too: with the checkbox, the new contract replaces all earlier terms of service, wallet terms and participation terms of Abstract for the period from your consent onwards. What happened before that remains to be judged under the old rules, as the contract itself records.

Liability of $100 at Most, Even for Their Own Negligence

The core of the contract sits in three sections, and all three are set in capital letters.

Section 5.8, the waiver when migrating: anyone who uses the migration functions after ticking the box, or even merely attempts to, waives claims against all Cube Parties for loss, delay, error or failure, "including those caused by their own ordinary negligence". A successful completion is not required for that. Fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct and the breach of express obligations under the contract remain excepted.

Section 13.1, the cap: the total liability of all Cube Parties combined is limited to the higher of two amounts: $100, or the fees you paid directly to Cube in the preceding twelve months. Because the Migration Hub charges no usage fee under section 5.5, and network fees expressly do not count, $100 is what remains for most users. The cap applies once for everything, expressly not per transaction, per wallet or per defendant.

Section 13.5, the deadline: claims must be brought within one year of arising, otherwise they are permanently barred under the contract, as far as the law permits such a shortening.

Sections 8.6 and 12 come on top. Anyone who overlooks their assets or fails to complete a step in time bears the loss themselves, expressly including "loss of access after the shutdown". For security vulnerabilities, phishing, errors in smart contracts, wrong recipient addresses and outages of the chain, section 12 also excludes liability, again including ordinary negligence.

Arbitration Seated in Miami: How to Opt Out Within 30 Days

Section 17 provides that disputes are decided not by a court but in arbitration before the American Arbitration Association, and individually only. Class actions and consolidated proceedings are excluded by section 17.6. The legal seat of the arbitration is Miami, Florida, and the language of the proceedings is English. For consumers the contract provides concessions, such as a hearing on the documents alone or by video, and a cap on filing costs.

You can opt out of this part without losing the Migration Hub. Section 17.8 gives you 30 days from your first consent to do so. Here is how:

1. Write an email to privacy@abs.xyz.
2. Give your name, the email address of your account or the wallet address concerned, and a contact address.
3. Write one unambiguous sentence, for instance: "I opt out of the arbitration agreement and class action waiver in Section 17 of the Migration Hub Terms of Service."
4. Keep the sent message with its date. Under the contract, a confirmation is not needed for it to take effect.

The opt-out has limits. It removes only the arbitration and the class action waiver. The liability waiver in section 5.8, the rule on missed deadlines in 8.6 and the one-year deadline in 13.5 are expressly left in place by section 17.8. Never include a seed phrase or a private key in that email; the contract warns against it itself.

The Good News: You Do Not Need to Tick the Box to Withdraw

The most important sentence for users sits not in the bold part but in section 3. It states that independent alternative routes named through the official channels do not require consent to these terms. Section 1.3 adds that reading public information, holding assets, connecting a wallet or signing a transaction does not yet amount to consent. And anyone who declines need fear no special costs and no forfeiture, according to section 3.

Alongside the Migration Hub, the migration page lists four such routes: the native bridge at native-bridge.abs.xyz, and the independent bridge services Stargate, Relay and Jumper. For the native bridge, the existing terms of the Abstract portal continue to apply as long as you do not agree to the new contract. For Stargate, Relay and Jumper their own terms apply. According to Abstract, the native bridge carries a delay of around three hours; the external services are faster and take a fee.

A simple order of operations follows: first check whether your asset can come down by a route without the checkbox. Only if it cannot, use the Migration Hub and know the consequences. Which wallet works as a destination is shown by our comparison of software wallets.

No Airdrop, No Token: What Section 7 Says About XP and Badges

For months users collected XP on Abstract, unlocked badges and kept streaks going. Guides online called it "airdrop farming", and individual exchange blogs were still writing in spring 2026 that XP would turn into a future token allocation. We found no official commitment to that in Abstract's own announcements. The new contract now ends the hope in writing.

Section 7.2 records that the migration services include no tokens, no airdrops, no distributions, no profit sharing and no redemption of XP, points, streaks or badges. Section 7.1 adds that the move itself creates no claim to a reward either. Igloo chief Luca Netz had said on X on 6 October that an Abstract token or a token sale had been considered and dropped.

What remains is an archive. Under section 7.3, Cube keeps the XP data of all users who consent off-chain until six calendar months after the shutdown, so presumably until mid-June 2027. The contract names as a possible purpose that an independent project might one day recognise earlier participation, and in the same breath rules out any commitment: no right to a token, no airdrop, no guarantee that a third party will ever receive the data.

A warning follows from that: sites now offering an "Abstract airdrop" or an "ABS token claim" for XP are, on the terms of this contract, not from the project. Abstract itself warns in its announcement about imitators and fake migration pages. Connect your wallet only to abs.xyz and to the addresses named by the official accounts @AbstractChain and @Abstract_Eco on X.

What Still Applies to Users in Europe

The contract chooses the law of Delaware and, for court proceedings outside arbitration, courts in Miami. It contains an important limitation of its own, though: under section 18.2 it takes no protective rights, warranties or remedies from consumers that cannot be waived under applicable law, "including mandatory protective provisions of your place of habitual residence". Where the law of your domicile allows you to sue in your home courts despite an arbitration clause, the same section permits you to do so.

Which clauses would hold up in a German dispute is for courts to decide, not this article. What is clear: the liability cap of $100 and the waiver covering negligence are the places where such a dispute would catch fire. And it is equally clear that nobody who takes a route without the checkbox has to fight that dispute.

Two obligations under the contract also apply to you before you click. Section 5.6 warns that the address of an Abstract Global Wallet, meaning Abstract's smart contract wallet, may not belong to you or may not be usable on another chain. Never give it as a destination unless the route expressly supports that. And section 8.1 makes clear that individual routes can have their own deadlines falling before 15 December.

How to Find Everything You Still Have on Abstract

Anyone who tried out various applications on Abstract over months easily loses track. Three places help, and it is best to use all three.

1. Know the right address. Anyone who signed up with an email address or an account on X uses an Abstract Global Wallet. Its address is in the portal under "My Wallet", and that is exactly the address you need for every further step, not the address of another connected wallet.
2. Look in the block explorer. At abscan.org, the explorer for Abstract, you enter the address and see below the balance every token sitting there, including ones the portal does not show with a value. Under "Token Approvals" you will also find every approval you granted to applications.
3. Bring in a portfolio tracker. The tracker Zerion supports Abstract fully by its own account and shows on-chain balances once you enter the address. Positions in pools, games or vaults of individual applications are not always recognised by a tracker. So go through your history in the explorer as well, and open every application you worked with there.

Expect to find tokens that are no longer worth anything. In our newsroom's Abstract wallet, the portal shows a value of $0.00 for two memecoins. Where there is no buyer, bridging is not worth it: the fee would exceed the value.

Abstract Migration Hub: Five Steps Before Clicking "Continue"

1. Save the contract. Store the terms of service as a PDF or a screenshot with the date. Section 2.1 does promise to keep every version available for download, but after the shutdown access to the page itself is not guaranteed.
2. Take stock. The Migration Hub does not necessarily show everything you own, under section 5.1. NFTs, locked positions, liquidity in pools and balances inside applications often have to be withdrawn outside the hub, at the application itself, under section 5.2.
3. Choose the route. Check the native bridge or an independent service first. For larger amounts you intend to hold for longer, self-custody is the obvious destination; our comparison of hardware wallets gives an overview of the devices.
4. Test small first. Send a small amount ahead and wait until it has arrived on the destination chain. Under section 5.7, a confirmed transaction on Abstract is not yet a completed transfer; some routes require a second step on the destination chain.
5. Secure your records. Section 8.7 expressly asks you to export transaction and acquisition data before the shutdown. You need that for tax, and tools for it are in the comparison of crypto tax tools.

If you decide on the Migration Hub, put an appointment in your calendar 25 days after ticking the box so you do not miss the opt-out from the arbitration clause. What the end of Abstract means for the PENGU token is in our PENGU price prediction after the Abstract shutdown.

(As of October 9, 2026, terms of service in the version dated 6 October 2026. This article describes the text of the contract and is not legal or investment advice.)

Of the roughly 588.70 million Solana in circulation, 438.97 million sit in a delegation. That is 74.6 percent, and at the price of $110.20 on Friday midday it corresponds to a locked value of around $48.4 billion. The figure comes from our own query of the Solana mainnet in epoch 1052, not from a provider's disclosure. It answers three questions an investor can settle today: what a delegation actually yields, how long the money is tied up, and how many validators really decide over the network you entrust your SOL to.

How Much SOL Is Really Locked Today

Active stake is the sum of all SOL assigned to validator vote accounts. A query of the getVoteAccounts method on a Solana node returns it directly, without going through a data provider. On Friday midday the figure stood at 438,973,557 SOL, spread across 674 active validators. Eight further validators were flagged as delinquent, meaning behind on voting; only 31,896 SOL fell to them, a vanishing share.

What matters is the reference figure you calculate against. Total supply came to 635.46 million SOL, of which the network counted 46.76 million as not circulating, for instance because they sit in locked accounts. Against total supply, active stake works out at 69.1 percent; against circulating supply, 74.6 percent. Both numbers are correct, they simply answer different questions. For the yield calculation below, circulating supply is what counts, because only circulating SOL compete for the rewards paid out.

A rate of 74.6 percent is high. The more SOL are delegated, the fewer units sit freely on exchanges and in wallets. That shrinks the supply that can hit the market at short notice, and it lengthens the time a decision to sell needs before it can be executed. Both work in the same direction: the price reacts more violently when a lot of capital first has to wait out a deadline.

What a Nakamoto Coefficient of 18 Says About Solana

The Nakamoto coefficient is the smallest number of validators that together hold enough stake to block the network. At Solana the blocking threshold sits at one third of active stake, because from that size a group can prevent blocks from being confirmed. Our own analysis shows that 18 validators are enough. The ten largest hold 107.92 million SOL between them, or 24.6 percent.

That number is neither a scandal nor a reassurance, it is an order of magnitude. Eighteen out of 674 means a good 2.7 percent of validators account for the blocking minority. If you delegate, one concrete consideration follows: hand your stake to one of the ten largest operators and you reinforce that concentration. Give it to a mid-field validator and you reduce it slightly, accepting a somewhat higher outage risk in return, because smaller operators less often run redundant hardware.

The Staking Yield Follows From Inflation and the Staking Rate

Solana pays staking rewards out of newly created SOL, not from a pot with a fixed interest rate. The inflation rate in epoch 1052 stood at 3.6117 percent a year, and it went entirely to the validators; the foundation's share was zero. Those two values are enough to work out the gross yield, without any forecast: the newly created SOL are spread over the delegated SOL, so 3.6117 percent divided by 0.746. The result is 4.84 percent a year.

The same calculation explains why the yield falls as more people stake. The quantity of new SOL is fixed, the number of claimants grows. At a rate of 60 percent it would have been 6.02 percent, at 85 percent only 4.25 percent. Anyone carrying over a yield figure from last year is therefore almost always calculating wrongly. The mechanics behind it are set out in the Solana developers' documentation on delegation and rewards.

What the Validator's Commission Takes Off the Yield

Out of the 4.84 percent gross, the validator keeps its commission. Across all 674 active validators the median rate was 5 percent. After that deduction, 4.60 percent a year remains. On a position of 10,000 euros that is around 460 euros gross before tax, a difference of about 24 euros against the gross yield.

The spread, though, is wide. There are validators with zero percent commission and validators with 100 percent, where nothing reaches the delegator at all. A rate of 100 percent is not a data error but a permitted setting, and it does occur. So check the specific rate of your validator before delegating, not the average. To weigh the yield of different routes against each other, the providers' terms are in our comparison of staking platforms; the distinction that matters there is between the validator's commission and the additional fee an exchange adds on top.

An Epoch Currently Runs 32 Hours, Not Two Days

Delegated SOL is not available immediately. To withdraw, you have to wait out the end of the current epoch; only after that is the amount released. An epoch at Solana covers 432,000 slots. How long that takes depends on the actual slot time, and that is not a fixed quantity.

Our own measurement over three consecutive minutes produced 269.3 milliseconds per slot on Friday midday, at a throughput of around 3,900 transactions per second. That works out at 32.3 hours for a full epoch. Many guides still calculate with 400 milliseconds and arrive at 48 hours. The difference of almost 16 hours is substantial in a falling market, because it determines the earliest point at which a sale becomes possible. At the time of the measurement, 24,869 slots were still outstanding in the current epoch, just under two hours. How the deadline plays out alongside the price is something we showed on 27 September using the epoch length at the time: staking yield and the unstaking deadline at $122.

Liquid Staking Shifts the Risk, It Does Not Remove It

There is a way around the waiting time. With liquid staking you receive a tradable claim for your delegated SOL, which you can sell at any time without waiting out the epoch. The price for that is an additional risk: you then no longer hold SOL but the token of a protocol, and its price can sit below the value of the underlying SOL. Exactly that happens in hectic phases, when many want out at the same time.

There is also contract risk. A liquid staking protocol is software, and software can have bugs. Choosing that route swaps a calculable deadline for a technical risk that is hard to calculate. For short holding periods it can make sense; for a position meant to sit for years anyway, the direct route is the simpler one.

Staking Income Counts as Other Income in Germany

This is where the tax treatment splits into two parts, and throwing them together is the most common mistake. The rewards themselves count, in the view of the German tax authorities, as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. The tax falls due in the year of receipt, at your personal rate, and an exemption threshold of 256 euros a year applies. An exemption threshold is not an allowance: go over it with 257 euros and the entire amount is taxable, not just the single euro.

The decisive price is the one at the moment of receipt, not the one at year end. With daily distributions that means many individual valuations, and that is precisely where tax returns fail in practice. A tax tool or portfolio tracker handles that valuation automatically; doing it by hand requires the receipt history from your validator or your exchange.

The second part concerns the SOL themselves. For them the one-year rule under section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies: hold for longer than a year and the gain is sold tax free. That staking extends that period was a widespread worry for a long time; the tax authorities contradicted it in their circulars on the treatment of crypto assets. For gains within the year, an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applies.

The Holding Period Stays, the Bundestag Decided Today

On Friday the Bundestag rejected a motion to abolish the one-year holding period by 445 votes to 132. For Solana holders that means the tax advantage of direct ownership remains, and it remains the decisive difference from an exchange-traded product on SOL, where the one-year rule does not apply. What the vote covered in detail, and why the deadline is not permanently secured by it, is in our analysis of the Bundestag vote.

For planning a delegation that is relevant insofar as the one-year rule and the epoch deadline are two different clocks. The epoch deadline of 32 hours concerns availability, the one-year rule concerns tax. Withdrawing after ten months makes the SOL available but costs the tax exemption if you sell in the same move. Continuing to hold the SOL and merely ending the delegation does not touch the period, because a delegation is not a disposal.

What the Commission Means in Figures

The row on epoch length is the one that changes fastest. Slot time swings with the load on the network, and it has fallen over recent months. If you need the deadline precisely, recalculate it on the day of the decision instead of carrying over a figure from an older text.

Where the Price Stood on Friday

SOL was quoted at $110.20 on Friday midday, after $109.52 twenty-four hours earlier. In euros the price stood at 98.55 euros against 97.71 euros the day before. The daily range in euros, 94.08 to 100.86 euros, was considerably wider than the daily gain, a sign that the calm close emerged from two opposing moves. Trading volume came to 660,387 SOL in the dollar pair and 168,522 SOL in the euro pair; the figures come from the Kraken exchange.

For a decision on a delegation, though, the day's price is the least important of the figures named here. A lock-up of 32 hours and a tax deadline of one year are quantities that do not change over a single morning. The staking rate, the commission and the epoch length do.

Solana Staking: 4.60 Percent Net With a 32-Hour Lock-Up

Three steps to carry the figures over to your own position:

1. Work out the net yield of your specific validator instead of using the median: 4.84 percent gross, less its commission rate. The providers' terms are in the comparison of staking platforms, and an exchange's fee comes on top of the validator's commission.
2. Record the receipt of your rewards with date and price as soon as the 256-euro threshold comes within reach. A tax tool values every receipt automatically at the day's price; by hand you need your validator's history.
3. Separate the two deadlines in your planning: 32 hours to availability, twelve months to a tax-free gain. Selling before the year is up gives away the advantage that Friday's Bundestag vote has just confirmed.

(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. Tax information is general information and does not replace advice from a tax adviser.)

Quant (QNT) trades at around $248 at midday on Friday, 9 October 2026, a good 5 percent above the previous day (CoinMarketCap). On Thursday the price had slipped as far as $221 in the wake of the wider crypto pullback. Since 2 October, QNT has moved in a range between roughly $221 and $277. For the Quant price prediction, what counts most is which side of that range gives way first.

From Fireworks to a Trading Range

In late September, the selection of Quant by The Clearing House, operator of the US payment systems RTP and CHIPS, set off a steep rally. QNT climbed as high as $357 intraday on 27 September, and the next day the price fell to $198 (CoinMarketCap). We unpacked what sits behind the mandate in our article on tokenized deposits.

The market has calmed markedly since then. On 27 September, QNT worth around $1.19 billion changed hands; by 8 October the figure was around $197 million, a drop of more than 80 percent (CoinMarketCap). With a market capitalization of around $3.0 billion, Quant ranks 34th there. Over 30 days the price is still up around 266 percent.

Quant Price Prediction: The Levels on the Chart

Around $277 is the level on the upside. QNT rose that far on 4 October, and the same point marks half of the slide from $357 to $198. Many traders use that calculation, half of a drop retraced, as a first resistance. From today's price it is just under 12 percent away. Above it, the next calculated level sits at around $296, or 61.8 percent of the same move.

Around $221 is the level on the downside, Thursday's intraday low. Together with the 2 October low at around $226 it forms the floor of the range. From today's price that is a good 10 percent away.

Around $198 is the low left behind by the slide of 28 September. If the range breaks to the downside, that is the next zone. Moving averages are of little help with Quant right now: the 50-day average sits at around $145 and the 200-day average at around $92, both calculated by us from daily closing prices. The price has pulled that far away from them within a few days.

Two Ways Out of the Range

To the upside, QNT would need a daily close above $277. Trading would have to pick up again for that, because a breakout on shrinking volume lacks force. Further steps in the banking project could supply a fresh trigger, such as a timetable for the launch of the tokenized deposits.

To the downside, it gets tight if the zone around $221 gives way. The area around $198 would then be the next target, roughly 20 percent below today's price. After a run from around $67 to $357 within a week, pullbacks of that size are no rarity at Quant, as 28 September showed.

What This Means for Investors in Europe

Which exchanges hold a licence under MiCA, the European crypto regulation, and what they charge is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges. Check before buying whether the provider lists QNT. Anyone who bought in only at the end of September should know the holding period: in Germany, gains on crypto assets held for less than a year are taxable once the annual exemption threshold of 1,000 euros is exceeded.

How Quant fares against its biggest rival in the banking business is shown by our comparison Quant or Chainlink. The technology behind the project is explained in What is Quant (QNT)?

Quant: What to Take Away

Three points sum up the situation. First: after the jump to $357 and the slide to $198, QNT has settled between roughly $221 and $277 over the past week. Second: volumes have fallen by more than 80 percent since the peak, and the market is waiting for the next trigger. Third: a daily close outside the range is the next signal, above $277 on the upside and below $221 on the downside.

Our last assessment, from 2 October, can be found in the Quant price prediction after the first pullback; whether getting in at the current price is worthwhile is weighed up in the analysis Is Quant a good buy at the current price? Crypto assets swing sharply and a total loss is possible. This article is not a recommendation to buy or sell Quant.

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.)

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.

Shiba Inu added a substantial volume to exchange balances which raises a possibility of a rapid market reversal.

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.

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.

On-chain researchers estimate that somewhere between $72 million and $86 million may have been stolen, as Ledger begins investigating reports of these major crypto losses from users who bought hardware wallets from an authorized Southeast Asian reseller.

The hardware wallet manufacturer said there is no indication that its own infrastructure, systems, or services were compromised. However, users are piling on X to complain about substantial losses.

How Much Was Stolen?

The official support channel of Ledger on X confirmed yesterday evening that it was investigating user reports from customers of CryptoBilis, which is listed as an authorized reseller in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Ledger asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments for the time being.

More importantly, the post urged anyone who purchased a device from the reseller in the past 90 days and has not completed installation not to begin setup now. Customers already using such devices were advised to consider transferring their assets to a new Ledger signer using a newly generated seed phrase.

On-chain sleuth tanuki42 traced more than $72 million to suspected theft addresses, while fellow investigator Specter estimated losses exceed $86 million, across BTC, ETH, and TRX. Ledger’s official account didn’t confirm either figure, and it remains unclear whether the two estimates include overlapping transactions.

MistTrack noted that the losses could be closer to $90 million, while Tether reportedly froze USDT held in addresses connected with the incident.

What Happened?

The details on what exactly transpired are still scarce, but Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said the currently available information suggests a localized supply-chain attack involving one vendor, with a small number of customers potentially receiving counterfeit or physically tampered Ledger devices.

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles added that he had already been examining modified Ledger devices containing a hidden hardware implant and asked CryptoBilis to open units from its inventory to see whether similar components were present.

He said an implant he examined could monitor internal communications used to display recovery words, potentially allowing an attacker to capture a seed phrase even though the genuine Ledger Secure Element itself remained intact.

Ledger claimed that the reports appear limited to products sold through CryptoBilis and that it has “no indication that Ledger’s security infrastructure, systems, or services have been compromised.”

Meanwhile, users such as Edward Winz have publicly admitted to being victims of the incident, with $1 million reportedly stolen.

The Ledger incident comes just a month after its biggest competitor, Trezor, experienced one of its own, with the personal information of over 80,000 US users compromised.

The post Ledger Investigates $86M Crypto Drain as Reseller Supply-Chain Fears Grow appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Only a few days ago, the native cryptocurrency of Ripple traded high, with analysts speculating about its chances of taking down the first major resistance level at $1.51-$1.53 before heading toward the next at over $1.60.

Instead, the bears reemerged, drove the entire market down, and XRP slumped below $1.35 before it found some support. EGRAG CRYPTO, though, remains undeterred, indicating that even another leg down wouldn’t halt the asset’s bull market progress.

$1.20 Is the Key Macro Level

The popular analyst who has been bullish on XRP even as the asset slipped below $1.00 in early August said the token can still retrace to $1.20 and maintain its bullish structure. His analysis focuses on the monthly chart and the relationship between the 33 EMA and 111 EMA. He added that it has historically helped define major cycle structures and pointed to the line of the sand: $1.20.

As long as the cross-border token holds above that area on a monthly closing basis, EGRAG believes the broader bullish thesis remains intact. However, a sustained breakdown below it would force him to reassess, as it would likely invalidate the pattern.

If XRP continues its recovery from the recent sub-$1.35 low, then EGRAG identified $1.65 as the first major level it has to reclaim. Then, he turned even more bullish, noting that the asset can skyrocket to somewhere between $4.00 and $8.00 if the structure develops further. His much more aggressive “Valhalla” scenario extends beyond $15, although that remains highly speculative and dependent on the macro setup holding up.

Similar Pattern In-Play?

Fellow bullish-on-XRP analyst Bird outlined a different structure on the asset’s four-hour chart, highlighting three descending resistance trendlines. He argued that the first two were followed by strong upside moves after the token found support, and the third may be developing now.

Bird identified a long-term ascending support line, a major demand zone at around $1.30-$1.34, and resistance between $1.52 and $1.56. As explained above, XRP has remained between the two for the past several weeks.

If the asset is finally able to break through to the upside and the previous pattern repeats, the analyst believes the move could open the door toward $2.00. Interestingly, Celal Kucuker supported Bird’s view, saying $2.00 is “within reach” by the end of the month after XRP bounced from a “solid support level.”

$XRP IS SETTING UP FOR SOMETHING VERY INTERESTING.

Look closely at this 4 hour chart.

Notice a pattern?

THREE descending resistance trendlines (orange).

The first two were followed by explosive moves upwards after XRP found support.

Now we’re seeing a THIRD potentially forming the exact same setup.

We’ve got a long-term ascending support trendline (white), a major demand zone around $1.30–$1.34, and resistance sitting at $1.52–$1.56.

If history rhymes, a breakout above that resistance could open the door towards $2.00.

Three similar structures. One very interesting possibility.

I’m watching this VERY closely.

— Bird (@Bird_XRPL) October 9, 2026

The post XRP May Plunge to $1.20 and Still Remain Bullish, Analyst Says appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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.