Google's move could democratize app development, fostering innovation and potentially transforming hobbyists into professional developers.

The post Google opens Play Store to privately listed vibe-coded apps appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The closure highlights challenges in aligning crypto assets with traditional ETF investors, questioning the viability of niche crypto funds.

The post SEC files Form 25 for Bitwise Dogecoin ETF as wind-down nears its end appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The declining UK budget deficit may influence the Bank of England's interest rate decisions, impacting economic stability and growth.

The post UK budget deficit on decline, says Bank of England’s Bailey appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Investor sentiment shifts as skepticism from industry leaders and rising competition in semiconductors signal potential market volatility.

The post Dow snaps three-day win streak as chip selloff drags S&P 500 and Nasdaq lower appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Dell's call for AI safeguards highlights the urgent need for balanced innovation and regulation to prevent potential societal risks.

The post Michael Dell calls for AI safeguards and a government role in oversight appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Amount of Bitcoin on Exchanges Is Shrinking. Is a Rally Imminent?

Bitcoin’s price could be due a move upwards as the supply of the leading cryptocurrency on exchanges shrinks. 

That’s according to a researcher at data firm CryptoQuant, who wrote in a Monday report that bitcoin on exchanges has dropped to 2.67 million from 2.8 million since February. 

The price of bitcoin was recently $83,485, unmoved over a 24-hour period but up 8% over the past 30 days after having its best quarter in years. Its surge in August and September has led a number of analysts to declare the bear market is over.  

“If buying demand continues to improve while exchange supply remains low, BTC could benefit from a supply-demand imbalance, creating favorable conditions for a longer-term upward trend,” the report by on-chain researcher Rei Researcher read. 

It added: “More importantly, in recent weeks, bitcoin has recovered from its lows while exchange reserves have continued to decline. This is a notable development, suggesting that the supply readily available for trading is decreasing even as the market recovers.”

The report further noted that it was possible investors were taking bitcoin off exchanges to put in cold storage solutions. 

Bitcoin’s price was mostly trading under $65,000 for the first half of 2026. The coin spent most of this year in a bear market following the all-time high of $126,080 it hit in October 2025. 

But that all changed in August. News that the U.S. Treasury would double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations, weakening the dollar but strengthening bitcoin and other non-yield bearing assets. 

Now, the so-called debasement trade — where investors throw money at an asset to hedge against a currency losing its value — is hot again. Bitcoin is benefiting from the trade, analysts say, as it did in 2024 and 2025. 

Bitcoin’s price is still more than 30% below its record. 

This post The Amount of Bitcoin on Exchanges Is Shrinking. Is a Rally Imminent? first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trezor Reduces Number of Resellers Following Ledger Drainage Incident 

Hardware manufacturer Trezor has said it has reduced the number of resellers it works with following supply-chain incidents related to its competitor Ledger. 

The Prague, Czech Republic-based company added in a Tuesday post on X that it was in the process of checking which vendors it works with. 

It added that there were no reports of any issues with Trezor devices. “Let us be very clear: there is not a single piece of evidence that Trezor devices have been compromised,” the company wrote. 

“This is a preventive step, taken out of an abundance of caution.”

Signing device manufacturer Ledger last week said it had started an investigation after customers in South East Asia reported they’d lost funds after buying from Malaysia-based reseller, CryptoBilis. 

Ledger then said that one of the impacted users’ devices contained an unauthorized hardware implant. 

More reports of what appear to be tampered devices have since surfaced on social media but Ledger said Tuesday that only devices sold through CryptoBilis have been linked to lost funds. 

It added that it had only confirmed an unauthorized hardware implant in one affected user’s device. The implant, according to Ledger, was able to read a seedphrase when it appeared on the device. 

Ledger did not reveal how much money had been lost but blockchain investigator Specter said $86 million had been drained from devices. 

“We have not confirmed the total number of affected users or the total value lost,” Ledger added on X. “Figures circulating online come from third parties and Ledger has not fully verified them.”

Ledger did not respond to Bitcoin Magazine’s questions. 

CryptoBilis has also stopped selling devices, Ledger added, and advised customers who bought from CryptoBilis to not set up their devices and contact the Ledger support team. 

Criminals have been targeting hardware wallets this year. Hackers in July were able to steal close to $120 million in bitcoin from Coldcard users due to a firmware bug in the devices. 

Canadian company Coinkite, which makes the popular products, said that the bug led to faulty seed generation, allowing hackers to guess investor seedphrases. 

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. 

Scammers earlier this year were able to get hold of customer information via crypto wallet Ledger’s payment processor Global-e to send phishing emails.  

This post Trezor Reduces Number of Resellers Following Ledger Drainage Incident  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive Buys More Bitcoin, Crosses 30,000 BTC Mark 

Nasdaq-listed Strive isn’t slowing down with its bitcoin buys.

The company now has more than 30,000 BTC after buying 3,311 coins last week, according to a Tuesday filing. 

Strive now holds 32,773 coins worth $2.7 billion at today’s prices, keeping its position as the  fifth biggest publicly traded bitcoin company, according to Bitcoin Treasuries. 

Strategy, Twenty One, Metaplanet, and MARA all hold more bitcoin than Strive.  

Strive’s stock (ASST) was trading slightly lower on Tuesday. Unlike other treasuries, though, Strive shares are up significantly this year: year-to-date, ASST has risen by close to 60%. 

A number of top bitcoin treasuries have seen their stock plummet this year since the price of bitcoin took a hit. Some top treasuries have had to sell bitcoin or rethink their model altogether. 

Dallas, Texas-based Strive debuted as an official bitcoin treasury last year, following in the footsteps of software company Strategy, the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin. 

Unlike Strategy, though, Strive hasn’t used debt to buy the cryptocurrency. CEO Matt Cole has described the company as debt-free with zero margin requirements and zero encumbered bitcoin.

Like with other digital asset treasuries, the idea is that investors can get amplified returns from Strive’s stock. 

In January 2026, it completed the acquisition of Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal — the first instance of a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company acquiring another such company. 

The company was founded by former Ohio gubernatorial candidate and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. 

This post Strive Buys More Bitcoin, Crosses 30,000 BTC Mark  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Alex Gladstein: How The Bitcoin-AI Convergence Impacts the Fight for Freedom

Is the biggest AI risk really the end of humanity? Alex Gladstein says no: the real danger is AI centralized in the hands of dictators, governments, and a few large corporations. In this interview, the HRF Chief Strategy Officer explains why “AI will kill us all” claims are largely propaganda, and why local AI on your own laptop and phone could be a huge win for human rights. Tune in to hear his vision for AI that’s in our control.

Chapters:
0:00 – Alex Gladstein on Freedom AI vs. Corporate AI
1:26 – How HRF Trains Human Rights Activists to Use AI
2:57 – The Freedom Stack: Encrypted Inference, Open Weights and Local AI
5:45 – The Real AI Risk: Centralization in the Hands of Dictators
8:20 – HRF and Bitcoin Park Hackathons for Activists
9:57 – Why CBDCs Are a Tool of Repression
12:35 – Living on Bitcoin in Kenya With Tando and M-Pesa
15:25 – Building Your Own Freedom Tech With AI Agents
17:39 – Venezuela After Maduro and Bitcoin as a Lifeline
20:25 – What “Freedom Money” Really Means

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

This post Alex Gladstein: How The Bitcoin-AI Convergence Impacts the Fight for Freedom first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Matt Dines: Why a Rising Dollar is Bullish for Bitcoin

The dollar is rising, and so is Bitcoin. Matt Dines says that’s a bullish signal. The Build Asset Management CIO explains how capital is leaving the old post-World War II offshore dollar system for a new U.S.-led Western Hemisphere financial system. He makes the case that Bitcoin is part of that system’s future, and covers what the DXY is really telling investors right now.

Chapters:
0:00 – Matt Dines on France’s Bond Crisis and the ECB’s Pontes CBDC Bridge
2:11 – How the Strait of Hormuz Disruption Rewired Global Trade
3:22 – French-German Spreads and European Contagion Risk
4:23 – Bank of England’s Digital Gilt and Tokenized Sovereign Debt
5:54 – Why Dollar Up, Bitcoin Up Is a Bullish Signal
7:47 – Signals to Watch Before Pressure Hits Bitcoin
10:25 – Treasury Buybacks and the Coming Bond Market Repricing
12:50 – Why Treasury Is Buying Back Old, Illiquid Bonds
14:28 – How Buybacks Pull Capital Into the Dollar and Bitcoin
15:40 – Why the Buybacks Aren’t QE and What It Means for Bitcoin

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

This post Matt Dines: Why a Rising Dollar is Bullish for Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin rebounded above $83,000 on Tuesday despite a sharp Asian stock selloff, as cryptocurrency liquidations exceeded $800 million.

BTC recovered after briefly slipping below $81,000, while semiconductor shares continued a deepening rout that sent South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index down 6%.

South Korea's AI stock collapse exposes concentrated market risks

Reports noted that South Korea's KOSPI plunged up to 7.4% before recovering some losses to close at 6,035.35. The decline briefly pushed the index below 6,000 and triggered a sell-side trading curb as the country's largest semiconductor manufacturers extended their losses.

Samsung Electronics fell 7.39%, while SK Hynix declined 10.09%, marking a fifth consecutive session of losses for both companies.

Together, the two memory-chip manufacturers account for approximately half of the KOSPI's market capitalization, leaving the broader index particularly sensitive to changes in the outlook for AI infrastructure spending.

Foreign investors sold approximately 4.5 trillion won ($3.35 billion) of Korean equities during Tuesday's session, extending a series of withdrawals that have weighed heavily on the country's technology sector.

Investment research firm Paradis Labs said the decline reflected a sustained retreat by foreign institutions from Samsung and SK Hynix.

The firm characterized the prevailing institutional strategy as “Sell Korea, Buy US,” while noting that domestic investors had largely remained patient, with some capital rotating from memory-chip manufacturers into financial stocks.

Paradis Labs also said the deterioration had been building for several sessions, pointing out that recent comments from Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan had intensified an existing selloff.

Tan compared speculative AI investment to gambling, adding to concerns that the industry's enormous capital commitments might not generate sufficient returns.

Those remarks coincided with a technological announcement from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, which said it had developed a DRAM architecture capable of reducing memory-cell area by approximately 30%.

The company plans to introduce products incorporating the technology by the end of 2026, raising concerns about potential competition for South Korean memory producers. Its ability to manufacture the technology commercially at scale remains unproven.

Bitunix analysts said the broader correction reflected growing sensitivity to the financing risks and concentrated investor positioning supporting the AI industry.

The analysts noted that strong semiconductor earnings had not prevented heavy selling, with reduced leveraged exposure and diminished support from share buybacks potentially amplifying the decline.

The pressure has also influenced broader institutional positioning. BlackRock downgraded US equities from overweight to neutral and increased its preference for short-term Treasuries as concerns about AI-related volatility and higher borrowing costs intensified.

Meanwhile, Paradis Labs warned that South Korea's dependence on imported crude oil created another vulnerability as tensions involving Iran escalate. Sustained energy-price increases could compound inflation pressures and weaken confidence in the country's equity market.

The semiconductor weakness has already spread beyond Korea, as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index declined 2.7% on Monday, while Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.8% Tuesday.

Bitcoin's recovery faces pressure after $813 million liquidation wave

Bitcoin's rebound contrasted with sharp losses in Asian equities, but it followed a derivatives market shakeout that wiped out hundreds of millions of dollars in leveraged positions.

According to CoinGlass data, cryptocurrency liquidations reached $812.9 million over 24 hours, affecting 170,209 traders. Bullish positions accounted for $686.72 million, or 84.5% of the total, compared with $126.19 million in bearish bets.

Bitcoin recorded the largest losses at $192.14 million, with long positions accounting for nearly 74% of the total. Ethereum followed with $180.5 million, while Solana saw $60.85 million in liquidations. The largest single liquidation was a $9.65 million Bitcoin long position on Binance.

As Bitcoin declined, forced long-position closures added selling pressure and accelerated the downturn. The subsequent recovery also caught bearish traders off guard, with short liquidations contributing to the sharp reversal.

Yet underlying trading activity suggests that buyers have struggled to regain control despite the price recovery.

CryptoQuant analyst JA Maartunn reported that Bitcoin's Net Taker Volume turned negative again, indicating that aggressive selling in derivatives markets outweighed buying activity.

The reading points to continued selling pressure even as Bitcoin recovers, so passive buying and the closure of bearish positions may be supporting prices without a sustained increase in aggressive demand.

That leaves Bitcoin's recovery exposed to another test if the equity selloff deepens or leveraged traders rebuild positions ahead of Wednesday's US inflation report.

The post Bitcoin defies $800 million crypto wipeout as South Korea’s AI stock market crashes appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum Name Service has proposed activating ENSv2 without requiring existing .eth domain holders to migrate to the new system.

The Oct. 11 proposal would let users keep their current names indefinitely, as long as they keep renewing them, while offering a permanent migration option for those who want access to upgraded features.

Once activated, ENSv2 would handle all new .eth registrations, replacing the existing registration infrastructure. Holders who migrate would permanently transfer management of their domains to the new system, with no mechanism for returning their original tokens.

The proposal remains subject to approval by the ENS decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), whose Oct. 12 governance bulletin listed the vote as pending. ENS has not announced a launch date.

ENSv2 introduces permanent migration and higher registration fees

The upgrade would replace ENS's existing registry, introduced in 2017, with a hierarchical structure that allows individual domains to maintain separate registries for their subdomains.

The changes would give owners more flexibility in assigning permissions, letting businesses and decentralized applications delegate responsibility for specific names or records without giving up broader control.

During the migration, an owner's existing ENSv1 token would move into a smart contract known as the Graveyard, which cannot return or transfer the tokens it receives.

However, users who choose to remain on ENSv1 would keep access to their domains and continue renewing them through a dedicated contract that also preserves their ENSv2 reservations.

The transition would introduce changes to registration costs.

According to ENS's official guidance, annual fees for names containing five or more characters would rise 60% to $8 from $5, while prices for three- and four-character names would remain unchanged.

ENSv2 would also introduce discounts for longer registrations, reducing annual costs by approximately 44% for users purchasing six or more years.

Registration and renewal payments would use stablecoins, including USDC and DAI, replacing ETH-denominated payments and keeping fees fixed in dollar terms.

Domain expiration rules would also change.

The existing 90-day grace period would shrink to 28 days for migrated names. To compensate, ENS would extend registration expiry dates by 62 days, preserving the original deadline when names become available to others.

Names remaining on ENSv1 would retain their 90-day grace period, while domains already expired beyond that window would not receive reservations in the new registry.

The activation process presents additional operational challenges.

ENS expects to temporarily suspend new registrations while developers synchronize existing records and activate the new infrastructure, a process expected to take several hours.

The proposal includes conflicting provisions on renewals during that interval, leaving uncertainty about whether existing holders can renew names before ENSv2 becomes operational.

Wallets and applications integrating ENS must also update their resolution infrastructure to support the new system.

Following approval, ENS Labs would complete the final synchronization, activate ENSv2 registration and resolution, and transfer its remaining administrative permissions to the DAO.

The timing of those steps, along with clarification on renewal availability during the transition, remains unresolved ahead of the governance vote.

The post Ethereum Name Service plans major .eth overhaul with one irreversible catch for domain holders appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Australia's markets regulator proposed extending retail leverage restrictions to crypto-settled derivatives amid mounting losses among investors trading risky financial products.

On Oct. 12, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced it wants to expand its existing contracts-for-difference (CFD) rules to cover qualifying derivatives settled through digital assets, closing a regulatory gap that lets economically similar products face different restrictions.

The proposal follows ASIC's finding that 68% of retail CFD clients lost money during the 2023–24 financial year, with combined losses exceeding A$458 million ($325 million), including A$73 million in fees. The figures cover CFD trading across asset classes, rather than cryptocurrency derivatives alone.

The Australian regulator is also seeking to extend its existing investor protections for another decade, keeping them in force until 2037, subject to government approval.

Australia targets leveraged crypto products and margin practices

Under ASIC's existing framework, CFDs are generally covered when transactions are settled in cash or through offsetting obligations between counterparties.

However, some derivatives with similar characteristics can settle through transfers of digital assets, potentially placing them outside the current product intervention order.

ASIC wants to eliminate that distinction by extending the definition to qualifying digitally settled contracts, regardless of whether their underlying exposure is linked to cryptocurrencies, traditional assets, interest rates or market indices.

The change could force affected brokers and derivatives platforms to comply with existing leverage restrictions, standardized margin close-out arrangements, negative balance protections and limits on promotional incentives.

For CFDs referencing cryptocurrencies, the current maximum retail leverage is 2:1, meaning investors must provide at least half the value of their positions as initial margin.

Other contracts face different limits depending on the underlying asset, ranging from 5:1 for shares to 30:1 for major currency pairs.

The proposed expansion would therefore depend on a derivative's underlying exposure and contractual structure, rather than automatically imposing the cryptocurrency leverage cap on every product settled using digital assets.

Some fixed-expiry crypto futures and options would remain outside the framework.

ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said existing restrictions had materially reduced investor harm, particularly by limiting excessive leverage.

During the first six months after the protections took effect in March 2021, aggregate quarterly retail losses declined 91%, from A$372 million to A$33 million.

The regulator also recorded an 87% reduction in quarterly margin close-outs, although subsequent reviews showed that most retail CFD investors continued losing money.

ASIC's latest proposal would tighten how brokers calculate initial margin, following a sector-wide investigation that identified firms offsetting customers' opposing trading positions to reduce collateral requirements.

Under the proposed clarification, brokers must calculate the minimum margin separately for each CFD, preventing them from using one position to reduce the initial collateral required for another.

The regulator said its intervention over margin-netting practices led 28 issuers to refund more than A$36 million to affected retail customers.

Additional changes target CFDs linked to options, where investor losses have been particularly severe.

ASIC found that 85% of retail clients trading CFDs over options lost money during 2023–24, prompting proposals to clarify margin requirements and examine whether some products should remain available to ordinary investors.

The regulator is specifically seeking evidence on contracts that could expose traders to losses exceeding the options premium, including structures with potentially unlimited downside exposure.

It has yet to decide whether those products should face further restrictions or an outright prohibition.

Australia's ASIC also wants tighter conditions for promotional discounts, requiring permitted offers to be available on substantially equal terms to retail customers and prominently displayed on brokers' websites and trading platforms.

The proposals would require firms to retain records of qualifying discounts for seven years after the offers end, while ensuring educational and research tools are not used to encourage prohibited trading activity.

The existing CFD intervention order expires on May 23, 2027. ASIC argues that a further 10-year extension would give firms greater regulatory certainty while preserving the regulator's ability to revoke the restrictions earlier.

However, the amendments remain under consultation, and industry feedback could change their final scope.

ASIC is seeking submissions from brokers, trading platforms and consumer groups by Nov. 9, including information about which digitally settled products would be affected, expected compliance costs and whether firms would need a transition period.

The post Australia moves to close crypto derivatives loophole after retail traders lose A$458 million appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A London judge rejected Chinese fraud victims' bid to use English law to claim more than 61,000 seized Bitcoin.

In an Oct. 12 ruling, High Court Justice Mark Turner sided with British prosecutors, determining that Chinese law must govern ownership claims over the cryptocurrency, currently worth approximately $5 billion.

“The applicable law is Chinese law,” Turner wrote in the judgment, rejecting arguments that English property and trust principles should determine the investors' entitlement.

The decision leaves thousands of victims facing a potentially difficult recovery battle, as proving they lost money to the fraud does not automatically establish ownership of the Bitcoin acquired with its proceeds.

How a Chinese investment fraud became a $5 billion Bitcoin dispute

The case stems from investment schemes operated by Zhimin Qian through Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology and associated businesses between 2014 and 2017.

According to the judgment's agreed factual background, the schemes collected approximately 40.23 billion yuan (£4.1 billion) through at least 128,409 investment contracts.

However, the court cautioned that the number of contracts should not be mistaken for the number of individual victims.

The records also revealed substantial repayments to some participants. Approximately 34.1 billion yuan (£3.4 billion) flowed back to investors during the scheme's operation, although others received nothing.

Qian converted part of the proceeds into Bitcoin, including purchases of more than 100,000 BTC through an account on cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, alongside over-the-counter transactions conducted in China.

After fleeing China in 2017, she relocated to Britain, where authorities subsequently seized devices, private keys and other assets linked to more than 61,000 Bitcoin.

The recovered cryptocurrency became the subject of civil recovery proceedings initiated by Britain's Director of Public Prosecutions under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Chinese investors later sought to establish ownership of the coins, arguing that English legal principles could let them trace their stolen investments into the cryptocurrency Qian acquired.

They argued that fraudulent investment contracts could be rescinded, creating trust-based ownership interests that followed the money into Bitcoin.

British prosecutors opposed that approach, maintaining that the original transactions and alleged acquisition of ownership rights occurred in China.

Turner agreed, finding that the investors, perpetrators, payments and cryptocurrency purchases were overwhelmingly connected to China.

The judge also rejected the argument that Bitcoin's eventual presence in Britain should determine which country's property laws applied.

Instead, he focused on the legal relationships established when the investors collected the investments and later converted them into cryptocurrency.

That conclusion defeated the investors' attempts to rely on English law or combine English and Chinese legal principles to establish their claims.

Victims must now prove ownership as recovery battle enters next stage

The next proceedings will determine whether Chinese law recognizes the ownership interests investors assert in the recovered Bitcoin.

Under Section 281 of Britain's Proceeds of Crime Act, claimants must establish a proprietary interest in assets targeted for recovery, rather than merely demonstrate that criminals owe them compensation.

Turner emphasized that the provision “does not create any broader compensation scheme” for people who suffered financial losses through criminal conduct.

Consequently, investors may need to establish how Chinese law treats fraudulent investment contracts, whether ownership rights survive the conversion of stolen funds into cryptocurrency and whether those rights extend to the particular assets held by British authorities.

The scale and structure of Qian's operation could complicate those proceedings. The scheme involved multiple bank accounts, investment arrangements and repayments, leaving individual claimants with potentially different financial histories.

The judgment also leaves the precise operation of Chinese law unresolved.

Although Turner decided that Chinese law governs the underlying claims, the court has yet to receive evidence establishing its relevant provisions or the factual basis of each investor's asserted ownership.

The victims advanced an alternative argument that English law should apply until Chinese law was formally established.

Turner rejected that submission, distinguishing the choice of governing law from the evidence needed to establish its contents.

“The two should not be conflated,” he wrote.

The litigation also involves receivers appointed to Tianjin Lantian Gerui at the initiative of one alleged victim. Those receivers have asserted separate claims over assets held by British prosecutors.

Turner described the validity of that route as “a question for another day,” leaving another potential complication for the eventual distribution of the cryptocurrency.

Lawyers representing the fraud victims plan to appeal the ruling, according to the Financial Times, potentially prolonging the dispute over the seized assets.

For British authorities, the decision removes one proposed route investors sought to use to establish ownership under English law. It does not determine how much Bitcoin, if any, will ultimately remain available for government recovery.

Turner said he would hear further submissions on the precise order implementing his judgment.

The court will need to establish the applicable Chinese property rights and examine individual claims before it can determine which portions of the cryptocurrency belong to successful applicants.

The post A $5 billion Bitcoin fortune is at stake, but UK court says being defrauded isn’t enough to claim it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Researchers have cut the estimated computing cost of a specialized quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction by 82% to $59.

Data from the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge showed that improvements in graphics processing software reduced the projected expense from approximately $320 during StarkWare's first mainnet demonstration in August to $67 in September and $59 as of Oct. 13.

The breakthrough could make a specialized Bitcoin protection method more affordable as developers seek ways to safeguard cryptocurrency holdings against future quantum computers without waiting for changes to the network's underlying protocol.

The public competition, organized by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs, used AI-assisted coding tools to accelerate the computational searches required for the transactions.

Its latest benchmark recorded more than 1 billion verified candidates per second on an Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU, up from an initial rate of approximately 146 million.

However, the $59 figure remains a hardware-dependent estimate based on simulated GPU workloads rather than a completed production transaction. Bitcoin network fees are separate, while some computing stages still rely on provisional assumptions.

StarkWare said the improvements make its proposed emergency protection method considerably cheaper to prepare, with researchers now targeting a computing cost below $10.

Quantum computing advances intensify Bitcoin security race

The development builds on research by StarkWare's Avihu Levy, who demonstrated in August that Bitcoin could support a quantum-resistant spending arrangement under its existing consensus rules.

Known as Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB), the method uses hash-based cryptography and a computational puzzle to secure specially prepared Bitcoin holdings against attacks on conventional digital signatures.

The approach lets holders do the required calculations off-chain before spending their coins, potentially offering protection while developers work on broader changes to Bitcoin's cryptographic infrastructure.

That research has gained urgency as advances in quantum computing challenge previous estimates of how much computing power attackers would need to compromise cryptocurrency security.

In March, Google Quantum AI reported that future quantum computers could break the elliptic-curve cryptography used by Bitcoin with substantially fewer resources than previously estimated.

Its researchers calculated that certain attacks could theoretically complete in minutes using fewer than 500,000 physical qubits under specified hardware assumptions, a roughly 20-fold reduction from earlier estimates.

Although such machines remain beyond publicly demonstrated capabilities, the findings have increased pressure on blockchain developers to prepare before quantum attacks become practical.

The potential exposure is substantial.

According to a study by Glassnode, approximately 6.04 million BTC, representing 30.2% of Bitcoin's issued supply at the time, had public keys already visible on-chain.

The figure included 1.92 million BTC exposed through their underlying address structures and another 4.12 million BTC exposed through practices such as address reuse and previous spending activity.

A sufficiently powerful quantum attacker could theoretically derive private keys from those exposed public keys and gain control of the associated coins.

The threat has fueled debate over how quickly Bitcoin should adopt quantum-resistant cryptography, particularly given the complexity of introducing changes across a decentralized network.

QSB could offer an interim option, but it protects only eligible coins whose conventional public keys remain hidden until they are moved into specially constructed outputs.

That requirement leaves already-exposed holdings vulnerable if a capable quantum attacker emerges before owners can complete a secure migration.

The method also faces practical deployment restrictions. Although QSB transactions comply with Bitcoin's consensus rules, ordinary network relay policies reject them, requiring direct submission to miners willing to process them.

MARA's Slipstream service provided that route during the August demonstration.

Still, StarkWare continues to favor a broader Bitcoin protocol upgrade for long-term protection. Researchers must now demonstrate the latest computing savings in complete transactions and establish dependable miner access before QSB can become a practical fallback for holders.

The post Bitcoin’s quantum-safe protection gets 82% cheaper as researchers race to secure 6 million exposed BTC appeared first on CryptoSlate.

NEAR costs around $5.09 at midday on October 13, putting it 11.7 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. Bitcoin shed 0.3 percent over the same period and Ether 2.3 percent. At its intraday low NEAR stood at $4.90, below the round five-dollar mark; the jump a report from New York set off on Sunday has been given back in full. Nasdaq-listed SVRN, Inc. has bought FastNEAR, the operator of the servers through which practically every NEAR wallet and every NEAR app talks to the blockchain.

The details of the acquisition are in the Form 6-K that SVRN filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 9. What it says is more concrete for holders than any price figure, because it concerns the route by which your balance appears on the display at all.

What SVRN bought with FastNEAR: RPC servers, archive nodes and the NEARDATA service

RPC stands for remote procedure call and denotes the interface through which a wallet or an app asks something of a blockchain node or hands it a transaction. An RPC provider therefore runs the servers that hold a current copy of the blockchain and answer on behalf of users.

According to the press release in the SEC filing, FastNEAR operates three things: a fleet of such RPC servers, an archive infrastructure holding NEAR's complete transaction history, and NEARDATA, a data service developers use. SVRN cites more than 3.5 billion requests a month and more than 100 terabytes of data. FastNEAR has been a wholly owned subsidiary since October 8; co-founders Evgeny Kuzyakov and Mike Purvis have moved to SVRN. The company does not name the purchase price.

SVRN chief Sal Ternullo justifies the purchase in the release by saying that everything built on NEAR depends on infrastructure most people never see. When a wallet shows a balance or an application submits a transaction, something has to answer, fast and correctly, every time. The company announces that it will invest in reliability and capacity; for existing customers the services are meant to continue without interruption.

Why buying an RPC operator moves the NEAR price

The mechanism behind it is simpler than the technology sounds. SVRN holds NEAR on its own balance sheet and thereby gives its shareholders exposure to the token. Until now it was a pure holding company with staking. FastNEAR adds an operating business that has revenue of its own from paying customers and whose value does not depend on the NEAR price. For the market that means a listed buyer is binding itself more deeply to a network it can no longer exit cheaply without damaging its own business.

That fits what SVRN writes in the same release about its other role. The company stakes its holdings with validators that secure the network and takes part in governance; it co-authored the programme that has paid operators of MPC nodes according to performance since February 2026. A buyer that bundles technology, voting rights and balance sheet in the same network is a different signal for investors than a fund that merely collects tokens.

NEAR, Bitcoin and Ether over 24 hours: minus 11.7 against minus 0.3 against minus 2.3 percent

Over one day the gap is clear. NEAR lost 11.6 to 11.7 percent depending on the data provider, Bitcoin 0.3 percent, Ether 2.3 percent. Over a week the picture reverses: NEAR is down around 3.2 to 4.2 percent, just behind Bitcoin, which shed around 2.9 percent, but ahead of Ether at around 7.5 percent. The daily loss hits NEAR considerably harder than the broad market; measured over seven days Ether is the weakest of the three. NEAR's trading volume over those 24 hours came to around $1.28 billion.

Market capitalisation stands at around $6.65 billion, trading volume over the past 24 hours at $1.04 to $1.14 billion. On the ranking the providers diverge: CoinGecko lists NEAR in 21st place, Coinpaprika in 24th. Anyone reading a figure such as "top 20" should therefore know that it depends on the chosen provider and not on any official list.

NEAR Intents: $33.57 billion in total volume and $122.8 million in a day

The second reason that comes up in reporting on the NEAR rally is NEAR Intents. It is a swap system in which users declare a desired swap and competing service providers execute it, instead of tokens being locked across a bridge and minted anew. According to DefiLlama data the system has turned over $33.57 billion in total.

That sum is a cumulative figure since launch and says nothing about what is happening there today. The current values are smaller: $122.8 million over 24 hours, $1.15 billion over seven days, $4.74 billion over 30 days. The daily figure is therefore around 20 percent below the previous day's, even though the price rose. Read the 33 billion as current volume and you overestimate demand by more than twentyfold. In the autumn part of the volume came from Zcash swaps, that is, from a single fashion that can ebb away again.

What changes for NEAR holders: wallet, RPC endpoint and custody

The sale of FastNEAR changes nothing about your coins. Your keys remain your keys, and the balances still sit on the blockchain. What changes is the ownership of one of the routes by which you reach the blockchain. In practice that means three things.

First: in many wallets you can see and change the RPC endpoint in the settings. Take a look there at which provider is entered. An endpoint is interchangeable, and knowing several providers is the simplest safeguard against the failure of a single one.

Second: an RPC server sees which address asks what and when. A wallet that sends all requests through one provider leaves a movement profile there. That is not a theft risk, but it is a data protection point that takes on a different quality with a listed owner than with a small team.

Third: anyone holding larger balances separates custody from access. The keys sit on a hardware wallet, and which server queries the blockchain is then purely a question of convenience with no access to the assets. That separation is the real protection, not the choice of provider.

Staking and validators: 412 nodes secure NEAR, and FastNEAR is not among them

This gets confused often, so here is the clear distinction: validators produce blocks and secure consensus, RPC servers answer requests. Those are two separate layers. NEARBlocks currently counts 412 nodes online, block time is 0.6 seconds, and more than 5.46 billion transactions have been processed in total. The acquisition has changed nothing at that layer.

That is the most important framing of the day: whoever buys FastNEAR buys access, not control over the network. A buyer could raise prices, discontinue services or log requests. It could not forge a transaction, roll back a block or take anyone's coins away. Anyone who sees SVRN staking and infers influence over consensus from it is confusing the balance sheet with the technology; the staking confers voting weight in the network, the RPC purchase does not.

MyNearWallet closes on October 31: the key migration is still running

Independently of the acquisition, a deadline is running in the NEAR orbit that is more concrete than any price level. MyNearWallet is ceasing operation as of October 31. If you hold your NEAR there, you have to move the keys into another wallet beforehand, otherwise the familiar access is gone after the cut-off date. Cryptoticker covered the shutdown in detail on October 8.

Both processes have the same core, even though they have nothing to do with each other: access to a blockchain runs through services that can change owner or close. The blockchain itself remains, the access does not. That is exactly why a look into the wallet settings pays off now and not on October 30.

Buying NEAR in Germany: which route is open under MiCA

NEAR is available in Germany through regulated trading venues. Since the EU's MiCA regulation took effect, providers addressing retail customers in the EU need authorisation as a crypto asset service provider; a BaFin licence, or one from another member state used in Germany, is the minimum to look for in a buying route. Which venues carry NEAR and what fees they charge is shown in our crypto exchange comparison.

In the purchase itself, after a day with almost 12 percent of movement, the order type makes the difference. A market order in a thin order book buys at the next available price and can be filled well above the price you last saw. A limit order names your maximum price and may not be filled at all. With a daily range of $4.90 to $5.76, those are not rounding errors.

If you want not just to hold NEAR but to earn on it, you end up at staking. The proceeds are income and depend on the validator you delegate to; the lock-up period when you withdraw belongs in the calculation. Which platforms quote which terms is set out in our overview of staking platforms.

Tax on NEAR gains: holding period, exemption limit and the exchanges' reporting duty

In Germany, gains from the sale of crypto assets count as private disposals. After a holding period of one year the gain is tax-free; before that it counts towards your other income. The exemption limit for such gains is 1,000 euros in the calendar year and falls away entirely as soon as it is exceeded. Staking proceeds are valued at the time of receipt and have to be considered separately.

Documentation is what matters. Anyone rearranging a portfolio after a jump like the one from Friday to Sunday creates transactions whose acquisition data has to remain traceable next year. A tax tool or portfolio tracker takes over the logging; the duty to file correctly stays with you. The fact that trading venues pass data on to the tax authorities does not make clean records of your own unnecessary, it makes them more important.

The levels after the break below five: $4.90 below, $5.76 above

Three values are well founded for the coming days. Below sits the intraday low at $4.90: that is where the price slipped under the round five-dollar mark during October 13 before pulling back to around $5.09. The mark has therefore failed once and now sits just below the current price. Above sits the intraday high at $5.76, around 18 percent above the low. Whether the return above five dollars holds will show in whether the price leaves Tuesday's low untouched.

For context on the upside: the all-time high of $20.44 dates from January 2022. From today's price that is more than 70 percent away. The last time Cryptoticker wrote about NEAR, on October 10, the price stood at $4.93. The intraday low of October 13 at $4.90 was even below that, so the level around 5 dollars discussed then has been worked through. You will find the state of play at the time in the article on the volatility range of October 10.

Our assessment: a Nasdaq company at the access point, not at the blockchain

In the editorial team's view the acquisition is positive for NEAR over the medium term and overdrawn in the short term. Positive, because a listed owner brings money and accountability into an infrastructure that a small team ran at low prices until now; SVRN expressly announces investment in reliability and capacity. Overdrawn, because the network's daily figures were already not keeping pace on October 12: $122.8 million of daily volume at NEAR Intents stood against a cumulative total of $33.57 billion, and the token's trading volume of around $1.04 to $1.14 billion did not support a ten percent jump in a quiet overall market. The price path of October 12 has confirmed that reading.

Something else argues against it: the purchase price was not disclosed. Without it there is no judging whether SVRN bought cheaply or whether its own share price carried the cost. Assessing the acquisition as a piece of business is not possible with the figures published; assessing its direction is. Crypto assets can fall to a total loss; this assessment is not a recommendation to buy or sell.

NEAR's RPC plumbing: a Nasdaq company serves 3.5 billion requests

1. Open the wallet settings and note the RPC endpoint. If larger balances sit with a single provider, separate custody from access and put the keys on a device from the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Check the venue and the order type before buying. Authorisation under MiCA, NEAR on offer, a limit order rather than a market order after a day with almost 12 percent of movement: the terms are in the exchange comparison.
3. Weigh the lock-up period against the yield when staking. The proceeds are taxable on receipt, and withdrawing takes time; you will find the terms at the staking platforms.

The primary source on the acquisition is the SEC Form 6-K from SVRN, Inc. of October 9, 2026. The volume figures for NEAR Intents are at DefiLlama.

(As of October 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Binance is switching off its mining pool. On November 10, 2026 at 07:00 UTC the exchange will cut the connections to Binance Pool, the stratum URLs and mining endpoints will go offline, and any hash rate arriving after that will be neither accepted nor credited. Pool Savings, Cloud Mining and the Transaction Accelerator go with the pool, along with the Telegram hash rate alerts, the email notifications and the mining pool APIs.

The date you actually need to remember, though, is a different one. The same announcement carries a second deadline, seventeen hours later: by November 10, 2026 at 23:59 UTC you are meant to have completed everything needed for outstanding rewards, balances, refunds and statements to be able to reach you, identity verification expressly included. If you have only 07:00 in mind, you will think the matter is settled by midday and let the second edge pass in the evening.

Then there is a third cut-off, the one most likely to catch up with you years later: from November 24, 2026 at 07:00 UTC the pool pages will be permanently unreachable. That also takes away the statements you need as evidence for your tax return. This article walks you through all three deadlines, through the switch to another pool, and through the German obligations attached to it.

What Binance switches off on November 10, and what disappears with the pool

The Binance announcement names a whole product group, not a single offering. Binance Pool itself, Pool Savings, Cloud Mining and the Transaction Accelerator are all being retired. Added to that are the features built around the pool: hash rate alerts via Telegram, email notifications, and the mining pool APIs that many operators run their monitoring through.

Four of these terms affect different people. A mining pool combines the computing power of many participants; when the pool finds a block, it distributes the reward according to the submitted shares. Cloud mining is the counterpart: here you own no hardware but rent computing power for a term. Pool Savings was an interest product into which mining proceeds could be deposited. The Transaction Accelerator, finally, could push a stuck Bitcoin transaction into a block ahead of others.

Two terms will accompany you through the rest of this text. The hash rate is the speed at which your hardware works through computing operations, measured in hashes per second; it determines what share of the pool's proceeds you can claim. Shares are the evidence of that work: partial solutions your device submits to the pool, which the pool counts to determine your portion of a block it finds. Together the two describe what actually gets paid for in crypto mining, and what runs into nothing from 07:00 UTC on November 10.

If you are a cloud mining customer, you need to reconfigure no machine; the product simply falls away for you. Anyone running their own ASICs, the hardware specialised in Bitcoin, has real work ahead: select a new pool, switch each device individually to the new stratum address, reassign worker names and replace the monitoring that currently hangs off the Binance APIs. As of this week a Bitcoin costs around $83,300 and a mined block currently brings 3.125 BTC plus fees, so the switch is not about small change.

The Binance Pool shutdown in sequence: 07:00 UTC, 23:59 UTC and November 24

November 10, 07:00 UTC. Binance begins cutting the mining connections. The stratum URLs and the mining endpoints are deactivated. Hash rate submissions and mining shares arriving after this point will, in the wording of the announcement, no longer be accepted, processed or credited. Product access closes at the same time, and no new rewards, earnings or benefits accrue. On the same day all references to Binance Pool disappear from the exchange's home page.

November 10, 23:59 UTC. This line is the least conspicuous and the most consequential. Binance asks that by then you make sure your account can actually receive outstanding rewards, refunds or statements, and expressly names all required identity verification steps in that context. An incompletely verified account is precisely the case in which a payout stalls. Those most affected are users who opened their account years ago and have barely touched it since.

November 24, 07:00 UTC. For fourteen days the pool pages remain reachable so that you can view historical data, account records and the status of your payouts. After that they are permanently unavailable.

One restriction takes effect even earlier but affects no German users: for customers in Brazil, Binance is limiting access to several services including Binance Pool from October 27, 2026. The trade outlet CryptoBriefing attributes that step to new requirements from the country's central bank. Binance itself draws no connection between the two in its announcement.

The second deadline at 23:59 UTC and the role of identity verification

Close reading pays off here, rather than drama. Binance does not say that outstanding amounts lapse after 23:59 UTC. The announcement is more careful: eligible outstanding rewards, balances, refunds or statements will continue to be processed after November 10 as well, subject to the respective product rules, account status, risk controls, compliance checks and applicable law. The 23:59 UTC is named as the point by which the necessary steps should be done in order to allow prompt handling.

In practice that means the deadline is not a trapdoor with total loss, but it marks the point from which you can no longer rely on swift processing. Four things therefore belong done beforehand.

• Complete identity verification. This is the only point Binance names explicitly. If your verification is incomplete or an identity document has expired, the payout stands still.
• Check payout details. Stored addresses and bank details have to be current and confirmed.
• Clear up account status. An active security lock or an open support query is exactly the account status the announcement refers to.
• Close out Pool Savings positions. This point has an uncertainty of its own, more on that shortly.

Shares, rewards and the final settlement: what still counts before 07:00 UTC

One detail takes the pressure off: mining shares you submit before 07:00 UTC on November 10 still feed into the final calculation of rewards under the applicable Binance Pool rules. The work of the last hours before the shutdown is therefore not lost. Binance also writes that the pool should keep running under normal conditions until the stated times.

What comes afterwards, by contrast, really is wasted work. A device still pointing at the old address at 08:00 UTC on November 10 computes into the void: the shares it submits are no longer counted, and the electricity runs all the same. On a current large machine drawing three to four kilowatts, that is roughly 72 to 96 kilowatt hours a day for which not a single reward is credited any more.

That is why the switchover date is not a point but a window. If you are responsible for several devices, allow a day of lead time, test the new address on a single machine and only then move the rest across. One thing matters when comparing pools: the settlement models differ. Under PPS you get a fixed payment per submitted share; FPPS, or full pay per share, adds a proportional share of the transaction fees on top; PPLNS only distributes after a block is found and therefore fluctuates more. Which model you choose changes your proceeds noticeably.

Pool Savings: close it out, even though no separate time is named

At this point the announcement stays vague, and that deserves saying. On Pool Savings it only says that you should review your active positions and cancel or redeem them before the service ends. Binance names no separate time for it.

Because Pool Savings appears in the same list as the pool itself, 07:00 UTC on November 10 is the moment you should plan for. A separate, later deadline for Pool Savings is nowhere documented, and nobody should stake their balance on an undocumented deadline.

Our measurement: Binance Pool recently found 47 of 4,419 blocks

Why does one of the largest companies in the industry close its mining pool? Binance is among the largest crypto exchanges in the world, and the closure hits a service the company has run since 2020. Binance gives only the ongoing review of its own product range as the reason. The numbers are more explicit.

We counted the blocks found per pool, on the basis of data from the block explorer mempool.space. Over the past three years Binance Pool accounted for 4,366 of 159,250 blocks, that is 2.74 percent and ninth place. Over the past year it was 1,080 of 52,380 blocks, 2.06 percent, still ninth place. And in the past month: 47 of 4,419 blocks, 1.06 percent, thirteenth place. Its share has more than halved in three years.

At the top, the same month looks like this: Foundry USA came to 25.6 percent, AntPool to 20.7 percent, F2Pool to 16.2 percent. The three largest mining pools thus share around 62 percent of the blocks found between them. A pool with a one percent share finds a block every day and a half on average, and it is exactly that rarity that makes proceeds uneven for the miners connected to it.

Our assessment: the crypto mining business has become a side matter for Binance, and the closure follows from that. The halved block share supports it, as does the slide from ninth to thirteenth place within a year and the fact that the entire product family is going rather than a single service. Little stands against it, apart from the timing: the restriction in Brazil taking effect two weeks earlier can be read as regulatory pressure. That connection is not documented, and Binance does not draw it itself. In any case the reason changes nothing about the three cut-off dates.

Mining income in Germany: section 15 or section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act

Now to the part the reports on the shutdown leave out. Anyone mining in Germany has taxable income, regardless of whether the pool continues to exist or not.

The Federal Ministry of Finance assigns block creation to two income categories in its circular on crypto assets of March 6, 2025. If you mine on a sustained basis and with the intention of making a profit, it is income from a trade or business under section 15 of the Income Tax Act; block reward and transaction fees then count as business receipts. If the activity remains occasional, other income from services under section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act applies. There an exemption limit applies: if this income stays below 256 euros in the calendar year, it is tax-free. If the limit is exceeded, the full amount is taxable, not just the excess.

What is decisive is the value at the time of receipt: the relevant price is the one on the day the reward was credited to your account, not the price at a later sale. How the line between trade and occasional activity falls in an individual case is broken down at length in our guide to crypto mining and tax.

What section 147 of the Fiscal Code demands of your mining records

That makes November 24 the real tax date of this shutdown. The German Fiscal Code sets out in section 147 which records have to be kept in order and for how long.

For mining that means concretely: monthly statements, payout receipts and the transaction history are accounting documents or at least other records of relevance for taxation. Section 147 paragraph 3 of the Fiscal Code sets staggered periods for them: books and annual financial statements ten years, accounting documents eight years, other records six years. The period only begins at the end of the calendar year in which the document arose, and it does not expire while the assessment period for the tax concerned is still open.

A statement from 2026 can therefore stay with you well into the 2030s. The provider, however, only keeps it available until November 24, 2026. Whatever you have not downloaded by then you will later have to reconstruct, and without access to the source.

A complete export rather than a sample therefore makes sense: all monthly statements, the full payout history with the destination addresses, the entries on Pool Savings and Cloud Mining, and the receipts for fees. If you want to record your proceeds on an ongoing basis, the crypto tax software and portfolio trackers include programs that value mining receipts at the daily rate and output them as a report. You still have to secure the raw data yourself: a tool is no substitute for a receipt, and the provider's pages are unreachable from November 24.

What the tax office learns about crypto accounts from 2026 anyway

The records also matter more because the authorities are seeing more in parallel than they used to. With the Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act, Germany has implemented the EU directive DAC8; the law has applied since January 1, 2026. Providers of crypto asset services have to report details of their users and their transactions to the Federal Central Tax Office, which passes the data on to the local tax offices and to partner authorities in the EU. The first reporting year is 2026, with the report due the year after.

For you as a miner that amounts to a plain arithmetic task: what the exchange reports should match what stands in your return. An account whose statements you can no longer call up makes exactly that reconciliation harder. That is the second reason to pull the records before November 24, even if you moved to another pool long ago.

Switching pools: stratum address, worker names and the monitoring

The technical part is manageable as long as you do not leave it to the last day. Three steps are enough for one device.

1. Open an account with the new pool and store a payout address. Check the minimum amount from which payouts are made and at what intervals. On small setups that threshold determines whether you see money regularly at all.
2. Enter the stratum address and worker names. In your device's interface you replace the previous pool URL with the new one and assign a worker name following the new provider's scheme. Set up a second address as a backup at the same time, so the device does not sit idle if there is a fault.
3. Rebuild the monitoring. Alerts that rely on the Binance APIs or the Telegram notifications stop working on November 10. Many miners notice their monitoring has failed only once the hash rate has long been at zero. The replacement belongs in place beforehand, otherwise you notice an outage only from the payout that fails to arrive.

Four things count when choosing the new provider. First, size: large mining pools find blocks more often and therefore pay out more evenly, but they also concentrate the network's computing power on a few addresses. Second, the supported cryptocurrencies: some services settle only Bitcoin, others serve several blockchains, which pays off if your hardware is not fixed on BTC. Third, the fee, which depending on the provider sits between around one and four percent of proceeds. Fourth, the location of the servers, because high latency between device and pool costs rejected shares and therefore hard cash.

Where your rewards land afterwards is a separate decision. On an exchange they stay conveniently tradable but sit in third-party custody. If you are building up larger holdings, you withdraw them into custody of your own. One thing should be clear in all this: mining proceeds are not secure income. Falling prices, rising difficulty and electricity costs can make an operation unprofitable, and a total loss of the capital deployed is possible.

Binance Pool: the statements stay available until November 24

Three steps, in this order:

1. By November 10, 07:00 UTC: move the hash rate. Choose a new pool, switch each device individually, compare settlement model and payout threshold. Where the payouts go afterwards is best settled in advance: the comparison of crypto exchanges and their fees shows what deposits and withdrawals in euros cost where.
2. By November 10, 23:59 UTC: make the account ready to receive. Complete identity verification, update payout details, close out Pool Savings positions. For larger holdings you then want to keep in your own custody, the hardware wallet comparison is worth a look.
3. By November 24, 07:00 UTC: secure the records. Download all monthly statements, the payout history and the fee receipts, and file them so that you can still find them in eight years. A tax tool with a portfolio tracker then takes over the valuation at the daily rate.

(As of October 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Dogecoin costs $0.0848 on Tuesday afternoon. Market capitalisation stands at $13.2 billion, roughly a third above that of Chainlink, which sits at $9.97 billion on the same day. Even so, the emerging index launched at the end of August by CME Group and CF Benchmarks lists Chainlink as a member and Dogecoin not. The reason is not in the price but in the rulebook: the index excludes memecoins and additionally measures how much value sits in the applications on a blockchain. On that second yardstick Dogecoin fails, and that explains more about the coming months than any single day's move.

The CME index takes ten coins, and Dogecoin is not one of them

CME Group and CF Benchmarks launched two benchmarks on August 31, 2026. One, the CME CF Crypto Market Index, covers twelve assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum. The other, the CME CF Emerging Crypto Index, leaves out the two large ones and bundles ten assets: BNB, XRP, Solana, Hyperliquid, Chainlink, Stellar, Sui, Uniswap, Avalanche and Aave. The indicative weights from the CF Benchmarks study of August 13 put BNB at 32.0 percent, XRP at 27.6 percent, Solana at 18.5 percent and Hyperliquid at 14.6 percent. For the remaining six assets, Chainlink included, 7.3 percent is left in total. Weighting follows free-float market capitalisation, with a review every six months on the first business day in June and December.

An index on its own is just a number. It matters once products are built on it. That is exactly why a futures exchange constructs such benchmarks: indices like these are the basis for futures contracts, for certificates and for funds that track a group of assets rather than individual coins. Anything not in the index does not appear in those products. Single-asset products on Dogecoin are unaffected; basket products are not. crypto.news has written up the details of the composition and the launch.

Chainlink is smaller than Dogecoin and still in

Comparing the two assets shows that size alone does not carry. Dogecoin sits at $13.2 billion in market capitalisation on October 13, Chainlink at $9.97 billion. The gap in daily turnover is similar: $780 million for Dogecoin against $404 million for Chainlink. On the two figures investors look at first, Dogecoin would be the stronger candidate.

The admission rules, however, ask for something else. First, memecoins are expressly excluded, and Dogecoin is the oldest and largest of them. Second, a coin has to be custodiable in a way that lets institutional houses hold it. Third, and this is the point that can be measured, the value held in the applications on a blockchain is set against the token's fully diluted market capitalisation. The rulebook names no public threshold for this, but the direction is unambiguous.

The usage filter: what sits on a blockchain is what decides

A simple idea sits behind the third criterion. A blockchain that carries lending, that issues stablecoins and that hosts trading venues ties up capital. The industry calls that tied-up capital total value locked, or TVL: the sum of all funds deposited in the applications on a blockchain. Set it against the token's market capitalisation and you get a measure of how much of that market value rests on actual usage and how much on expectation.

Chainlink supplies price data to a large number of applications and, with its staking offering, features in that calculation itself. Solana and Avalanche carry application ecosystems of their own, Aave is a lending market, Uniswap a trading venue. Dogecoin has none of this, and for a reason that was never meant to be a shortcoming: the Dogecoin blockchain cannot execute programs. It transfers value, and has done so reliably since 2013. For a metric designed to measure tied-up capital, that leaves close to nothing.

How to check the admission criteria yourself

The three points can be followed without a data service. For the memecoin criterion a project's own description is enough: Dogecoin was launched in 2013 explicitly as a joke project, and nothing about that has changed. For the custody criterion you check whether regulated custodians carry the coin, which they do for Dogecoin. For the usage criterion you look up the blockchain's TVL and divide it by the token's market capitalisation. If the result sits close to zero because the blockchain cannot carry applications, the filter is the reason for a no, not the size.

A sober expectation for December follows from that. The first regular review of members falls on the first business day in December. As long as the rules apply unchanged and the Dogecoin blockchain runs no applications, nothing changes in the composition as far as Dogecoin is concerned. Anyone betting on inclusion is betting on a rule change, not on a price path.

The Dogecoin blockchain in numbers on October 13

How little happens on the blockchain itself can be put in figures. The data below comes from the public statistics at Blockchair, queried on October 13 at 14:44 UTC. Over 24 hours, 1,375 blocks were found and 19,853 transactions processed. That is about 14 transactions per block. In the mempool, the queue of transfers not yet confirmed, 20 transactions totalling 5,127 bytes were sitting at that moment. A blockchain under load looks different.

The remaining figures round out the picture. Network hash rate came to 3.51 petahashes per second and the number of reachable nodes to 494. The largest single transfer of the past 24 hours was worth $46.6 million, which shows what the blockchain is used for: large transfers between a few addresses, not many small operations inside applications. Newly minted in the same period was Dogecoin worth around $1.17 million, roughly 13.7 million coins, because issuance continues with no cap.

These numbers are not a criticism of the design. Dogecoin was built as a means of payment, not as a platform. But they explain why a metric looking for tied-up capital finds nothing at Dogecoin. And they mark the difference from the project that starts precisely here.

DogeOS is built to close exactly this gap

On September 30 the team behind the MyDoge wallet opened a public testnet for DogeOS. It is an application layer on top of Dogecoin, technically a zero-knowledge rollup: a second layer that executes transactions itself, bundles them and then posts a cryptographic proof of the result on the Dogecoin blockchain. The layer understands the Ethereum programming environment, and fees are paid in DOGE. The base blockchain stays unchanged.

Several applications were named at launch, among them Barkswap as a liquidity engine, Superposition Finance for lending, Derps for perpetual futures, Split Markets for options and USDoge as a collateralised stablecoin. According to the report, the project was funded with $6.9 million in a round led by Polychain Capital in May 2025. Timothy Stebbing, a director of the Dogecoin Foundation, said of it: “L1 ledger purity must stay intact while we introduce utility one layer above, and that is what DogeOS represents to me.” Unchained has gathered the particulars.

For the index question the timing is what counts, and it is open. There is no date for the launch of the live network. Founder and chief executive Jordan Jefferson said only that the timetable would be communicated along with the next development steps. A testnet ties up no capital, and as long as no main network runs, the metric the index looks at does not move.

The bridge hangs on validators and a TEE signer

Anyone who later wants to move real DOGE onto this second layer should know what security there depends on. According to the developer's statements to The Block, the bridge requires three things at once: valid zero-knowledge proofs, signatures from a majority of DogeOS validators, and the signature of a so-called TEE signer, that is, a shielded execution environment. For now the order of transactions is set by a permissioned sequencer, not an open market.

The most important point comes at the end of that list. The Dogecoin blockchain itself does not verify these proofs. That would require a new opcode called OP_CHECKZKP, proposed since July 2025 and not implemented so far. Until that happens, whoever sends value across the bridge is relying on the validators and the shielded environment, not on the blockchain. That is not a warning about the project but a description of the trust model. In the testnet it has no consequences, because no real value sits there. At the launch of the main network it will be the first question.

The ETF channel stands at zero in October

The index is not the only route through which institutional money reaches a coin. For single-asset funds on Dogecoin, though, things look no better at present. According to an evaluation by 24/7 Wall St. based on data from the provider SoSoValue, there was not one trading day in October through the 12th of the month with a net inflow or net outflow. Shares were traded only between investors. Total net assets across all Dogecoin funds came to around $14.9 million, against $15.6 million paid in since launch.

On Monday, October 12, the first flow figure of the month then arrived, as an exit: FXStreet reports $399,460 of outflows from the Dogecoin funds. Measured against spot turnover of $780 million a day, that is not a number that moves a price. As an indication of interest on the product side it is telling.

There is also a date. Bitwise is halting trading in its Dogecoin fund BWOW on NYSE Arca after October 14, so tomorrow. Anyone keeping shares receives a cash payout on October 22 based on the net asset value of October 21. The net assets of that fund stood at about $684,000 on October 8. We reported on the process itself and on the distribution of the remaining holdings across two custodians on October 12, in Dogecoin custody: 144.8 million DOGE across two custodians.

What has changed since the report of October 12

Two things have been added since that article. First, October 12 is the first flow day this month, and it came out negative. Second, the price has barely moved, but the day's range is instructive: Dogecoin fell as far as $0.080215 on October 13 and rose as far as $0.085368, trades at $0.0848 in the afternoon and is therefore 0.28 percent below the previous day. The intraday low of $0.080215 is the level that has been added since; the concentration of fund holdings with two custodians, the subject of October 12, is unchanged.

Over longer horizons it sorts out like this: over seven days Dogecoin is down 11.72 percent, over 30 days it is up 1.64 percent. The distance to the high of $0.731578 from May 2021 is 88.41 percent. The figures come from CoinGecko, as of October 13, 14:44 UTC.

Holding period, buying route and custody in Germany

The index exclusion changes nothing about the legal framework in Germany; it only shifts expectations about inflows. The three points that actually affect your return stay the same.

For tax purposes Dogecoin counts, like other crypto assets, as an other asset. A sale within a year of purchase is a private disposal under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act and is taxed at the personal rate, above the annual exemption limit of 1,000 euros. After a year has passed the gain is tax-free. If you want to use the one-year rule you need unbroken records of the purchase date and purchase price, and that is exactly where most returns come apart. Which tools keep this history is covered in our overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

On the buying route, what counts since MiCA came fully into force is the provider's authorisation. Venues licensed as crypto asset service providers in the European Union are subject to supervisory duties and must keep client holdings segregated. Whether a provider holds that licence is recorded in the register of the competent supervisor. Then there is the cost side: on small amounts, the spread between instant buy and order book is a bigger item than any one day's price move. Which venues work on which terms is broken down in our crypto exchange comparison.

On custody, the situation with Dogecoin is simpler than with many altcoins, because the blockchain knows nothing beyond transfers. A wallet of your own is enough, and it makes you independent of what a fund provider or a trading venue decides. If you want to hold a balance for years, separate it from the trading venue. That applies all the more if a second layer does eventually launch: the bridge to it is an additional trust relationship, and part of your holding need not enter into it.

The editorial team's assessment

Our assessment: the exclusion from the emerging index carries more consequences for Dogecoin than the small number of affected products suggests, but it is also not a verdict on the coin. The facts in this text support that: the criterion Dogecoin fails is the usage filter, and that measures something Dogecoin was never designed to deliver. Against that stands the fact that the filter cannot be argued with. It is a number, it sits close to zero, and the six-month review in December will not change that as long as no main network for applications runs. Anyone holding Dogecoin should therefore not count on institutional inflows via basket products. What remains are the single-asset funds with around $14.9 million in combined assets and a month without a net inflow. That is the picture, and it is measurable.

Dogecoin in the index: the December review decides on inclusion

Three steps make sense now, and none of them depends on the day's price.

1. Check your purchase records for completeness and note the purchase date for every holding, so that you can actually prove the one-year rule under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Which tool keeps the history is shown in our comparison of tax tools.
2. Look up whether your trading venue is licensed as a crypto asset service provider in the EU and what a purchase in the order book costs you there compared with an instant buy. The providers' terms are in the crypto exchange comparison.
3. Separate the part of your holding you want to keep for years from the trading venue and move it into custody of your own. The devices and how they differ are in the hardware wallet comparison.

The next date on the calendar is the first business day in December, when CF Benchmarks reviews the members of both indices. Until then it is not Dogecoin's market capitalisation that decides, but the question of whether anything sits on the blockchain that can be counted as tied-up capital.

(As of October 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Zcash traded at $1,184.90 on October 13, 2026, 8.2 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. The trigger came from the futures market, not from the project itself: after a rally that had carried ZEC to $1,332 on October 12 and left it as the only one of the ten largest coins with a weekly gain, leveraged long positions unwound. A second date is running in the background that many holders have yet to note: on October 20 the developers decide on the activation height of the network upgrade NU7.

This article puts the two together. First the numbers behind the setback and the level that will settle the next few days. Then the NU7 roadmap, what it changes technically, and which part of your balance it actually affects.

Zcash price falls to $1,184.90, down 8.2 percent in 24 hours

The price of Zcash stood at $1,184.90 at 12:57 UTC on October 13, 2026. That is 8.16 percent lower over 24 hours and 14.16 percent lower over seven days. Trading turnover came to $1.05 billion, market capitalisation to $19.35 billion. cryptoticker.io compiled this data itself on October 13, 2026.

The intraday range was wider than the daily close suggests. On the ZEC/USDT pair at Binance, the 24-hour high was $1,315.44 and the low $1,123.43, on turnover of more than 209 million USDT; those figures come from a reading taken by The Crypto Times at 11:15 UTC. High to low is 17 percent, inside a single day.

The level that settles the next few days

The intraday low at $1,123 is the level that counts now. It does not come from a chart pattern: it is the point where selling exhausted itself, and from there the price recovered around 5 percent. Hold above it and the setback stays a correction inside the multi-month uptrend. Break below it and the next tested floor is missing, because the previous zone from September sat markedly lower.

For context on the level: the all-time high for Zcash is $5,941.80, set on October 29, 2016. From today's price that is almost 80 percent away. Anyone who bought ZEC this year is sitting on one of the strongest years among the large coins despite the setback; anyone who bought in 2016 is not.

From weekly gain to weekly loss: the price was still $1,332 on October 12

On October 12 we described here how Zcash stood as the only one of the ten largest coins with a weekly gain, at $1,332 at the time. A day later that sentence no longer holds. From $1,332 to $1,184.90 is 11.0 percent, and over seven days ZEC is now down 14.16 percent. The special status has gone; the year-to-date record has not.

The reasoning has changed too. Last week, ETF speculation and a short-covering wave drove the price; both are forces that work upwards as long as new money keeps arriving. Since Monday the same mechanism has been running the other way. What was a driver yesterday is selling pressure today, and that explains why the setback happened without a single piece of bad news out of the project.

One point from the previous week is unchanged: Winklevoss Asset Services has filed an S-1 for a spot ETF on Zcash, listing venue Nasdaq, custodian Gemini, ticker WINK. Filed is not approved, and an application moves no price once it is a week old. As an explanation for today's move it is therefore out.

Liquidations of $17.4 million to $26 million: how futures amplify the spot price

The Zcash futures market holds around $2.4 billion in open contracts, according to CoinGlass data evaluated by The Crypto Times on October 13. Open interest is the sum of all futures positions not yet closed. For comparison: the entire market capitalisation of Zcash is $19.35 billion. That is one dollar of open futures exposure for every eight dollars of market value, a high reading for a coin of this size.

The number of positions wiped out varies with the moment of measurement. One snapshot put liquidations at around $26 million within 24 hours, a later one at around $17.4 million, in both cases predominantly on the long side. Binance, Bybit and OKX were affected. We give both figures as a range, because the count depends on the window and any single smoothed number implies more precision than the source supports.

The mechanism in three sentences

A leveraged long position posts only a fraction of the position value as collateral. If the price falls far enough that the collateral no longer covers the losses, the exchange sells the position automatically at the market price, regardless of what the holder wants. That forced sale hits the same order book that is already thin, pushes the price a little further and triggers the next position. This chain reaction, not a headline, is what explains days with a 17 percent range.

Two practical conclusions follow. First, a day like this says little about the project and a great deal about positioning. Second, the liquidation price is the only price that really matters for a leveraged position; it is shown in the position overview of the platform concerned and shifts with every margin top-up. If you use leverage, the terms and liquidation rules of the venues are in our comparison of perpetual DEXs; if you do not, skip this section, because nobody who owns their coins outright gets liquidated.

NU7: the activation height is decided on October 20

Alongside the price action, the roadmap for Network Upgrade 7, NU7 for short, is moving ahead; it is the ninth major network upgrade for Zcash. It has been live on the public testnet since October 4, 2026, activated at block height 4,465,026. That does not yet apply to the main network. The project's official upgrade page records a single unambiguous sentence on this: the activation height for NU7 has not yet been set.

An activation height is the block number from which the new rules apply. That height is the actual switch: only with it does a target date become a deadline that exchanges, mining pools and wallet providers can plan around. According to the reports available, this decision is due on October 20, based on the experience from the testnet. November 5 is on the table as the target date for mainnet activation, so far as a plan rather than a commitment.

What that means in practice for the timetable

As long as no height is set, operators on the main network need do nothing, and nothing can go wrong. From the moment it is set, a hard deadline runs: any node not running the new software by that block number follows a different rule set afterwards. October 20 is therefore the more interesting date for holders than November 5. That is when you learn whether the November plan holds or slips.

A second point concerns the software itself. The old zcashd node does not support the expected consensus changes and is being retired; if you run your own node, you move to Zebra, the Rust implementation from the Zcash Foundation. ASIC miners, according to the project, need change nothing themselves, because they do not verify consensus rules and the block header is likely to stay unchanged; responsibility lies with the mining pool they are connected to.

From 75 to 25 seconds: what NU7 changes about the block interval

The most conspicuous change in NU7 is the pace of the blockchain. The target interval between two blocks drops from 75 to 25 seconds, to one third. For users that mostly means one thing: a transfer gets its first confirmation three times faster on average. Exchanges that require a fixed number of confirmations for a deposit will credit balances correspondingly earlier, provided they do not raise their thresholds at the same time.

The other side of the ledger belongs here too. Three times as many blocks mean three times as many block headers for every node to store and transmit. The reward per block falls accordingly, while the payout over time stays the same. For mining pools that shifts the ratio between fixed costs per block and revenue, and smaller pools feel it first. The project also lists mechanisms around fees whose final wording sits in the candidate ZIPs and can still change up to the set activation height.

Sprout pool: legacy ZEC can no longer be spent after activation

This is the point where NU7 turns from a protocol matter into a task for individual holders. Zcash has had several shielded balance pools over the years. The oldest is called Sprout. ZEC still sitting there and not moved before NU7 is fully activated can no longer be spent afterwards. This is about access, not about the price, and only very old holdings are affected.

You are affected if you put ZEC into a shielded address years ago and have not moved it since, typically in an old desktop wallet or a backup on a hard drive. You are not affected if you hold your ZEC at an exchange, keep it in a current wallet with a unified address, or transferred it at some point in recent years. You can recognise such a holding by a receiving address that begins with "zc"; modern shielded Zcash addresses begin with "u" for unified address or with "zs" for the Sapling pool.

Moving it is an ordinary transfer between your own addresses. For tax purposes in Germany it is not a disposal, as long as the coins belong to you before and after; economically nothing happens. Technically it needs wallet software that can still read the old pool, and that is exactly why it is easier before a set activation height than after one.

Shielded pool: 4.97 million of the 16.98 million ZEC sit shielded

Of the roughly 16.98 million ZEC in circulation, around 4.97 million sat in the shielded pools at the time of the evaluation, about 29 percent. The maximum supply is 21 million ZEC. That share is the most important metric for Zcash alongside the price, because shielded balances are the actual purpose of the project: amount, sender and recipient stay hidden there, while with a transparent address they sit publicly in the blockchain.

The share matters for reading the price for a sober reason. Shielded holdings mostly sit in self-custody rather than on exchanges, so they are not short-term selling supply. If the shielded share rises, it narrows the tradable float; if it falls, material moves towards the venues. No forecast follows from that, but it does explain why Zcash reacts so sharply in both directions.

What self-custody means here in concrete terms

If you want to hold larger ZEC balances through the transition, separate two things: the trading balance and the long-term balance. The trading balance sits where you buy and sell. The long-term balance sits on a device whose keys you hold yourself, with a recovery phrase secured on paper. Check a device's support for shielded addresses before you buy it, because practically every device handles transparent addresses and not every one handles shielded ones.

Holding period and the tax office: one year separates tax-free from taxable

For investors in Germany the setback is a tax matter too, because the rally of recent months leaves many positions deep in profit. Gains from the sale of crypto assets count as private disposals under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain stays tax-free. Below that it counts as income and is taxed at the personal rate, above the annual exemption limit of 1,000 euros for the total of all private disposals.

That produces a calculation with nothing to do with the price chart. Someone who bought ZEC eleven months ago and sells now pays tax on the full gain. Someone who waits a month pays nothing. On a holding that is up three figures this year, that difference is larger than any single week of price movement. What counts is the acquisition date of each individual tranche, not the average of the portfolio. Tools that track the deadlines per tranche and produce a report for the tax return take that bookkeeping off your hands, and our crypto tax software comparison lists them.

Two traps belong with this. First: swapping ZEC into another coin is a disposal and restarts the clock for the new coin. Second: moving between your own addresses, for example out of the Sprout pool, is not a disposal, but it should still be documented so the acquisition date remains traceable later. For larger amounts a tax adviser settles this, not an article.

Zcash against the market: rank ten, $19.35 billion market value

Zcash stood at rank ten among the largest crypto assets by market value on October 13, 2026, at $19.35 billion. The 8.16 percent setback that day was markedly sharper than the market as a whole: Bitcoin was up 0.61 percent, Ether down 1.27 percent. The gap is there over seven days too, 14.16 percent for ZEC against 3.67 percent for Bitcoin. cryptoticker.io compiled this data itself on October 13, 2026.

The pattern fits the explanation from the futures market. A coin with high open interest relative to its market value moves more than the market in both directions, because the same inflow and outflow meets a smaller order book. Last week Zcash was the winner of that leverage effect, this week its loser. For a holder that says less about Zcash than about the size of position they can stomach.

Our assessment: the futures market weighs more than October 20

In the editorial team's view, October 20 is a date for operators and only secondarily a price event. The evidence: the official upgrade page names no activation height to this day, the November 5 target is a plan and not a commitment, and the change itself concerns the block interval, a parameter that takes no ZEC away from anyone and adds none. Against that stands open interest of $2.4 billion on a market value of $19.35 billion; that ratio produced a 17 percent range in a single day on October 13, with no headline required.

The case against: if the target date slips noticeably at the October 20 decision, that would be the first real disappointment in a story that has run on expectation for months, and then the date would indeed land in the price. And the one group for whom the roadmap counts regardless of the price are holders of old Sprout balances: for them it is a deadline with loss of access at the end, and that does not wait for a price recovery. Neither case contains a recommendation to buy or sell; with crypto assets a total loss is possible.

Zcash before October 20: without a height the date stays a plan

1. Check legacy holdings before a height is set. Open old Zcash wallets and backups and look for shielded balances from the Sprout era. If you find something, move it into a current address. A device that handles shielded addresses is in our hardware wallet comparison.
2. Establish the acquisition date per tranche. Note for each ZEC position when you bought it, and mark the tranches that reach the twelve-month threshold in the coming months. Crypto tax tools track these deadlines automatically.
3. Measure leveraged positions against $1,123. Compare your liquidation price with the intraday low of October 13. If it sits above, the position is due on a second slide like today's. The terms of the venues are in the perpetual DEX comparison.

(As of October 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

A Bored Ape costs less today than it has in years. On October 13, 2026 the lowest asking price for the famous ape collection stood at 5.12 ETH, just under $12,900. In May 2022 it was 153.7 ETH. That is a fall of 97 percent, and the Bored Apes are no exception: almost all the large NFT collections on Ethereum sit far below their records, and several have lost another two thirds over the past year.

The timing is notable. On Saturday Yuga Labs celebrates ApeFest in Charleston; at the same time Blur, once the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum, is announcing its closure, and Igloo, the company behind Pudgy Penguins, is shutting down its own blockchain Abstract. We queried the prices of the eight best-known collections at CoinGecko and show who is holding up, who is falling and what lies behind the decline.

NFT prices in October 2026: the large collections at a glance

What we measured is the so-called floor price, meaning the lowest price at which an NFT from the collection is currently offered. It is the usual yardstick for the value of a collection, because it shows what entry costs at a minimum. Retrieved on October 13, 2026 between 16:11 and 16:13 CEST through the interface of CoinGecko; the dollar values follow the ether price at that moment.

The column on the far right measures the price in ETH, not in dollars. That matters, because ether itself has fallen too: in dollar terms a Bored Ape has lost around 59 percent over twelve months, in ETH terms 32 percent. Anyone who paid for their apes in ether is therefore better off than someone counting in dollars or euros.

CryptoPunks hold up, Pudgy Penguins and Moonbirds fall furthest

The most stable are the CryptoPunks. At 31.29 ETH, just under $79,000, they sit 75 percent below their record from August 2021, markedly less than all the others. The punks of 2017 are among the oldest NFT collections on Ethereum, and many holders will not part with them. That supports the price, but it also makes the market thin: on the day of our query, punks worth a mere 70 ETH changed hands.

The younger favourites were hit hardest over the past year. Pudgy Penguins cost 36.33 ETH at their December 2024 peak. Today it is 2.19 ETH, down 72 percent in twelve months alone. Contributing to that were the end of the mobile game Pudgy Party in June and the news of October 6 that Igloo is switching off its blockchain Abstract on December 15. What holders there have to do now is set out in our guide to withdrawing funds from Abstract, and the consequences for the PENGU token in our PENGU price prediction.

Moonbirds and Doodles stand 99 percent below their records from the spring of 2022. A Moonbird cost around $930 on October 13, a Doodle around $550. For both, only a handful of NFTs changed hands on the day of our query, together not even 13 ETH.

Why NFT prices are falling: less trading, fewer marketplaces

The most important reason is simply absent demand. Nowhere is that clearer than at Blur. In 2023 the marketplace had overtaken incumbent OpenSea with zero fees and rewards in its BLUR token. According to CoinDesk, monthly trading volume fell from around $1.43 billion in March 2023 to less than $7 million in March 2026, a decline of more than 99.5 percent. On October 12 Blur announced it would close the website on November 12; the Blend lending product will then arrange no new loans. Everything on that is in our article Blur closes on November 12.

On top of that, the speculation has moved on. Anyone betting on ape pictures in 2021 is more likely today to be buying memecoins or trading with leverage. NFTs have become a market for collectors who genuinely want to own a collection. That fits with the restructuring at the big houses: Yuga Labs is concentrating on Bored Apes and the game world Otherside, and Igloo, after the end of Abstract, entirely on Pudgy Penguins. Which marketplaces still have trading worth mentioning after Blur's retreat is shown in our overview NFT marketplaces in 2026: who still trades.

ApeFest 2026: a ticket for 0.74 ETH

The low prices have an unusual side effect around ApeFest on October 17 in Charleston. Admission goes to anyone holding a Bored Ape or a Mutant Ape, with one ticket per NFT. A Mutant Ape cost just 0.74 ETH on October 13, around $1,860. A Yuga-adjacent post of October 11 even advertises that buyers from this week will get their ticket free of charge. Why hardly anyone from the German community is flying over all the same is written up in our article ApeFest 2026 in Charleston.

Buying an NFT at a low price: what matters

Low prices do not mean things cannot go lower still. An NFT produces no income; its price depends solely on whether somebody else will pay it later. Anyone who still wants to buy should know four points:

1. Check the trading: the lowest asking price is of little use if there is barely any trading. Bored Apes and Pudgy Penguins each came to more than 200 ETH of turnover on the day of our query, Moonbirds to less than 4 ETH. In thin trading a sale can take weeks.
2. Compare the fees: marketplaces charge different fees, on top of which come creator royalties and the network fee. Which platform costs what is shown in our NFT marketplace comparison.
3. Clear out approvals: in September, attackers exploited old marketplace approvals connected with the Limit Break Payment Processor to drain NFTs. Anyone who used to trade on several marketplaces should revoke approvals they no longer need before their next purchase.
4. Store them securely: valuable NFTs belong on a wallet whose keys have never been online, meaning a hardware wallet, ideally bought directly from the manufacturer. Why the purchase route matters is shown by the current case in which MediaMarkt and Saturn stopped selling Ledger devices; which devices exist is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

For tax purposes there is no separate rule from the German authorities for NFTs. In practice tax advisers mostly treat sales like other private disposals under section 23 of the Income Tax Act: gains within one year of purchase are taxable, and after that as a rule tax free. This is not tax advice. Anyone with many purchases and sales gets to a clean statement faster with a crypto tax tool.

NFT prices in October 2026: what to take away

The NFT market in the autumn of 2026 is as cheap as it has been in years. Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Azuki, Doodles and Moonbirds sit 97 to 99 percent below their records, Pudgy Penguins have lost almost three quarters in a year, and only the CryptoPunks are holding up comparatively well. At the same time the number of marketplaces is shrinking: Blur closes on November 12, Abstract on December 15. For collectors that is an opportunity, for speculators a warning sign. We will keep this overview going and update the prices at the turn of the month.

Binance will discontinue Binance Pool, Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, and other related services in a retreat from mining infrastructure.

A wallet that received 4,581 BTC in March 2020, worth about $40 million then, moved its stash today when it was worth about $377 million.

The Nasdaq-listed asset manager bought the Bitcoin at an average of about $84,500 during a rough week for the market, lifting its total stash to 32,773 BTC.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says many AI researchers have taken up smoking to signal their faith in AI.

Bitcoin dipped below $81,000 before buyers stepped in, but the Fear and Greed Index says traders aren't convinced yet.

Ripple has partnered with Stripe-owned Privy to bring AI-powered payments to the XRP Ledger, expanding its push into agentic commerce.

Hardware wallet giant Trezor is severing ties with a significant portion of its authorized resellers following the massive Ledger supply-chain security scare, introducing stricter controls to protect customers from potential attacks.

SEC report exposes who really owns Nasdaq's new XRP stock, revealing massive stakes held by Chris Larsen, Ripple, and SBI Holdings.

Tesla still boasts nearly a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin years after Elon Musk directed the electric vehicle maker to invest $1.5 billion in the leading crypto asset.

Ripple has minted another 19.6 million RLUSD on Ethereum amid heightened treasury activity, with the latest transactions coinciding with a major institutional custody breakthrough.

TLDR

• Walmart stock gains 0.25% as AI chatbot recommendations boost retail visibility.
• UBS research shows Walmart leads AI shopping suggestions for everyday products.
• Gartner finds 34% of US consumers willing to use AI for holiday gift shopping.
• Walmart’s strong retail presence supports its position in AI shopping results.
• High stock valuation remains a challenge despite new AI-driven growth prospects.

Walmart Inc. rose 0.25% to $113.36 during Tuesday’s intraday trading, gaining $0.28 as shares advanced modestly. The increase came as UBS research highlighted Walmart’s strong position in artificial intelligence-powered shopping recommendations. Analysts identified the retailer as a frequent recommendation across AI chatbots, creating another potential channel for attracting customers.

Walmart Inc., WMT

UBS Research Highlights Walmart’s Strength in AI Shopping

UBS analysts examined how leading AI chatbots recommend retailers when consumers search for everyday products and shopping advice. The research covered several shopping categories, including groceries, household supplies, and other essential consumer goods. Results showed Walmart frequently appeared among the leading recommendations, reflecting its established retail presence and competitive pricing.

The analysts tested 12 shopping questions across New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota to evaluate different recommendation patterns. They examined responses from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Muse to identify which retailers appeared most frequently. Walmart performed strongly across multiple categories, while Costco and Aldi also gained recognition for their respective retail strengths.

The findings highlight how artificial intelligence could influence where consumers begin their shopping journeys. Chatbots help users compare products, identify retailers, and narrow purchasing decisions without reviewing multiple websites. Walmart could attract additional customer interest as more households incorporate these tools into everyday shopping activities.

Gartner Survey Shows Growing Demand for AI Shopping Tools

A Gartner survey found that 34% of American consumers expressed strong willingness to use AI for holiday gift recommendations. Researchers surveyed 1,004 consumers in August 2026 to examine changing shopping habits ahead of the holiday season. The findings indicate growing acceptance of automated product suggestions, particularly among consumers seeking faster purchasing decisions.

Traditional shopping channels continue playing a central role despite increasing interest in artificial intelligence. Gartner found that 77% of respondents planned to shop in physical stores during the holiday period. Additionally, 75% expected to purchase products through Amazon, highlighting continued demand for established retail platforms.

Walmart’s extensive store network gives the company an established position across both physical and online retail markets. Its product selection covers groceries, electronics, clothing, household goods, and other frequently purchased consumer products. Customers can combine online searches with store visits, pickup services, and home delivery options.

Walmart Stock Valuation Remains a Key Growth Challenge

Despite the potential benefits of AI recommendations, Walmart shares have delivered relatively modest gains during 2026. The stock has advanced approximately 2% this year, trailing the broader market despite the company’s established retail operations. Its valuation exceeds 40 times trailing earnings, placing greater emphasis on future revenue and profit growth.

Walmart generated more than $730 billion in revenue over the preceding 12 months, reflecting its substantial operating scale. However, that size also means incremental sales from AI referrals may produce limited changes in overall growth. The company would need significant additional spending from customers to produce a meaningful improvement in its revenue trajectory.

Walmart continues developing its digital operations while maintaining its position in the competitive US retail market. Its broad product selection and established reputation for affordable goods support its visibility across emerging shopping platforms. The UBS findings identify another potential source of customer traffic, although they do not establish additional sales or earnings.

The post Walmart Inc. (WMT) Stock: AI Chatbot Recommendations Fuel Growth Potential appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• UnitedHealth stock rises 0.25% as management outlines stronger growth for 2027.
• UnitedHealth raises its 2026 earnings forecast following stronger Q3 results.
• Management targets 13% to 16% long-term earnings growth as operations improve.
• AI tools reduce clinical review times by 33% as UnitedHealth cuts paperwork.
• Optum expands pharmacy services while Medicare and Medicaid reforms advance.

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) rose 0.25% to $379.47 on Tuesday following its third-quarter 2026 earnings announcement. The healthcare company raised its annual earnings outlook and outlined plans for stronger financial performance in 2027. Management emphasized operational improvements, artificial intelligence adoption, and medical cost controls as major drivers of future growth.

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, UNH

UnitedHealth Group Raises Earnings Outlook After Strong Q3 Performance

UnitedHealth Group reported third-quarter revenue of $112.7 billion, while operating earnings reached $6.6 billion during the reporting period. Adjusted earnings reached $4.69 per share, exceeding Wall Street expectations as the company improved its cost management. Management raised its full-year 2026 adjusted earnings guidance to at least $20.50 per share.

The company also reduced its medical care ratio to 88.4%, compared with 89.9% a year earlier. Management attributed the improvement to pricing discipline, benefit adjustments, and stronger coordination across its healthcare operations. Specialty pharmacy expenses and higher treatment intensity continued to pressure medical spending across several business segments.

UnitedHealth expanded its operational modernization efforts across UnitedHealthcare and Optum to improve service delivery and efficiency. Approximately 40% of employed clinicians now use AI-powered documentation tools, reducing medical record review times by 33%. The company plans to eliminate 30% of prior authorization requirements by year-end to simplify patient access.

Management Targets Stronger Earnings Growth in 2027

UnitedHealth management expressed confidence in reaching the lower end of its long-term adjusted earnings growth target for 2027. The company maintains a growth framework of 13% to 16%, supported by stronger execution and operational improvements. Chief Financial Officer Wayne DeVeydt also indicated that current analyst earnings estimates may underestimate the company’s recovery potential.

The company’s Medicare Advantage strategy prioritizes health maintenance organizations and specialized plans serving patients with complex medical needs. These offerings include Chronic Special Needs Plans and Dual Special Needs Plans, which support targeted healthcare management. UnitedHealth expects its quality improvement programs to strengthen its competitive position across government-sponsored insurance markets.

Management also expects Optum Insight to advance its technology offerings through new AI-focused products during 2027. The company anticipates further expansion in 2028 as these services gain commercial traction across healthcare organizations. Optum Rx continues developing transparent pharmacy services, with external customers accounting for more than half its membership.

Medical Costs and Regulatory Reforms Shape Recovery

Despite improving operating performance, UnitedHealth continues managing medical expenses and regulatory requirements across its insurance businesses. Medicaid margins remain under pressure, although management expects them to reach their lowest point during 2026. The company targets stronger profitability by 2028 through reimbursement negotiations and improved care for patients with complex needs.

Management identified the No Surprises Act arbitration process as another source of elevated healthcare costs. The company reported that related disputes account for up to 6% of medical spending in certain regions. Consequently, UnitedHealth continues advocating regulatory changes while improving its internal claims management and payment processes.

UnitedHealth also expects 75% of its Medicare Advantage membership to enter plans with ratings of four stars or higher. The target applies to 2028 ratings and reflects continued spending on service quality and patient outcomes. Separately, the United Health Foundation committed $1 billion toward rural healthcare, workforce education, and broader community health programs.

Management expects fourth-quarter performance to reflect seasonal medical spending alongside additional investments in technology and clinical operations. The company will continue expanding administrative automation while strengthening its healthcare delivery network and insurance offerings. These initiatives form part of UnitedHealth’s broader plan to improve operating margins and support earnings growth beyond 2026.

The post UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) Stock: Climbs as Management Targets Strong 2027 Growth appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Applied Materials (AMAT) stock plunges 8.19% despite strong demand for AI chips.

• Applied Materials targets over two percentage points of market share gains by 2030.

• Applied Materials expects its eBeam equipment revenue to reach $2 billion in 2026.

• Applied Materials projects semiconductor service revenue above $12 billion by 2030.

• Applied Materials plans to more than double its research and production capacity by 2030.

Applied Materials (AMAT) stock plunged 8.19% to $456.77 during Tuesday’s intraday trading, losing $40.76 despite strong demand for AI chips. The decline followed the company’s presentation of ambitious semiconductor equipment growth targets through 2030. Meanwhile, Applied Materials outlined expansion plans across advanced manufacturing, research facilities, and semiconductor services.

Applied Materials, Inc., AMAT

Applied Materials Targets Stronger Growth in AI Chip Equipment

Applied Materials presented its long-term growth strategy during the 2026 SEMICON West Investor Breakfast on Tuesday. The company expects expanding AI infrastructure to support sustained demand for wafer fabrication equipment. Its strategy focuses on advanced chip production, memory technology, and semiconductor packaging.

CEO Gary Dickerson identified AI infrastructure development as a major driver of future semiconductor equipment spending. He emphasized the company’s leadership in technologies that improve computing performance, energy efficiency, and production costs. Applied Materials expects broader AI adoption to increase demand for advanced silicon manufacturing.

The company projects three semiconductor segments will generate approximately 75% of wafer fabrication equipment growth between 2025 and 2030. These segments include leading-edge foundry logic, DRAM memory, and advanced packaging technologies. Applied Materials aims to increase its equipment market share by more than two percentage points during this period.

Applied Materials Expands Semiconductor Services and eBeam Technology

Applied Materials expects its electron-beam inspection equipment business to generate $2 billion in revenue during calendar 2026. The technology helps semiconductor manufacturers identify production defects and improve yields during advanced chip manufacturing. Additionally, its imaging systems support faster production processes and more efficient factory operations.

The company also expects its semiconductor services revenue to increase more than 20% during 2026. Management projects annual services revenue will exceed $12 billion by 2030, supported by a mid-teens compound growth rate. These services help semiconductor manufacturers improve equipment performance, factory productivity, and manufacturing efficiency.

Chief Financial Officer Brice Hill outlined plans to strengthen profitability while expanding research and development spending. According to Hill, previous technology investments have established the company’s position across important semiconductor manufacturing processes. The company now plans to increase operating leverage as semiconductor equipment demand expands.

Applied Materials Plans Major Manufacturing Expansion Through 2030

Applied Materials plans to more than double its research laboratory and manufacturing capacity by 2030. The expansion supports expected growth in semiconductor production and demand for advanced manufacturing equipment. The company continues investing in facilities that support collaboration with semiconductor manufacturers.

On Monday, Applied Materials unveiled its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization Center in Silicon Valley. The new facility supports joint research into semiconductor process technology and equipment development. The company has already announced 15 partnerships involving chipmakers, technology companies, equipment manufacturers, and universities.

Applied Materials has also expanded its manufacturing infrastructure across several international locations. These facilities include operations in Austin, Texas, Singapore, and Treviso, Italy. The investments support the company’s long-term production strategy as semiconductor manufacturers expand capacity for increasingly complex computing applications.

The post Applied Materials (AMAT) Stock: Sinks 8% Despite Strong AI Chip Demand appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• BigBear.ai (BBAI) stock climbs 3.83% as new government awards surpass $225M.
• BigBear.ai secures over 25 generative AI awards across major U.S. agencies.
• FBI, NASA, and the Coast Guard join BigBear.ai’s growing government client base.
• BigBear.ai expands defense operations with new military and intelligence awards.
• BigBear.ai reports a $270M backlog, with only 29% funded as of June 30, 2026.

BigBear.ai Holdings (BBAI) stock rose 3.83% to $2.3877 during Tuesday’s intraday trading, gaining $0.0877. Shares stabilized after an early surge above $2.50, following developments in the company’s government business. BigBear.ai announced more than $225 million in awards across several U.S. agencies since July.

BigBear.ai Holdings, Inc., BBAI

BigBear.ai Secures $225 Million in New Awards

BigBear.ai reported new business and renewals across homeland security, defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies. The agreements support its expansion in national security, trade, and travel technology markets. The latest wins also strengthen its relationships with existing customers while expanding its government presence.

According to the announcement, BigBear.ai secured more than 25 new generative AI awards. Customers include the FBI, NASA, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Energy, and Department of Veterans Affairs. These projects cover specialized technology services for law enforcement, security operations, and civilian applications.

CEO Kevin McAleenan identified customer retention and new agency relationships as major drivers of the company’s recent activity. He highlighted continued work with Customs and Border Protection alongside new partnerships with security organizations. The developments reflect broader adoption of advanced technology across government operations.

BigBear.ai Expands Defense and Intelligence Operations

BigBear.ai also secured agreements supporting U.S. Central Command, U.S. Southern Command, and classified intelligence operations. These projects extend its services into additional military and intelligence environments. Meanwhile, demand for secure AI platforms continues to shape the company’s product offerings.

Its generative AI products provide access to models and automated tools from leading technology providers. Government teams can select available systems according to their operational requirements and security standards. The platforms also support disconnected networks and restricted environments that require tighter data controls.

BigBear.ai retained important work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection through two competitive renewals. The company supports border operations involving traveler screening, cargo movement, and customs security. Its technology helps personnel assess shipments, process information, and make operational decisions.

BigBear.ai Reports $270 Million Backlog

BigBear.ai reported approximately $270 million in total backlog as of June 30, 2026. The company identified only 29% of that amount as funded at the reporting date. This distinction separates secured financial commitments from the broader value of outstanding business.

The announced $225 million includes potential award values, unexercised options, and maximum contract limits. Consequently, actual revenue will depend on government funding decisions, project execution, and exercised options. Agencies also retain the authority to modify agreements, reduce spending, or terminate work.

The post BigBear.ai Holdings (BBAI) Stock: Gains on $225M Federal AI Contract Wins appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Goldman Sachs (GS) stock rises 0.27% as Q3 revenue jumps 23% to $18.68 billion.
• Goldman Sachs reports $5.29 billion in Q3 profit as earnings reach $17.01 per share.
• Equities revenue surges 72% as stronger financing and derivatives lift results.
• Investment banking fees climb 21% as mergers and underwriting activity rebound.
• Goldman Sachs returns $4.49 billion to shareholders and declares a $5 dividend.

Goldman Sachs Group (GS) stock rose 0.27% to $896.36 during Tuesday’s intraday trading, gaining $2.41 after retreating from earlier highs. The bank reported third-quarter revenue growth of 23% to $18.68 billion, driven by stronger trading and investment banking activity. Meanwhile, net earnings reached $5.29 billion as its major business divisions delivered improved annual results.

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., GS

Goldman Sachs Reports Strong Q3 Earnings Growth

Goldman Sachs reported diluted earnings per share of $17.01, up from $12.25 during the same quarter last year. However, earnings declined sequentially from $20.98 per share in the second quarter. The bank recorded an annualized return on average common shareholders’ equity of 18.7%.

For the first nine months of 2026, the company generated $56.24 billion in revenue and $17.55 billion in earnings. Its book value per common share also increased 4.2% during the period to $372.64. These results reflected stronger banking operations and improved profitability compared with 2025.

Operating expenses increased 20% annually to $11.31 billion, primarily due to higher transaction costs and employee compensation. Meanwhile, provisions for credit losses reached $368 million, reflecting impairments related to wholesale loans. Despite these costs, the bank improved its nine-month efficiency ratio to 59.4% from 62.1%.

Investment Banking and Equities Support Revenue Growth

Global Banking & Markets generated $13.46 billion in quarterly revenue, representing a 32% increase from the previous year. Investment banking fees climbed 21%, supported by higher completed merger transactions and increased underwriting activity. Stronger initial public offerings and secondary share sales also contributed to the division’s performance.

Equities revenue surged 72% annually, supported by stronger financing operations and derivatives trading. Meanwhile, fixed income, currency, and commodities revenue remained largely unchanged despite mixed performance across trading products. Higher currencies and commodities revenue helped offset weaker mortgage, credit, and interest rate activity.

Asset & Wealth Management revenue increased 14% from the previous year, supported by higher management and incentive fees. Increased average assets under supervision contributed to stronger recurring fee income during the quarter. However, weaker investment returns and private banking revenue partly offset the division’s growth.

Goldman Sachs Announces Dividend and Capital Returns

Goldman Sachs declared a quarterly dividend of $5.00 per common share on October 12, 2026. The company scheduled payment for December 30 to shareholders of record on December 2. The announcement followed continued capital distributions through dividends and share repurchases.

During the third quarter, the bank returned $4.49 billion to common shareholders through its capital return program. Share repurchases accounted for $3 billion, while common stock dividends represented the remaining $1.49 billion. The company also maintained its shareholder payout strategy alongside increased investment banking activity.

Meanwhile, average global core liquid assets increased to $574 billion from $555 billion in the previous quarter. Headcount also rose 3% sequentially, reflecting the timing of new graduate recruitment. However, the investment banking backlog declined from the second quarter despite stronger completed transactions.

The post Goldman Sachs Group (GS) Stock: Gains as Q3 Revenue Jumps 23% and Profit Hits $5.29B appeared first on Blockonomi.

The SHIB Army, the collective term for Shiba Inu holders, supporters, traders, and enthusiasts, has once again found itself in the crosshairs of scammers.

Such schemes can lead to painful losses, so here’s how users can protect themselves.

‘This is a Drainer’

Recently, an X account falsely claimed a Shiba Inu airdrop was “back,” telling users they were eligible for the dubious campaign after they completed a supposed wallet verification check. The mysterious person or entity also provided a link, but people should not click it, as it was flagged as a scam.

Long-time Shiba Inu community member Marzael.shib warned that no such token distribution exists, calling the development “a drainer.”  “They are flooding the timeline; recommend not clicking and report,” they added.

The X account BSCN also sounded the alarm on the matter. The team said the real danger comes when users connect their wallets and sign malicious approvals.

“Those permissions can allow scammers to transfer tokens without stealing a victim’s password,” the warning reads.

The popular meme coin boasts a vast and devoted community, making it a frequent target for scammers. Earlier this year, Shibarium Trustwatch (an X account dedicated to warning Shiba Inu users about potential threats) warned about numerous fraud attempts involving the SOU NFT.

Its team clarified that users will never receive the non-fungible token in question, and that eligible users can claim it only through Shiba Inu’s official website.

“Do not click on shared, shortened, or copied links. Scammers often create fake websites that look identical to the real one in order to steal funds. Always type the official address directly into your browser and verify you are on the correct domain before connecting your wallet. Never share your private keys or seed phrase with anyone under any circumstances,” it added.

Prior to that, the same X account warned that bad actors created a malicious website impersonating Shiba Inu’s official platform. The fake site includes “special” promotions and false claims of collaborations and presale bonuses, designed to lure people into connecting their wallets.

SHIB Price Outlook

The meme coin’s price has plunged by nearly 12% over the past week. However, the main reason for the drop appears to be the overall decline in the cryptocurrency market during that period, not the scam warning that could have spread panic across the community.

As of this writing, SHIB trades around $0.000005163 (per CoinGecko), down 95% from its late-2021 all-time high. Analysts have been relatively silent on the token lately, yet certain technical indicators may help traders identify the next potential move.

Today (October 13), Shiba Inu coins stored on crypto exchanges fell to a near one-month low of roughly 87.2 trillion. This can be interpreted as a bullish signal since it reduces immediate selling pressure.

The post Critical Shiba Inu (SHIB) Warning: Here’s the Latest Threat appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Blur will shut down its frontend on November 12, 2026. But the NFT marketplace won’t disappear. Its protocol will keep running on-chain, and the BLUR token will still control the fee switch.

The same date also marks a change for Blend, Blur’s lending platform. It will stop matching new loans, giving borrowers until then to repay or risk default. Users who still have assets on Blend will get a withdrawal tool after the deadline, according to the announcement.

What Happened to Blur?

Blur raised $11 million in seed funding in March 2022 and emerged as a major rival to OpenSea, targeting professional NFT traders. After launching in October, it attracted users with zero marketplace fees, bulk trading tools, and token rewards. Its BLUR token launch in February 2023 brought a wave of activity, while Blend later expanded Blur into NFT-backed lending. By December 2023, it commanded 80% of the NFT market’s share.

Blur still maintained its lead in Q1 2024 after recording $1.5 billion in volume. However, falling NFT activity and declining lending demand gradually weakened its position. By 2025, OpenSea was recovering market share, while Blend went in the opposite direction. In April 2026, KuCoin removed BLUR cross-margin trading. Two months later, Binance placed the token under its “Monitoring Tag.”

Shutdowns in 2026

2026 has seen several crypto and Web3 platforms announce shutdowns or wind-downs. NFT platform Nifty Gateway and social collecting app Rodeo announced plans to wind down, while Foundation announced its closure in April after a sale fell through. Meanwhile, Blur’s news comes less than a fortnight after Blast announced it would close on October 2.

Interestingly, both projects were created by Blur founder Tieshun Roquerre, better known as Pacman, and developed by the same team. Blast, an Ethereum scaling network, also revealed it was ceasing operations just over two years after launch. It said that “the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense.” Activity on the network had faded, which left it unable to cover its running costs.

The post Blur Is Pulling the Plug on Its Frontend, but the On-Chain Protocol Lives On appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The November 2024 election, which saw Donald Trump become America’s 47th president, triggered a major cryptocurrency rally. After all, the Republican presented himself as a strong supporter of the industry throughout his campaign, promising to make the USA a global crypto hub, promote innovation, establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, ban the creation of a CBDC, and implement a more favorable regulatory framework for digital assets.

During his nearly two years in office, he fulfilled several promises, but other decisions have increased geopolitical tensions and negatively affected financial and crypto markets. With that in mind, we asked three of the most widely used AI-powered chatbots to assess how Bitcoin might react if the Republicans lose the midterms next month. Here’s what they had to say.

Pullback on the Way?

According to ChatGPT, if Republicans lose control of Congress (especially both chambers), BTC could face short-term selling pressure. Specifically, OpenAI’s platform expects a 5-10% drop immediately after the potential news, while a 15% fall was described as “a stress scenario.”

At the same time, ChatGPT said this would not mark the start of a new bear market and would likely be followed by a substantial rebound. It also claimed that if the result is already priced in, BTC might barely move south.

The latest polls suggest Democrats have the upper hand ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. Prediction market Kalshi, for instance, currently assigns Republicans less than a 30% chance of winning Congress despite Trump’s promises for a $5,000 payment if they maintain control.

Perplexity shared a similar view, expecting that a possible loss for Trump’s party could lead to a short-term correction in Bitcoin and not automatically trigger a crypto crash.

Meanwhile, the chatbot warned that a collapse is not completely out of the question and may occur only if election results align with falling ETF inflows, higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve, or a major deleveraging event.

Google’s Gemini agreed with the thesis, estimating that a short-term correction after a Democratic midterm victory is a realistic possibility.

“However, unless accompanied by a major macroeconomic shock (like hawkish Federal Reserve pivots or liquidity contractions), such a pullback would represent a temporary price adjustment rather than a fundamental trend reversal,” it added.

The Historical Data

Not long ago, popular analyst Ali Martinez noted that the US midterm elections have historically preceded a major drop in Bitcoin’s price. He reminded that after the 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 elections, the cryptocurrency fell 72%, 65%, 52%, and 27%, respectively.

At the same time, Martinez doesn’t think this could stop BTC’s overall bullish move, viewing a potential drop after the elections as a perfect buying opportunity.

The post What Will Happen to BTC if Trump Loses the US Midterms? (3 AIs Analyze) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Jameson Lopp has argued that no type of Bitcoin loss is solved by handing the asset to a third party.

It led to a spat with analyst Willy Woo and other X users over whether professional custodians are safer in practice than individuals holding their own keys.

A Custody Argument Plays Out on X

In a post on the social platform, Lopp took aim at the claim that an ETF removes the worry of losing BTC.

“There is objectively NO type of loss that can be solved by giving your bitcoin to a third party,” he wrote. “Third party custody is exposed to every self custody risk PLUS MORE!”

A user named Dima conceded that custodians carry every individual risk plus counterparty risk, but countered that most people are undone by their own mistakes, such as lost seed phrases and phished wallets. Furthermore, some ETF custodians now offer bankruptcy-remote segregation, meaning customer assets are kept apart from the firm’s own, which exchanges once lacked.

Lopp rejected the idea that most people can’t self-custody, suggesting they just aren’t willing to put in the effort, and said that segregation “doesn’t do jack if the underlying asset is lost.” He used his firm, Casa, as an example, noting that it has many older clients and consultants who do the work for them.

Woo then posted the numbers: 1.57 million BTC lost through self-custody, 1.51 million on exchanges and none through custodians of spot ETFs. The figures came from a December 2025 report by River. A modern regulated custodian, he wrote, does a better job than “moms and pops at home.”

The security advocate replied that ETFs haven’t existed long enough to suffer a catastrophe, and that nearly all of them use the same custodian. He then asked if Woo would rather have risk spread across thousands or millions of amateur custodians, or concentrated with one professional.

Coinbase Custody, which most spot ETFs use, has gone more than eight years without losing coins, Woo pointed out, while self-custody lost 136,000 BTC and exchanges 13,000 BTC in that time. He called the choice a false one: a person’s own self-custody and a professional custodian each depend on a single party doing its job, and the custodian wins because of lower risk of physical coercion through acts like wrench attacks.

Coinbase’s Record Is Contested

Lopp’s next reply called the never-lost-coins claim one that “seems to be in dispute,” pointing to Ari Paul’s recent allegation against Coinbase.

As CryptoPotato reported in September, the BlockTower Capital founder posted on X that Coinbase had “lost” $25 million belonging to his firm years ago and later alleged that it had covered up repeated hacks, affecting at least a dozen other firms and more than $1 billion.

However, Paul’s claims are unproven, and he says multiple legal processes regarding it are ongoing. Coinbase Support also replied under his post that it had messaged him directly to look into the issue.

The post Do Bitcoin ETFs Remove Custody Risk? Analysts Disagree appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After ending September with massive gains, Cardano appears to be struggling again, losing almost 12% in the past week alone.

But new data suggests that it could face more downside pressure as whale selling and weaker network activity raise concerns about its price outlook.

ADA Price at Risk?

According to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, large holders have sold more than 110 million ADA over the past five days. This adds selling pressure as the token approaches a key support level. To top that, network activity is also slowing. Daily active addresses have dropped 41.36%, after falling from 27,248 to 15,977. The decline indicates fewer users are interacting with the Cardano network.

All eyes are on the $0.24 support level. Martinez believes that a break below it could push ADA toward $0.21, near the lower boundary of its rising channel.

Despite the drop in daily active addresses, Cardano recently set a new transaction record for the first time in five years. During Epoch 660, the network handled 1,780,896 transactions, beating its previous high of 1,566,974 from November 2021. That works out to an average of 83.83 transactions per block, which is a new all-time high for the network.

While short-term signals exhibited a mixed picture, Crypto Patel is sticking to a much more optimistic view of ADA. The analyst believes Cardano could still have plenty of room to run. The analyst is now watching $0.2887, a level the crypto asset needs to close above on the two-week chart to confirm the breakout. If that happens, ADA’s rally could extend toward $0.50, $1, $2, $3, and eventually $5.

Other Developments

Beyond its price action, the ecosystem has seen a couple of notable developments. The Cardano Foundation rolled out CIP-0113, a new token standard for regulated assets last week. It lets issuers set rules on who can hold their tokens and freeze or seize holdings when required. The move could make it easier for banks and fund managers to bring assets like bonds and funds onto Cardano.

Additionally, the foundation’s digital identity project, Veridian, has become an independent Swiss company. It has also tokenized its shares on Cardano and plans to build identity tools for businesses, governments, and AI agents.

The post Cardano Under Pressure: Falling Network Activity Adds to ADA Selling Concerns appeared first on CryptoPotato.