The US military's actions in the Strait of Hormuz could lead to increased global oil stability and reduced Iranian influence in the region.

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The expanded sanctions heighten global compliance challenges, impacting international trade, digital assets, and humanitarian activities.

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India's record forex reserves bolster economic resilience but pose currency risk, as rupee stability remains challenged by external factors.

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The US Treasury's actions may strain Egypt-US relations and highlight the complexities of enforcing global sanctions on Iran.

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Bitcoin's dip highlights market volatility and the impact of macroeconomic factors, emphasizing the need for cautious trading strategies.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Pakistan Built Its Crypto Regulatory Regime Using Just 8% of Its Budget, Minister Bilal Bin Saqib Reveals at Bitcoin Asia

Pakistan has launched its virtual asset regulatory regime in less than six months while using just 8% of the budget allocated to build it, according to Bilal Bin Saqib, the country’s Minister of State and Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA).

Speaking at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong on August 28, Saqib said approximately $200,000 was used to build and operationalize the new regulatory framework, leaving roughly 92% of the approved budget unspent.

“We used only 8% of our approved budget to get this done,” Saqib announced. “Government should not measure success by how much money it spends. It should measure success by how much it delivers.”

Pakistan moved from primary legislation to notified regulations and a live licensing regime in under six months, establishing a formal pathway for companies operating in the digital asset sector.

The framework covers activities including exchanges, custody, brokerage, asset management, lending and settlement, while introducing requirements around governance, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, customer asset safeguarding, cybersecurity and market conduct.

For Pakistan, the regulatory rollout represents a significant shift toward bringing Bitcoin and digital asset activity into the formal financial system and providing companies with a defined framework for operating in the country.

Rethinking How Governments Build

Saqib framed the PVARA rollout as more than a regulatory achievement, arguing that it demonstrates how governments can operate differently in an environment where technology is developing rapidly.

Rather than building a large bureaucracy, the authority focused on smaller teams, technology-driven workflows and delivering a functioning regulatory framework.

“Technology is moving at machine speed. Government has to learn how to move much faster without compromising structure, accountability or consumer protection,” Saqib stated.

Saqib argued that governments need to balance speed with institutional credibility as emerging technologies continue to develop.

“Speed without structure can be dangerous. But structure without speed can become irrelevant.”

The approach reflects a broader vision for how Pakistan intends to compete in financial technology. Rather than simply adopting technologies developed elsewhere, the country is positioning itself to participate in the development of new financial infrastructure.

Beyond Crypto: The Agentic Economy

Saqib said Pakistan’s regulatory ambitions extend beyond today’s digital asset market.

The country is looking toward an economy increasingly shaped by tokenized markets, programmable payments, stablecoins, machine-to-machine commerce and artificial intelligence agents.

AI agents could eventually transact on behalf of individuals, companies and other machines, creating new questions around financial authority, identity, compliance and consumer protection.

Among the questions governments may need to address are who is responsible when an AI agent executes a financial transaction, how delegated authority should work and how anti-money laundering controls can function when machines transact directly with one another.

“Today we are regulating virtual asset service providers,” Saqib stated. “Tomorrow we will need regulation around agentic payments and the agentic economy.”

Saqib described the country’s virtual asset framework as an initial building block for this broader financial system.

Pakistan Wants to Build at the Frontier

The strategy represents an attempt to compress the traditional timeline for emerging markets, which often adopt financial and technological innovations after they have already matured in larger economies.

“Emerging markets do not have to spend the next decade catching up. We can build at the frontier,” Saqib said.

With a population of more than 240 million, Pakistan represents a potentially significant market for emerging financial technologies.

For PVARA, the immediate test will be whether the new regulatory regime can attract legitimate digital asset businesses while maintaining the consumer protections and oversight built into the framework.

But Saqib’s vision extends beyond regulation itself.

Pakistan’s rapid transition from legislation to live licensing — accomplished with only 8% of its approved budget — is being presented as a model for how governments can approach the next generation of financial infrastructure.

The country now wants to apply that same philosophy to an economy where digital assets, artificial intelligence and programmable finance increasingly converge.

You can watch Saqib’s full appearance at Bitcoin Asia 2026 below.

This post Pakistan Built Its Crypto Regulatory Regime Using Just 8% of Its Budget, Minister Bilal Bin Saqib Reveals at Bitcoin Asia first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nik.

Bitcoin Magazine

Genius Group Sets $2B Dual Treasury Target Months After Liquidating Bitcoin Holdings

Genius Group has announced a new plan to buy bitcoin — just months after selling its entire stash. 

The NYSE-listed AI-powered education company said in a Thursday statement that it was aiming to build parallel AI and bitcoin treasuries worth a combined $1.6 billion, with total company assets targeted at $2 billion by fiscal year 2031. 

Just in April, Genius Group sold its entire bitcoin reserves to repay $8.5 million in debt. The sale came as a number of digital asset treasuries were struggling due to a drop in crypto prices. 

“Every dollar of preferred capital deployed into our bitcoin and AI Treasury that generates returns above the preferred dividend rate flows directly to our ordinary shareholders’ net asset value,” Genius Group CEO Roger James Hamilton said. 

Genius Group first adopted a “Bitcoin first” strategy in late 2024, building a position that grew to 440 BTC by February 2025. 

That effort was disrupted when a court order blocked the company from raising funds or issuing shares, forcing a series of sales that reduced its holdings — including roughly 86 BTC sold in a single month, leaving about 84 BTC by February 2026. 

The company has now sold its remaining bitcoin entirely, using the proceeds to eliminate $8.5 million in debt. The liquidation reportedly came at a loss, leaving Genius Group with no crypto reserves.

Against that backdrop, the company is now proposing to rebuild a bitcoin treasury — this time alongside a similarly sized AI treasury — funded not through equity sales but through a new preferred stock offering.

Genius Group intends to draw on its $1.2 billion SEC-cleared shelf registration to issue Perpetual Preferred Securities, targeting an initial $12.5 million raise. Proceeds would be split between the AI treasury, the bitcoin treasury and a cash reserve covering about 18 months of dividend payments. 

The plan mirrors moves by the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin, Strategy. The company has raised over $16 billion via perpetual preferred stock for its bitcoin holdings. Nasdaq-listed Strive Asset Management has raised more than $150 million similarly. 

Genius Group says preferred capital will become its primary funding tool going forward, reducing reliance on its ordinary share ATM program.

This post Genius Group Sets $2B Dual Treasury Target Months After Liquidating Bitcoin Holdings first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Japanese Bitcoin Industry Unveils ‘Aurora’ to Let Global Anime Fans Support $2 Trillion Yen Space

Japan Bitcoin Industry Co., Ltd. has debuted a self-custodial Bitcoin payments platform designed to help Japanese companies sell to international fans who are often shut out by traditional payment systems.

Using this week’s Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong to introduce the product, JPI dropped Aurora — aiming to reach an audience that could not be serviced before. 

The pitch is simple: anime, manga, games, and other Japanese content have a massive global following, but the payment rails supporting that content haven’t kept pace. 

Aurora aims to close that gap by letting international customers pay in Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, while giving Japanese merchants a simple point-of-sale and API layer to manage invoicing, payment tracking, and integrations.

According to JBI, the market for Japanese anime content outside Japan reached ¥2.17 trillion in 2024, up 26% year-over-year — yet many overseas fans still struggle to pay for streaming subscriptions, digital merchandise and limited-access drops due to geographic payment restrictions.

The platform’s core design principle is that JBI never touches the money. Each merchant runs its own self-custodial Lightning node, receiving Bitcoin directly from customers. 

JBI says this setup gives businesses cleaner regulatory footing, since the company isn’t acting as a custodian, while still handling the harder operational lift — node uptime, liquidity, accounting and auditing, and conversion to fiat — that has historically kept enterprises from adopting Bitcoin payments on their own.

JBI says aurora draws on lessons from its existing consumer business, UseBitcoin.jp, which has let customers buy digital gift cards — including au PAY, V-Preca and Kyash cards — using Lightning payments for the past two years.

The company is inviting media, prospective merchants and wallet providers to connect with the team at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong.

This post Japanese Bitcoin Industry Unveils ‘Aurora’ to Let Global Anime Fans Support $2 Trillion Yen Space first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Again Flirts With $81,000 Ahead of Fed’s Jackson Hole Meeting 

Bitcoin again closed in on the $81,000 mark on Thursday before dropping again as its stellar week continued. 

The leading cryptocurrency was recently trading for $80,236 after notching as high as $80,793 earlier in the day in New York. 

Bitcoin is now up more than 2% over the past day after gaining 10% in a week. The coin’s rise comes ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote on Friday where he is expected to talk about digital payments — including crypto. 

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City will hold the annual event at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where central bankers, Federal Reserve officials, policymakers and academics will gather to discuss “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy.”

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City website, this year’s event will touch on how “recent years have seen a dramatic increase in innovation in financial intermediation and payments,” including new technologies such as “cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.” 

It will be Warsh’s first major speech as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Warsh, who has made pro-Bitcoin statements in the past, has been reluctant to lower interest rates; President Donald Trump, who nominated Warsh, has since last year pushed for borrowing costs to come down. 

Bitcoin in the past has done well in a low interest rate environment. 

Bitcoin’s run started last week when it sustained its biggest run in years following positive regulatory news and an announcement from the U.S. Treasury. 

But recent positive regulatory news has helped the coin. While a vote on the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has been delayed until September, President Donald Trump last week said that the bill was a “very, very powerful” piece of legislation, and urged lawmakers to get it over the line. 

The proposed law will establish a framework for distinguishing between digital assets that are securities, commodities or payment stablecoins — legislation that the crypto industry has long called for. 

And U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also last week announced the department would double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. 

The news sent yields down lower; lower long-term yields reduces the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally supports risk-on sentiment. 

This post Bitcoin Again Flirts With $81,000 Ahead of Fed’s Jackson Hole Meeting  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

No Fork Required: Bitcoin’s First Quantum-Safe Transaction Just Happened

Should fund managers dealing in Bitcoin be worried about the threat of quantum computing? 

The short answer is yes — but there’s time to prepare and solutions are already being found.

One of them? Post-quantum Bitcoin transactions on the mainnet. And the first one happened this week thanks to the Starknet Foundation. 

Speaking at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong on Thursday, Damian Chen, VP of growth at the Starknet Foundation, demonstrated how funds vulnerable to future quantum attacks can be secured without requiring a network-wide fork, thanks to the company’s latest solution. 

“This is a monumental moment,” Chen said. “This is the first post-quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on bitcoin mainnet today. It required no soft forks; it required no hard forks; it required no core protocol upgrades, and it’s live today.”

The transaction happened using a method created by StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy. It works like this: Bitcoin transactions sit briefly in a public queue before confirmation. During that window, they expose cryptographic material that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could use to forge a signature and steal the funds before the transaction is confirmed.

But rather than accepting the first valid signature, his method generates millions of signature candidates until it finds one with a specific structural property that doesn’t expose that vulnerable material while waiting in the mempool. 

This “signature grinding” is deliberately computationally expensive — a single transaction takes hours to produce — but that cost is what makes it resistant to quantum shortcuts.

Touting Quantum safe Bitcoin transactions — dubbed “QSB” — to institutions, Chen said that even if attackers have a fund’s private keys, they couldn’t make a fraudulent transfer. 

“QSB introduces a new hash authorization, and so an attacker with a sufficiently capable computer, even if they have your exposed public key, even if they derive your private key from your public key, even if they try to use that to authorize a spend to move your coins out of your wallet, those things are not enough for them to do so,” he said. 

It’s worth noting that ordinary Bitcoin nodes currently don’t recognize this non-standard transaction format, so it couldn’t go into the public mempool and instead had to be handed straight to a miner willing to accept it — with mining company MARA’s Slipstream service being the one that mined the QSB transaction. 

Quantum researchers have warned that a time will come when Bitcoin’s software — which underpins the biggest and strongest computer network in the world — will need to be upgraded to deal with quantum computing. 

While some crypto VC firms have urged action, top Bitcoin developers have argued that many of today’s quantum computers have limited capabilities, and have only demonstrated trivial computations. 

Still, they have noted that their development could arrive unexpectedly — just like advances with artificial intelligence — and have started developing some solutions. 

Chen added: “The question to me has never been when will quantum arrive. We all know quantum will arrive at one stage, but the question to me has always been, how long will it take for you to be ready when quantum does arrive?”

This post No Fork Required: Bitcoin’s First Quantum-Safe Transaction Just Happened first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) closed at $44.46 on Aug. 26, about 30.2% below the $63.69 price needed to trigger an early exit from a $21.374 million JPMorgan structured note.

The securities are bank debt linked to IBIT, not shares in the exchange-traded fund. Under the note’s final terms, JPMorgan Chase Financial Company LLC would automatically call them only if IBIT closed at or above its starting price on that date. BlackRock’s fund page reported a $44.46 close, leaving the condition unmet on the published, unadjusted figures.

No standalone issuer or calculation-agent notice in the public record confirmed the final treatment of the observation. The filing permits adjustments and postponement in defined circumstances. On the available contract terms and public price, however, the call payment was unavailable and the securities continued toward their August 2028 maturity.

The missed trigger exposes the central trade in bank-made crypto products: investors can gain a tailored payoff, but their exit depends on contractual dates and thresholds rather than their ability to sell a liquid ETF whenever they choose.

One missed IBIT call trigger changes risk

JPMorgan issued the securities in August 2025 at $1,000 each. They pay no periodic interest. A successful one-year call would have returned $1,210 per security, equal to principal plus a 21% premium.

The public price left the note below that trigger. Investors therefore kept an unsecured obligation of JPMorgan Chase Financial Company LLC, guaranteed by JPMorgan Chase & Co., rather than receiving the call proceeds. The original $21.374 million issue size does not establish how much principal remains outstanding after any repurchases or cancellations.

The next binding price test comes on Aug. 21, 2028. The note’s $47.7675 downside threshold, equal to 75% of its starting price, applies on that final calculation day rather than on the 2026 call date.

If IBIT finishes above $63.69 in 2028, the maturity payment adds an amount equal to 150% of the fund’s percentage gain to principal. A finish between $47.7675 and $63.69 returns principal. A final price below $47.7675 produces one-for-one downside from the original $63.69 starting price, resulting in a loss greater than 25%.

IBIT’s $44.46 close fell below the maturity threshold on the 2026 observation date, but that date did not activate the maturity formula. The eventual principal result remains contingent on the 2028 final calculation.

Missing the call also preserves the note’s final-payment upside exposure if IBIT finishes above $63.69 in 2028. Investors receive that possibility in exchange for two more years of issuer credit risk, no periodic income and uncertain liquidity.

IBIT trades on Nasdaq. The structured securities are not exchange-listed, and JPMorgan said any secondary market could be limited or unavailable. An investor seeking an early sale must depend on a dealer price shaped by the fund, interest rates, volatility, issuer credit and the remaining derivative payoff.

The entry economics showed a cost wedge from the start. JPMorgan estimated each $1,000 security at $926.20 when the terms were set. Its filing attributed the difference to selling commissions and projected structuring and hedging economics, among other components.

CryptoSlate’s earlier coverage of the note focused on leveraged upside and buffered downside. The Aug. 26 observation reveals the timing risk between them: a later Bitcoin recovery could still improve the final payout, while the contract keeps control of the exit date.

New notes add deductions and weaker-asset risk

JPMorgan is marketing a different Bitcoin-linked structure whose costs sit inside the reference index.

The preliminary Aug. 3 pricing supplement described auto-callable notes tied to the MerQube Bitcoin Vol Advantage Index and expected them to price on or about Aug. 31. The actual rate and other final inputs remained to be set in a final supplement.

The proposed note stated contingent interest of at least 14.50% a year, paid quarterly. Payment for any review date requires the index to close at or above 60% of its initial value. A lower observation produces no interest for that period.

The index places two drags ahead of that headline rate. It deducts 6% annually, accrued daily, even while the strategy is underinvested. It also subtracts a notional financing cost based on SOFR plus 1.25% a year from IBIT-linked performance.

Exposure changes with volatility. At weekly rebalances, the index divides a 35% implied-volatility target by IBIT’s one-week implied volatility, constrained between 0% and 500%. Low implied volatility can lift exposure and magnify financing costs. High implied volatility can push exposure below 100%, limiting participation in an IBIT rally while the 6% deduction continues.

The hurdle cannot be reduced to a fixed “6% plus SOFR and 1.25%” break-even rate. Financing changes with exposure, and exposure changes with volatility. JPMorgan’s filing says the deductions offset gains, deepen declines and make the index trail an otherwise identical version without them.

Barclays has proposed a separate structure that concentrates risk in whichever of two crypto funds performs worse. Its preliminary Aug. 4 filing links the note to both IBIT and the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF.

On each relevant call date or the final calculation day, the fund with the lower return controls the result. The controlling fund can change from one observation to another. Gains in one fund do not offset weaker performance in the other.

The Barclays proposal offers a 30% maturity buffer. If the lower-returning fund falls by more than 30%, the investor takes one-for-one losses beyond the buffer and can lose as much as 70% of principal. The preliminary terms also indicated an automatic-call premium of at least 18% and 200% participation in the lower fund’s positive return at maturity.

The table shows why the largest percentage on a term sheet is incomplete on its own. Observation dates decide when the investor can exit. Barriers decide whether interest appears. Index methodology determines how much of an ETF move reaches the note. Worst-of mechanics allow one asset to dominate the payoff, and dealer liquidity sets the cost of leaving early.

Note demand and spot demand diverge

The 2025 JPMorgan filing permits the issuer and its affiliates to use swaps or related hedge transactions. It does not require note proceeds to purchase an equal amount of IBIT shares or spot bitcoin.

Bank-issued note volume therefore measures demand for a debt obligation with a derivative payoff. ETF flows are measured separately. A particular hedge could affect ETF trading, but the note’s principal amount alone cannot establish an ETF inflow or a direct spot purchase.

Bitcoin’s expansion into structured credit and other financial products gives investors more routes to exposure than buying Bitcoin or a spot ETF. Each additional wrapper creates a new set of contractual drivers between the asset and the investor’s return.

The Aug. 26 call test makes that separation concrete. IBIT remained liquid and observable, while the investor’s exit depended on one date and one threshold inside an unlisted note. The preliminary MerQube product adds a persistent deduction, floating financing and a volatility-controlled exposure path. The Barclays proposal adds a second asset capable of controlling the outcome.

Wall Street can turn spot crypto ETFs into debt with a familiar coupon or premium. The transformation leaves investors bearing the timing risk, liquidity risk and embedded cost whenever the contract, rather than the ETF, controls the exit.

The post JPMorgan’s IBIT Bitcoin ETF bet just missed its escape hatch to avoid 6% deduction appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Alpha Modus shares fell 25% after the company agreed to issue more than 10 times its existing share count for Bitcoin.

The Nasdaq-listed company said 10 non-US investors would contribute 3,170 BTC in exchange for 51.62 million Class A shares and warrants covering another 51.62 million shares, according to an Aug. 27 SEC filing.

The agreement values the Bitcoin at $71,000 each, implying about $225.1 million of consideration. The transaction has been signed but has not yet closed, meaning the Bitcoin has not been transferred and the new securities have not been issued.

Alpha Modus had about 4.99 million Class A shares outstanding under the agreement’s Aug. 24 capitalization table. Issuing the initial 51.62 million shares would lift that total to roughly 56.61 million and reduce the pre-deal shares to about 8.8% of the enlarged base.

That means the company would issue about 10.35 new shares to the Bitcoin investors for every existing Class A share.

The warrants could add another 51.62 million shares if exercised at $4.36 over their two-year term, creating a second layer of potential dilution. Beneficial-ownership limits, Nasdaq requirements, and any necessary shareholder approvals still apply.

Investors reacted negatively to the proposal, pushing Alpha Modus down about 25% to $2.84 after the announcement.

Bitcoin deal doubles as Nasdaq rescue attempt

The transaction also serves a more immediate purpose for Alpha Modus: repairing a balance sheet that has put its Nasdaq listing at risk.

Nasdaq notified the company in April that it failed to satisfy any of three alternative Capital Market standards covering net income, market value of listed securities or stockholders’ equity. Alpha Modus later submitted a compliance plan.

Its latest quarterly filing showed $2 million in cash, a $6.1 million stockholders’ deficit and a $6.3 million working-capital deficit. The company reported no revenue for either the quarter or the first half of 2026 and posted a $6.2 million loss over the six-month period.

The filing also raised substantial doubt about Alpha Modus’s ability to continue as a going concern and estimated that the company needed at least another $2.5 million to maintain its growth plan.

Management expects the contributed Bitcoin to strengthen stockholders’ equity and help address the Nasdaq deficiency.

The deal would also deliver Bitcoin rather than cash, meaning it would not automatically solve Alpha Modus’s near-term operating liquidity needs.

Alpha Modus moves against a retreating treasury trade

The deal's timing is notable because Alpha Modus is moving deeper into Bitcoin just as the corporate treasury trade is losing favor with investors.

The 50 largest publicly traded Bitcoin holders saw their combined market capitalization fall to about $67 billion in August from roughly $150 billion in July 2025, according to the Financial Times.

The model was popularized by Michael Saylor's Strategy, whose aggressive Bitcoin purchases encouraged other public companies to raise debt and equity to accumulate the asset.

However, Bitcoin has fallen about 30% over the past 12 months despite its recent rebound toward $80,000, while many treasury-company stocks have declined much more sharply.

As a result, some companies have begun selling their BTC holdings or refocusing on their core businesses as leveraged treasury strategies amplified the downside.

Alpha Modus is taking the opposite approach. Chief Executive William Alessi said the company had previously considered a Bitcoin strategy when prices were near record highs but chose not to proceed.

He said:

“We considered pursuing this strategy when Bitcoin was near record highs, and decided that timing was not optimal.”

Alessi is effectively betting that Bitcoin’s 30% retreat has created a better entry point than last year’s highs.

However, early indications show that investors have been less convinced so far, as shown by the steep decline in the firm's stock following the move's announcement.

The post A zero-revenue public company tried to copy Michael Saylor to avoid delisting, but its stock immediately crashed 25% appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto wallet maker Ledger is urging its Ethereum app users to update again after two signing flaws remained in its previous security release.

The hardware-wallet maker published Ethereum app version 1.22.3 on Aug. 25, closing vulnerabilities that could hide operations from a device review or authorize a token approval in place of an expected payment.

The update follows controversy over a separate Ethereum signing flaw reproduced by rival wallet maker OneKey. That issue, tracked as LSB-023, affected older versions and allowed a compromised host to interleave commands so that transaction parameters could change after being displayed but before signing.

Ledger said OneKey demonstrated the bug against version 1.22.1 after the company had already fixed it in Ethereum app 1.22.2, released Aug. 13.

“No Ledger user was hacked,” Ledger’s security team said, describing the demonstration as a laboratory reproduction involving outdated software. The company said it had found no evidence of exploitation in the wild.

Ledger Chief Technology Officer Charles Guillemet made the same distinction, saying reproducing an already-patched flaw did not amount to “hacking Ledger.”

Version 1.22.2, however, did not close every known Ethereum-app vulnerability on Ledger. Instead, two separate flaws, LSB-024 and LSB-025, remained until the release of 1.22.3.

Two additional signing paths remained exposed

LSB-024 affected how the Ethereum app processed arrays of operations during clear signing.

The app read the number of operations using a 16-bit value but stored the remaining count in an 8-bit field. In Ledger’s proof of concept, an array containing 257 operations wrapped the counter back to one, causing the device to display only the final operation even though its signature authorized the entire batch.

Exploitation required a compromised host and an unusually large attacker-controlled operation array. Ledger tested the scenario on a private network fork and reported no real-user losses.

The second vulnerability, LSB-025, affected the token-payment path used by Ledger’s Exchange application during swaps.

Ledger’s app checked the token, quantity, and destination but did not verify that the requested action was actually a payment. A malicious or compromised swap provider could therefore substitute a token approval matching those same parameters and have it signed without an additional device prompt.

The flaw could not create an unlimited approval, switch to another token, or grant permission to an arbitrary address. An approval also does not itself transfer funds, requiring a subsequent transaction before the approved assets could move.

Ledger said it found no evidence that the swap vulnerability was exploited.

The release history raises a separate question. Ledger’s records show the fix for the array-count issue was merged on May 5 and the swap-validation correction on May 25, months before version 1.22.2 was released. Its security bulletins do not explain why those changes were absent from that update.

Ledger defended its broader approach by pointing to updateability as central to hardware wallet security. Its security team said it continuously identifies vulnerabilities through internal research and external bug-bounty programs, then patches them through software releases.

For users, the distinction between the three vulnerabilities is important. Version 1.22.2 fixed the command-interleaving flaw later reproduced by OneKey, while version 1.22.3 is required to address the two additional signing bugs disclosed Aug. 27.

Ledger recommends installing Ethereum app 1.22.3 or later through Ledger Live and verifying the version on the device. Updating the hardware wallet firmware alone does not replace the affected Ethereum application.

The post Ledger says the viral “hack” was already patched, but two real bugs still needed fixing appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Circle's CCTP V1 deprecation gives developers still using the first version of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) 95 days to migrate before the legacy contracts stop processing USDC transfers.

The company said CCTP V1 burn limits will begin falling on Oct. 31. A burn limit caps how much USDC can be destroyed on one chain for reminting on another. Circle plans to reduce those limits and transfer capacity through November, then pause the contracts on Dec. 1. Any integration still pointing to V1 at that point will no longer move USDC across chains.

The cutoff governs cross-chain routing. Circle's migration guide says users will retain access to funds during the phase-out and pending redemptions will remain available. An attestation is Circle's signed approval for USDC burned on a source chain to be minted on a destination chain. Circle said it will keep enough minting capacity available to complete outstanding attestations before V1 is fully paused.

CCTP V1 deprecation: code changes and exposed routes

The migration requires code changes. CCTP V2, now branded simply as CCTP, uses different contract addresses, interfaces and APIs and is incompatible with V1.

Integrators must point to the V2 versions of TokenMessenger, MessageTransmitter and TokenMinter, update their contract interfaces, and change calls to depositForBurn. The V2 function adds parameters for the permitted destination caller, maximum fee and minimum finality threshold. Developers must also replace legacy attestation calls with the /v2/messages/{sourceDomainId} flow, choose standard or fast settlement where available, and handle applicable fees.

Teams that need uninterrupted service face an earlier operational deadline than Dec. 1. The Oct. 31 burn-limit cuts begin a November wind-down in which V1 capacity will progressively shrink.

Circle's current supported-chain matrix lists 27 blockchains on the current CCTP network. Aptos is listed among the chains supported only by CCTP V1, alongside Noble and Sui, on Circle's legacy network.

Aptos, Noble and Sui are the only chains Circle currently labels as V1-only. A native CCTP route to or from any of them still depends on the legacy network unless an integrator uses a separately documented alternative. Circle did not identify which exchanges, wallets, bridges or apps continue to call the old contracts, leaving the number of named production integrations facing the cutoff undisclosed.

Circle's adoption figures offer historical scale rather than a measure of current exposure. In a November 2025 update, the company said CCTP had processed more than $110 billion across 5.3 million transfers. Those cumulative totals combined V1 and V2 as of Nov. 14, 2025.

CryptoSlate's earlier Noble coverage described the broader V1 phase-out. Circle's CCTP V1 deprecation dates now set the integration-wide timetable: capacity begins falling Oct. 31, and V1 contracts pause Dec. 1.

The post Circle gives legacy USDC apps 95 days before old cross-chain transfer routes stop working appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Every summer in Gothic, Colorado, a yellow-bellied marmot walks into a wire trap baited with oats and peanut butter. A scientist weighs it, takes samples, checks its ear tags, paints a temporary identification mark on its back, and releases it back into the mountain meadow.

The scientific value of this emerges through accumulation, with thousands of encounters repeated for more than six decades creating the second-longest study of individually identified wild mammals in the world. The record follows family lines, health, behavior, reproduction, and survival across generations, allowing biologists to see patterns that take much longer than a typical three-year research grant to emerge.

That record came close to acquiring a permanent blank this year when the National Science Foundation declined the team's latest request for continued support. The scientists then began looking for money in places Kenneth Armitage, the biologist who started the project in 1962, could hardly have imagined.

UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein proposed a G-rated OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms, and an independent group of crypto traders later created a Solana meme coin whose creator fees have generated more than $150,000 for the research project.

All of this sounds like it was made for the internet, complete with comically chubby rodents, an adult platform, and a memecoin.

But the problem it addressed is much less playful because researchers can never return to 2026 and reconstruct which marmot emerged from hibernation, produced offspring, joined a new colony, or disappeared.

The value of never missing a summer

Armitage began tracking the Gothic marmot population in 1962 and directed the work until 2001, when Blumstein took over. Blumstein now runs it with University of Ottawa professor Julien Martin, preserving the basic routine that gives the record its power: researchers repeatedly observe identifiable animals in the same valleys using compatible methods.

The repetition has produced a very detailed genealogy, and a 2025 study used a pedigree spanning 11 generations and 2,196 animals to examine whether warning behavior can be inherited. Other work from the project has connected early hardship with longevity, mapped the relationship between social behavior and survival, and examined how an alpine mammal responds to warmer temperatures and erratic snowfall.

A single season gives researchers a population count, while six decades let them identify what altered its size and which animals fared best.

Winter supplies the smaller part of the record because marmots spend most of the year underground, living on fat accumulated during summer. Their heart rate, breathing, metabolism, and body temperature fall sharply during hibernation, making snow cover above the burrow an important layer of insulation.

Blumstein said the team monitored more than 160 animals before the last hibernation period and found about 60 when fieldwork resumed. He associated most of the loss with inadequate snow cover, an assessment that the longer record can place beside body condition, kinship, temperature, and conditions from earlier winters. The value comes from having every season available for comparison, including the bad ones.

Federal support arrived through a sequence of separate grants over six decades. UCLA's account of the funding loss says the NSF declined the latest continuation request in late May as American universities were absorbing broader research cuts. That rejected renewal placed an uninterrupted record at risk.

Marmot's Got Money Troubles

Blumstein borrowed the OnlyFans idea from the Apple TV series Margo's Got Money Troubles and applied its premise to marmots with money troubles of their own. Graduate student Emily Renkey created OnlyMarms, filled it with nearly daily field videos and explanations, and worked through a verification process built for human creators.

The account is free, with visitors able to leave tips for photographs and videos of marmot life. It attracted thousands of visitors and raised roughly $6,000 in its first months, according to UCLA, before OnlyFans took its 20% share. That covered some supplies and staff time while leaving the team far short of any kind of dependable funding for recurring fieldwork.

The stranger source of money came when a group outside the project launched $OnlyMarms through Pump.fun, a platform that makes it easy to create and trade tokens on Solana, then directed the token's creator royalties to the marmot researchers. Launched independently, the coin later got Martin's support, and he accepted the fees and added its contract address to the project's fundraising page.

The OnlyMarms token runs on a royalty system in which trading activity generates fees that accrue to a wallet controlled by the lab, allowing the team to claim them as donations. Martin's project page now reports more than $150,000 raised for marmot research, while the community's token page says every creator royalty goes to the project.

Token issuance, team allocation, trading, and buyers' return expectations have nothing to do with the lab, leaving the researchers free to receive creator royalties as donations. The arrangement resembles Vitalik Buterin's proposal for philanthropic meme coins, with speculative activity sending money toward a public purpose.

Token-generated donations are already more than 25 times the OnlyFans account's gross tips, although future income depends on traders continuing to care when the hype fades. A longitudinal project needs money on a calendar, with trained field staff returning every summer regardless of whether marmots are trending or not on Pump.fun.

The internet picks a species

Marmots are the perfect animal for the attention economy that runs both the culture and the market. With names like Jamba Juice and Egg, these oversized squirrels gain significant fat before the winter.

The team has built on that advantage with the first Fat Marmot Week, a public tournament that ran from Aug. 24 through 28 before a winner was crowned Aug. 29. Visitors voted for the marmot that best represented healthy preparation for hibernation.

That campaign was a hit because it essentially recruited future donors while exposing the lottery inside viral patronage.

Because its payoff may take years, research has always required persuasion, and social platforms compress that process into a contest for attention that asks scientists to cultivate an audience alongside their animals and data.

OnlyMarms shows what a small crypto community can accomplish when the target is concrete, and the payments are direct. Trading gave one field team more time during a lapse in formal support, with the duration of that reprieve still tied to the internet's appetite.

The marmot researchers have kept the science in view while enjoying the absurdity surrounding their new patrons. That money buys the one resource this project can never recover: another uninterrupted field season.

Gothic's marmots will soon seal their burrows and slow their bodies through the winter while the researchers wait for spring. Thousands of strangers found the animals online, enjoyed the absurdity, and then helped preserve a 64-year scientific record whose real value comes from never having to start over.

The post Solana traders on OnlyFans just saved a 64-year marmot wildlife study after federal funding stopped appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Selling Bitcoin Privately: What Tax Applies to Direct Sales in Austria

Bitcoin does not have to be sold through a crypto exchange. Buyer and seller can also agree directly and move the coins from one private wallet to another.

For tax purposes in Austria, however, that generally makes no difference. Anyone who disposes of bitcoin for euros or another legal currency generally realises a taxable event, regardless of whether a crypto exchange sits in between.

The Gain Is Taxed, Not the Sale Price

What matters is the difference between the sale proceeds and the acquisition cost for tax purposes.

Example:

• bitcoin bought for 15,000 euros
• later sold directly to a private buyer for 30,000 euros
• taxable gain: 15,000 euros

For bitcoin acquired after February 28, 2021, the special tax rate of 27.5 percent generally applies. In the example, that would generally come to 4,125 euros in tax.

Cash Changes Nothing About the Bitcoin Tax

Payment in cash does not make the transaction tax-free either.

Whether the buyer:

• transfers euros,
• hands over cash,
• pays in another legal currency,

generally makes no difference to the fact that bitcoin has been disposed of for fiat money. A swap for goods or services can likewise constitute a taxable realisation event.

How a Private Sale Differs From Selling on an Austrian Exchange

The decisive practical difference lies in the tax deduction. Where a domestic crypto service provider is involved, the tax is in many cases withheld automatically as capital gains tax and paid over to the tax office. In a direct private sale, by contrast, there is regularly no party obliged to withhold it.

The seller therefore has to:

• determine the sale proceeds,
• establish the acquisition cost,
• calculate the gain,
• account for the taxable income in the assessment.

Worked Example: Tax on a Private Bitcoin Sale in Austria

Written Proof Matters Especially Here

Private bitcoin sales should be documented in detail.

The following are particularly worth recording:

• date of the sale
• BTC amount
• agreed euro price
• proof of payment
• transaction ID
• sender and recipient address
• original acquisition cost
• any fees

Where payment is made in cash, a written receipt should be drawn up as well. Years later the blockchain will still show that the bitcoin was transferred, but not automatically which purchase price was agreed and actually paid.

What Happens When You Swap Bitcoin for Other Cryptocurrencies?

A direct private sale has to be distinguished from a swap into another cryptocurrency. Swapping bitcoin for another cryptocurrency that qualifies for tax purposes is generally not a taxable disposal in Austria. The existing acquisition cost carries over to the cryptocurrency received instead. Bitcoin for euros and bitcoin for ether can therefore have completely different tax consequences.

Legacy Holdings Can Still Be Free of Bitcoin Tax

Bitcoin acquired up to and including February 28, 2021 generally counts as a legacy holding and does not automatically fall under the current crypto tax regime. For legacy holdings held privately, a sale can generally be tax-free under the earlier rules once the speculation period that applied back then has expired. Anyone selling old bitcoin privately in 2026 should therefore document the original date of acquisition with particular care.

Selling Bitcoin to Friends Counts as a Sale Too

Whether buyer and seller are related or friends is generally not decisive for the question of a disposal for consideration. Anyone who sells bitcoin to a friend at the market price has made a sale.

Where bitcoin is genuinely transferred without consideration, it is a gift. The Austrian rules on reporting gifts can then become relevant in place of the taxation of a sale.

Documentation deserves particular care where bitcoin is transferred well below its market value. Depending on how the transfer is arranged, it can be partly for consideration and partly without.

Conclusion

For tax purposes in Austria, a direct bitcoin sale between private individuals generally has to be taken just as seriously as a sale through a crypto exchange. For bitcoin acquired after February 28, 2021, a realised capital gain is generally taxed at 27.5 percent.

The key difference: in a private sale there is regularly no Austrian crypto service provider that handles the capital gains tax deduction automatically. The seller therefore has to document the taxable gain and, where applicable, declare it through the income tax assessment.

(As of August 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitcoin is holding just above $80,000 after climbing from the low $60,000s earlier this month. That is a gain of about 23% in August, putting it on track for its best August since 2017, in a month whose median historical return is actually negative 7%. The total crypto market sits near $2.75 trillion.

Almost all of it comes down to three things. Notably, only one of them has anything to do with crypto itself.

Top 3 Reasons Why Crypto Prices Are Up

1. The Treasury pushed liquidity into the system

This is the trigger, and it is the one most people are underweighting.

The rally started when the US Treasury expanded its bond buyback operations, which pushed long-term yields and the dollar lower. Cheaper money and a weaker dollar send capital toward risk assets, and crypto sits at the far end of that curve. Adding to it are reports that the Treasury could draw on its cash account of nearly $1 trillion, which would put more money into financial markets still.

Samir Kerbage, CIO at Hashdex, described the move as mostly a liquidity event. That is the cleanest summary available. $Bitcoin did not rally because something changed about Bitcoin. It rallied because the cost of money changed.

Worth knowing: the Fed has held its benchmark rate at 3.50% to 3.75%, and three policymakers voted for a quarter-point increase in July. Traders currently price September rate-hike odds at roughly one in three. This is not a market with confirmed monetary support behind it.

2. ETF inflows came back, and they are large

US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $2.72 billion during August, taking total assets under management to $98.56 billion and within reach of the $100 billion mark. BlackRock's IBIT alone accounted for $1.33 billion of weekly inflows, and total ETF turnover hit $22.1 billion last week.

That matters because ETF flows were negative for part of 2026. Their return means the institutional bid is back rather than merely holding steady. CryptoQuant data shows capital in the Bitcoin market rising from $20.6 billion to $24.9 billion.

This is the most durable of the three reasons, because it reflects allocation decisions rather than positioning. It is also the slowest to reverse.

3. Short sellers were forced out

The third reason amplified the first two rather than causing anything.

Traders positioned for further downside after Bitcoin's June low near $59,300 were caught badly. Billions of dollars in short positions were force-closed as the price climbed, and each liquidation becomes a forced buy order. That is what turns a steady rise into a vertical one, and it explains why the sharpest part of the move came in a single week rather than spread across the month.

Squeeze-driven gains are the least reliable kind. Once the shorts are gone, that particular buying pressure is gone with them. The Crypto Greed index has climbed to 74 out of 100, its highest in nearly 11 months, which tells you the positioning that fuelled this move has already flipped to the other side.

Will Crypto Prices stay UP?

Two things decide the near term. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote today at 10am ET, and he has given markets very little forward guidance since taking office in May. He described the speech in July as a blank piece of paper. That leaves unusually wide room for a surprise in either direction.

The levels traders are watching are $82,800 on the upside and the $74,000 to $75,000 zone on the downside. Losing the latter would put the move in question.

The honest framing is this: a rally built primarily on liquidity conditions lasts exactly as long as those conditions do. The ETF flows are real and the on-chain activity is real, but neither started this, and neither is large enough to hold it up alone if the macro picture turns.

Anyone who sets out to send crypto and picks the wrong network along the way will as a rule lose the balance for good. The exchange executes the withdrawal correctly, the chain confirms it, and still nothing arrives at the other end. Kraken puts this in its own withdrawal guide without softening it: a withdrawal to an unsuitable network can lead to the permanent loss of the funds.

How large that risk is across the market is a question nobody had counted out. We have. Of the 100 largest crypto assets by market capitalisation, 51 exist on two or more blockchains at the same time, 22 of them on five or more. For every one of those 51, the network selector in the withdrawal form is not a detail. It is the decision over whether the money arrives. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on August 26, 2026; the method and its limits are set out openly further down.

The timing is no coincidence. Several transfer deadlines are running out at once in these weeks, and tens of thousands of accounts have to move holdings that sat untouched on an exchange for years. Anyone who rarely transfers meets the network question for the first time at exactly the moment when the pressure is greatest.

Sending Crypto: What Technically Happens With the Wrong Network

A withdrawal consists of two entries that have to match each other: the destination address and the network the exchange sends over. Both are asked for separately, and the exchange checks only the form of the address, not where it belongs.

That is the core of the problem. An address beginning with 0x is valid on Ethereum, on BNB Smart Chain, on Arbitrum, on Base, on Polygon and on a dozen further chains. All of these chains use the same address format. The withdrawal form therefore has no way of recognising that you have entered an address belonging to an account on a chain other than the one being sent over.

The transfer then goes through cleanly. A valid transaction to a valid address comes into being on the chosen chain. It is just that nobody controls that address there, or it belongs to an exchange that accepts no deposits for this token on this chain at all. The balance is visible on the chain and out of reach all the same.

Why Nobody Retrieves the Transfer

A confirmed transaction on a blockchain cannot technically be reversed. Whoever holds the private key to the receiving address can move the balance. Whoever does not hold it cannot. There is nothing in between.

In a share of cases an exchange controls the key, because the address belongs to its deposit system. A way back then exists in theory, but it runs through support, takes weeks, costs fees and is expressly voluntary. Several large providers rule out recovery outside a list of supported chains from the outset.

Network, Chain and Layer 2: What These Terms Mean for a Transfer

Three terms turn up in the withdrawal form and are regularly confused with one another. A brief clarification, because the rest does not hold without it.

A network, in the withdrawal form, is the transfer route over which the exchange sends your coins. A blockchain, or chain, is the independent ledger on which that transfer is recorded. A layer 2 is a chain of its own that passes its results to a larger chain for security, but appears in the withdrawal form as its own entry and carries a balance of its own.

A wrapped token is an issue of a crypto asset on a foreign chain, backed by the original on its home chain. It often carries the same name and, in case of doubt, the same ticker, yet it is a different asset with a contract address of its own.

For a transfer this yields a single rule, and Kraken writes it into its guide in exactly those terms: always choose the same network your receiving wallet uses. Not the cheapest, not the fastest, not the preselected one.

Our Own Analysis: 51 of the 100 Largest Crypto Assets Sit on Several Chains

To put a figure on the risk, on August 26, 2026 we retrieved two public data sets from the CoinGecko programming interface and set them against each other. The first supplies the 100 largest crypto assets by market capitalisation, the second the complete list of all crypto assets held there, together with the chains on which they are recorded as a contract. On the day of collection that list ran to 18,684 entries. Both retrievals answered with HTTP 200.

For each of the 100 assets we evaluated how many different chains carry a contract entry. All 100 could be matched, and there was no gap. The result:

• 51 crypto assets are recorded on two or more chains.
• 22 of those on five or more chains.
• 10 of those on ten or more chains.
• 23 crypto assets sit on exactly one chain.
• 26 crypto assets carry no contract entry at all, because they run a blockchain of their own. Among them are Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Litecoin and Monero.

Ethereum appears most often as the host chain: 57 of the 100 largest crypto assets are recorded there. BNB Smart Chain follows with 25, Solana with 23, Arbitrum with 19 and Base with 16.

What the Numbers Do Not Say

The analysis measures how many chains record a crypto asset as a contract. The count does not measure which networks a particular exchange actually offers for withdrawing that asset. An exchange can support considerably fewer chains than there are contract issues, and precisely that gap is a source of error in its own right: the token exists on the destination chain, but your exchange does not send there.

Second, the figure is a snapshot from August 26, 2026. New issues on further chains are added continuously.

Third, we did not check whether every recorded contract actually carries trading volume. For the question of whether a misdirected transfer is possible, that plays no role, because an address on a chain accepts a transfer even when nobody trades there.

Chainlink, USDC and Tether: The Crypto Assets With the Most Chains

The top of the analysis shows how far a single crypto asset can spread. Chainlink leads the field with contract entries on 87 different chains, well clear of USDC with 34 and Ethena USDe with 30. Then come Ethena with 19, Aave with 15, Ondo US Dollar Yield with 14, Uniswap with 13 and Tether with 11 chains. Cosmos Hub and PancakeSwap reach ten each.

The stablecoins on this list deserve a look of their own, because they are moved most often. Withdraw USDC or Tether from an exchange and you are choosing from a dozen chains or more, and the balances on those chains are entirely separate. A Tether holding on Tron does not exist for a wallet that knows only Ethereum.

Why Bitcoin and Ethereum Are Special Cases in This Count

The 26 assets without a contract entry are the point at which the numbers are easily misread. These assets run a blockchain of their own, which is why the database lists no host chain for them. That does not remotely mean the network question fails to arise for them.

With Ethereum the opposite is true. Withdraw ether from an exchange and you will usually be choosing between Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and further layer 2 networks. All of them carry genuine ether, all use the same address format, and the balances are separate. That choice does not show up in our count, because these are not contract issues.

With Bitcoin there are additionally wrapped issues on foreign chains, which the database keeps as entries of their own and which therefore also fall outside the count. In practice that means the 51 is a lower bound. The number of cases in which the network choice decides between arrival and loss is higher.

Withdrawal Deadlines When an Exchange Closes: Why the Network Choice Counts Right Now

Misdirected transfers pile up when many people transfer at the same time and under time pressure. That is exactly the situation in August 2026. On August 20 Binance announced that it would end trading in ICON, Secret and Storj on September 3 at 03:00 UTC; deposits will no longer be credited after September 4, withdrawals remain possible until November 3, after which the exchange automatically converts residual holdings into stablecoins. Several trade publications reproduced this schedule independently of one another from the announcement.

Further transfer deadlines are running in parallel. Our own reporting has documented them one by one, most recently on August 22 on the withdrawal cut-off at OKX for MAJOR and J and on August 11 on the Kraken forced liquidation of 56 tokens. Anyone clearing several accounts faces the network decision repeatedly in short order, and each time in a different form with a different default.

On top of that comes a cost effect that tempts people into the wrong decisions. The fee differs between networks by a factor of a hundred in some cases, as we broke down in our overview of withdrawal fees at crypto exchanges. The cheapest chain is tempting, but it only serves if the receiving side carries it too. If you do not yet have a suitable destination address, it is better to look for one beforehand among the regulated crypto exchanges with EU authorisation, or to set up a wallet of your own, rather than improvising under deadline pressure.

The Reflex That Costs the Most

Under time pressure many people reach for the preselected chain, because the form suggests it anyway. That default follows what is favourable for the exchange, not what your receiving address accepts. This preselection is the most common starting point of a misdirected transfer.

Checking the Address Format: How to Recognise the Right Chain

The receiving side dictates the chain, not the sending side. Every withdrawal therefore begins with you having your wallet or the destination exchange display the deposit address for exactly this crypto asset and exactly this network. Most wallets name the network directly above the address.

The address format gives a first indication, but it does not replace the check. An address with the prefix 0x and 42 characters belongs to the Ethereum family and therefore to dozens of possible chains. Bitcoin addresses begin with 1, 3 or bc1. Solana addresses are a longer character string with no fixed prefix. Tron addresses begin with T.

What is practically useful above all is the direction of exclusion: if the format does not fit, the chain is certainly wrong. If it does fit, the chain may be right. With all addresses in the Ethereum family, the only remaining route is to look the network up explicitly in the receiving wallet.

Three Entries That Have to Match

Before sending, you reconcile three things: the crypto asset, the network and the address. All three appear both in the exchange's withdrawal form and in the receiving wallet. If one of them fails to match, you break off. This check takes a minute and is the only step that reliably prevents a misdirected transfer.

Sending a Test Amount: When It Pays Off and What It Costs

A test amount is a small advance transfer over the same route, with which you play through the whole path once before the main amount follows. It costs the network fee a second time, and that is exactly why many people do without it.

The arithmetic is unambiguous all the same. With a fee in the range of a few euros and a holding in the four- or five-figure range, the price of the insurance lies in the per-mille range. It pays off whenever you are using this route for the first time, whenever you have newly created the destination address, or whenever the crypto asset exists on several chains according to our analysis.

What matters is that the test amount lies above the other side's minimum deposit. Many exchanges do not credit amounts below their threshold, and then you have no misdirected transfer but no confirmation either. Wait for the credit as well, not merely the confirmation on the chain. Only the credit proves that the receiving side really carries the chain.

Anyone taking their holding off the exchange anyway should think a step further at this point. A transfer to a wallet of your own does not dissolve the network question, but it moves it into your hands; which devices and programs come into consideration for that is covered in the hardware wallet comparison and in the software wallet comparison.

Memo and Tag: The Second Common Source of Error in a Transfer

Not every misdirected transfer goes back to the network. With some crypto assets the receiving side additionally requires a second entry, called a memo, a tag or a destination tag depending on the chain. That entry assigns the transfer to your account within the exchange, because many customers there share the same deposit address.

If the entry is missing, the balance does land on an address the exchange controls, but with no assignment to you. The way back then runs through support and is an application, not an entitlement. Affected assets include XRP, Stellar and Cosmos Hub, along with some exchanges on deposits to their own chains.

Caught by the Wrong Network: Which Routes Are Left

Once the transfer has gone out, everything turns on who holds the key to the receiving address. That yields three situations whose prospects differ markedly.

If the address belongs to your own wallet and that wallet also handles the chain the balance landed on, the case is harmless. You add the network in the wallet, along with the token's contract where necessary, and the holding appears. To move it on you then need some of that chain's fee currency.

If the address belongs to an exchange, everything hangs on its recovery procedure. Some providers offer one for a fee, many only for a limited list of chains, and some not at all. The application belongs submitted immediately in any case, with the transaction identifier, the time, the chosen network and the destination address.

If the address belongs to nobody who can be reached, there is no route. All that remains then is documentation. Record the process in full regardless, because for tax purposes a loss can only be presented with supporting evidence; how that looks in combination with a forced sale is something we described in our article on the forced sale at a crypto exchange.

What You Should Secure Immediately

Secure the transaction identifier, the screenshot of the withdrawal form showing the chosen network, and the exchange's confirmation email. You need these documents both for a recovery application and for the tax file. Anyone closing an account anyway should take the complete history along while access still exists.

When the Exchange Itself Closes: Order Before Haste

In a closure two deadlines come together that are often confused: the end of trading and the end of withdrawals. Depending on the provider, hours or weeks lie between them. For the network question it is the withdrawal cut-off that counts, because the transfer has to be initiated by then.

A fixed order makes sense. First you settle where the holding is to go and create the deposit address there. Then you check which networks both sides carry and look for the overlap. Only after that do you send the test amount, and last of all the remainder. What happens when this order can no longer be kept is something we described in the article Crypto Exchange Shutting Down: What to Do Now; for holdings with no remaining trading venue, what stands in the article on transferring delisted tokens applies in addition.

One special case deserves attention: some providers require proof that the destination address belongs to you before the withdrawal. That costs additional time, which is missing when a deadline is tight. We gathered the requirements for it in the article on proof of ownership for your own wallet.

What the Network Choice Means for Tax

A transfer between your own addresses is not a sale and triggers no tax in itself. The holding period runs on. That applies regardless of the network you send over.

Two points remain to be observed all the same. The network fee is not to be treated identically for tax purposes in every case; we broke the question down in the article on sending bitcoin between wallets. And a switch between an original and its wrapped issue on another chain is not mere transport, because a different asset comes into being in the process. Anyone taking that route should settle the classification beforehand rather than at the tax return.

For record-keeping the same applies in both cases: every movement needs a date, an amount, an address and a network. Anyone using several chains loses that overview quickly, and a portfolio tracker with a tax function takes the assignment off your hands.

Sending Crypto Without a Misdirected Transfer: What to Take Away

1. Before every withdrawal, check whether your crypto asset exists on several chains. For 51 of the 100 largest that is the case, and the network selector in the form then decides between arrival and loss. If you lack a reliable destination address, set one up beforehand, for instance at one of the regulated crypto exchanges with EU authorisation.
2. Look the network up in the receiving wallet and send a test amount. The receiving side dictates the chain, and only the credit proves that the route carries. Anyone taking a holding into their own custody will find the matching devices in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document every movement with the network and the transaction identifier. You need those entries for a recovery application just as much as for the tax file. The running assignment across several chains is handled by a portfolio tracker with a tax function.

To place our own analysis in context: the basis was the public data sets of the CoinGecko programming interface, retrieved on August 26, 2026. The network rule itself stands in Kraken's withdrawal guide, which expressly names the permanent loss that follows from an unsuitable network.

(As of August 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The deadline that Cardano's self-governance is hanging on right now does not fall on September 1. It falls on September 6, 2026, at around 21:45 UTC. By then a governance action has to be ratified on chain that fills four of the seven seats on the constitutional committee. If that does not happen, the committee shrinks to three members and drops below the minimum size the protocol requires. From that moment on it can no longer confirm any governance action. This piece sets out what is actually happening, where the vote stands, and what you as an ADA holder can genuinely do in the days that remain.

Cardano Constitutional Committee: What Really Expires on September 6, 2026

Every governance action on Cardano has a fixed lifespan. The protocol parameter govActionLifetime is set to six epochs: if an action is not ratified within that window, it lapses with nothing to replace it, and the 100,000 ADA deposit returns to the submitting address.

The action at issue here is of the type NewCommittee. It was submitted in epoch 646 and carries epoch 653 as its expiry mark. An on-chain query of our own through the public Koios interface on August 27, 2026 at 00:38 UTC shows it still open: neither ratified_epoch nor enacted_epoch nor expired_epoch carries a value.

The exact window can be calculated from the chain tip. Epoch 651 began on August 22, 2026 at 21:44:51 UTC, and an epoch on Cardano lasts exactly five days. That places epoch 653 between September 1, 2026, 21:44:51 UTC, and September 6, 2026, 21:44:51 UTC. The deadline is therefore a piece of chain mechanics that runs down on its own. No editorial calendar governs it, and nobody can move it.

Four of the Seven Seats Expire: What the Constitutional Committee on Cardano Actually Does

The constitutional committee is a body of elected members whose only task in a governance action is to check whether a proposal is compatible with the Cardano constitution. It does not comment on the merits of a proposal; its sole yardstick is constitutionality.

On-chain governance means that the rules of self-governance sit in the protocol itself and every decision is recorded as a transaction on the blockchain. On Cardano that has applied to all governance actions since the move into the Conway era. There is no parallel body that could decide around the chain.

The committee is therefore the third chamber alongside the delegated representatives and the stake pool operators. Most governance actions need the approval of two or three of these groups, and the committee is involved in almost all of them.

The current line-up can be read straight off the chain. It lists eight entries, one of them marked resigned, meaning that member stepped down voluntarily. Of the seven remaining active members, four carry expiration epoch 653 and three carry expiration epoch 726. That is the figure at issue: four of the seven seats expire in the same epoch in which the renewal action lapses.

Why the Reports Say September 1 and What the Chain Says

Practically every German-language report on this subject names September 1 as the cut-off. That is understandable but imprecise: September 1 is the start of epoch 653, not its end. Anyone going by that date gives away five days.

The difference is not academic. Five days is a full epoch on Cardano, and the movement in the vote count over the past week shows that double-digit percentage points can accumulate in that span. Give up on September 1 and you give up an epoch too early.

One qualification belongs here, and I am not smoothing it over: what I measured was the expiration field of the governance action together with the epoch boundaries taken from the chain tip. Whether the ledger discards an action at the beginning or at the end of its expiration epoch is a question of ledger semantics that I have not worked through myself. The window between September 1 and September 6 is certain; the later date is the conservative reading.

Governance Standstill Explained: What Happens if the Committee Falls Below Five Members

The protocol parameter committeeMinSize is set to five. That figure has the standing of a hard ledger rule, not of a recommendation.

CIP-1694, the underlying standard, spells out the consequence unambiguously: if the number of non-expired committee members falls below the minimum size, the constitutional committee can no longer ratify governance actions. Only those actions that manage without committee votes can still proceed.

Governance standstill therefore does not mean the blockchain halts. Blocks continue to be produced, transactions confirmed, staking rewards paid out. What comes to a stop is the administration of the network: parameter changes, treasury withdrawals and the initiation of a hard fork all require the committee's approval.

Two types of action manage without it, and both are aimed at the committee itself: the no-confidence motion and the action that installs a new body. That is the built-in emergency brake. The way out of a standstill therefore runs through the very same vote that is currently not getting through, only under time pressure and by way of a fresh submission with a fresh deposit.

The On-Chain Vote Count: 51.68 Percent Among DReps, 18.16 Percent Among Stake Pool Operators

The figures below come from a query of our own on the Koios interface on August 27, 2026 at 00:38 UTC, epoch 651. They shift with every vote cast; anyone who wants to look them up runs the same query again.

The direction is right, the pace is an open question. The trade publication CryptoSlate still reported 32.46 percent approval among DReps for August 17. An on-chain measurement by this desk on August 24 produced 39.52 percent. On August 27 the chain shows 51.68 percent. That amounts to roughly 19 percentage points in ten days.

Whether that will be enough cannot responsibly be forecast, and both readings are defensible. The optimistic calculation sees an accelerating pace and around fifteen points still missing with ten days to go. The sceptical one looks at the stake pool operators: more than thirty points are missing there, and that group has moved considerably more slowly so far.

The 67 and 51 Percent Thresholds: How a Governance Action Is Ratified on Cardano

Both thresholds sit on the chain as protocol parameters and can be read off it. For a committee change under normal conditions, dvt_committee_normal stands at 0.67 and pvt_committee_normal at 0.51.

Stake pool operators are the operators of the nodes that produce blocks on Cardano. In governance they form a chamber of their own with a threshold of their own; their voting weight follows from how much stake is delegated to them.

Both thresholds have to be cleared at the same time. An action that would sail through among the delegated representatives while staying below 51 percent among the stake pool operators is not ratified. That second threshold is the larger one at present.

The count works in voting power, not in heads. A DRep with a great deal of ADA delegated to them weighs more heavily than one with little delegation. That is how 115 votes in favour against 3 votes opposed can still add up to no more than 51.68 percent.

What Delegating to Always Abstain Does to Your Voting Power

Always abstain is a predefined delegation option. Give your voting power to it and you remain registered for staking rewards, but under CIP-1694 your ADA expressly do not count towards active voting power.

The ADA token carries two functions at once: it is the means of payment on the network and at the same time the weight by which governance is counted. Anyone who holds the cryptocurrency automatically holds voting power, whether they use it or not.

And this is where the real obstacle to this vote lies. Around 9.75 billion ADA of voting power sits on always abstain among the DReps. At the stake pools, a further 10.51 billion ADA from 563 pools sit passively on the same option.

These amounts are not missing from the count; they have been taken out of it. The percentages above refer to active voting power, which is to say to whatever is left. Move your delegation from always abstain to an active DRep and you enlarge the denominator, which shifts those percentages.

The second option belongs in the picture as well: delegating to always no confidence does count towards active voting power, but it automatically casts a no to everything except a no-confidence motion. That is a deliberate vote against rather than an abstention.

What You as an ADA Holder Can Do Right Now

The honest answer first: if your coins are sitting on an exchange, you have no vote. Voting power attaches to the stake address in your own wallet, not to an account balance with a provider. Anyone who wants a say needs a wallet in self-custody.

Step 1: Check where your voting power is delegated

The common Cardano wallets have a governance section of their own. It shows whether your voting power points to a named DRep, to always abstain or to always no confidence. The community's official governance explorer carries the same information along with each DRep's voting record.

Step 2: Check whether your DRep is still active at all

The parameter drepActivity is set to twenty epochs, roughly a hundred days. A DRep who has not voted for that long counts as inactive, and the voting power delegated to them no longer counts towards active voting power. That is the most common quiet reason for a delegation running into the void.

Step 3: Change your delegation if that is what you want

Re-delegating costs network fees in the cent range and changes nothing about your staking: vote delegation and stake delegation are two separate processes. Your rewards carry on unchanged while you move your voting power. If you want to know how rewards are put together in the first place, the basics are in the comparison of staking platforms.

Becoming a DRep yourself is possible too, but it costs a deposit of 500 ADA. For most holders, delegating to an active representative is the more practical route.

Dijkstra Upgrade and Hard Fork: What a Standstill Means for Cardano's Next Upgrade

Cardano currently runs on protocol version 11, which can be read off in the epoch parameters. That version comes out of the van Rossem hard fork and is the basis the next set of rules builds on. The next major upgrade goes by the name Dijkstra and is meant to lift the network to protocol version 12 in a first phase, together with the Ouroboros Linear Leios scaling method. The development teams involved name the fourth quarter of 2026 as their target and point out expressly that this is a target corridor and not a fixed date.

The connection to the constitutional committee is direct: a hard fork on Cardano is initiated through a governance action of the type HardForkInitiation, and that action needs committee votes. A body below the minimum size cannot confirm it. The same applies to the parameter change through which the Dijkstra parameters are to be written into the constitution.

A governance standstill from September onwards would therefore reach beyond procedure and hit the network's upgrade schedule as well. How long it would last depends solely on how quickly a new renewal action is submitted and ratified.

Putting the Governance Risk in Context: What This Means for Staking and Custody of Your ADA

For the everyday life of an ADA holder, a standstill changes little at first. Staking carries on, rewards continue to be paid out, transactions are confirmed. What does change is the network's ability to react to problems: fee parameters, block sizes and treasury withdrawals are then fixed in place.

For assessing this cryptocurrency as an investment, this is one governance risk among several, and a different one from the risk of a technical fault. If your question is about the current valuation, the arguments are laid out in our stocktake, Is Cardano a Good Buy at Current Prices?

What this piece deliberately does not contain is any statement about how the market will react to one outcome or the other. The chain data says something about procedure and deadlines. About prices it says nothing.

Cardano Constitutional Committee: What to Take Away

1. Remember September 6, not September 1. The renewal action can still be ratified up to the end of epoch 653. Anyone holding ADA in self-custody should look into the governance section of their wallet during this period; the hardware for it is covered in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Check where your voting power sits. If it rests on always abstain or with a representative who has been inactive for more than twenty epochs, it does not count. Re-delegating costs a matter of cents and leaves your staking rewards untouched, as the comparison of staking platforms shows.
3. Keep procedural risk separate from the price question. A governance standstill blocks upgrades and treasury withdrawals, not block production. If you are drawing conclusions from it for your own choice of provider, work with the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

The rules at issue here are publicly available to read: the Cardano constitution in its German version and the governance standard CIP-1694, the source of the rule on the committee's minimum size.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Solana traded at $109.41 on 27 August at 17:08 UTC, its highest level of the year. Bitcoin was hovering just below $80,000 at the same time. For the first sustained stretch in months, the larger asset is not setting the pace. The timing is not a coincidence. Solana's first formal on-chain governance vote closed at roughly 15:30 UTC on 27 August, at the end of epoch 1023. SOL cleared $109 within about two hours of that deadline, taking out the $102.70 level that had rejected it a day earlier.

How far has Solana actually run?

$SOL has gained roughly 46% since mid-August, rising from near $75 to above $109.

The move has three distinct phases visible on the chart. Through late July and the first half of August, SOL held a tight range around $75, drifting slightly lower into the 7 August low. From 9 to 18 August it ground upward to about $78, still without much conviction. Then on 19 August the character of the move changed completely: an almost vertical leg carried SOL from the high $70s into the $90s within days.

That third phase is what most traders are reacting to. The 7-day gain sat at 31.87% as of 25 August, with a 30-day move near 35.6%. Both figures are now higher after today's push.

It is worth being precise about what got broken. SOL briefly touched $102.88 on 26 August and was immediately rejected, falling back to the mid-$90s while leveraged longs took $17.51 million in liquidations in a single day. Resistance around $102.70 marked a 13-week high. Today's move through $109 is the second attempt at that level, and this time it held.

Is Solana really outperforming Bitcoin?

Yes, on both the weekly and monthly view, though the gap is narrower than it feels.

Over the seven days to 25 August, Solana rose about 27% against Bitcoin's 23%. On 26 August, SOL gained 1.5% while $Bitcoin lost 0.2% and slipped back below $79,000. Today's move widens that spread further.

The nuance worth holding onto is that this is not capital leaving Bitcoin for Solana. On 24 August, US-listed Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and Hyperliquid products drew nearly $192.6 million in combined demand. Bitcoin ETFs alone took $208.9 million that day, following roughly $1.6 billion the previous week. Both assets are absorbing inflows at the same time.

That distinction matters for how you read the ratio. A genuine rotation means money moving out of one asset and into another. What is happening here looks more like fresh capital arriving across the board, with Solana capturing a disproportionate share of it relative to its size. The outperformance is real. The rotation framing is not, at least not yet.

What did the governance vote actually decide?

Three proposals went to a stake-weighted vote between 22 and 27 August, two of which would tighten SOL supply meaningfully.

This is the substance behind the price move, and it is the part most of the commentary is skipping.

• SGP-0001, the Solana Constitution. Ratifies a canonical governance framework and activates Solana's on-chain governance system, svmgov.
• SGP-0002, faster disinflation. Doubles the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%. Under SIMD-0550, this would cut future issuance by roughly 18.9 million SOL over six years, worth around $1.7 billion at current prices.
• SGP-0003, fee restructuring. SIMD-0553 proposes a fixed inclusion fee of 2,500 lamports per transaction, with a resource component scaling to computational demand and burned rather than paid out. This could lift daily burns from roughly 648 SOL toward 9,000, close to a fourteenfold increase.

Two caveats deserve more weight than they are getting. First, an approving vote only green-lights development. Technical implementation, testing and on-chain activation all follow separately through the SIMD process, so nothing changes about SOL's supply the moment the vote closes. Second, Solana Company, listed on Nasdaq as HSDT, backed the constitution but voted against both the faster disinflation and the fee changes. When a major stakeholder splits its vote that way, the supply-shock narrative is less unanimous than the price action suggests.

Do the three technical claims hold up?

Partly, and one of them cuts both ways.

Three claims are circulating alongside this move: that SOL/BTC hit a seven-month high, that RSI broke out of a five-year downtrend, and that SOL bounced from support held since 2021. All three come from chart reading rather than reported data, so treat them as one analyst's interpretation rather than established fact.

The SOL/BTC observation is directionally consistent with the price data. At $109.41 against Bitcoin near $79,000, the ratio sits around 0.00138, and SOL last traded above $100 in February 2026. Whether that constitutes a clean seven-month high depends on where you measure Bitcoin, and we have not independently verified the exact reading.

The support claim rests on a trendline drawn from 2021. SOL/BTC has been in a broad downtrend since mid-2021, so a bounce from a level with that much history would be meaningful if it holds. It also cannot be confirmed from reported data, and trendlines drawn across five years are unusually sensitive to where you place them.

The RSI claim is the one that needs care, because it points in two directions at once. A breakout from a long-term RSI downtrend is a momentum signal. But the same indicator on the 14-day timeframe recently read 84.31, and touched roughly 79 during the 26 August rejection. Both readings are deep in overbought territory. Anyone citing RSI as evidence of strength here should also be citing it as evidence of exhaustion, because it is the same number.

Is the ETF bid real money?

This is the most solid part of the case, because it is reported rather than inferred.

US spot Solana ETFs took $33.5 million on 24 August, the largest single-day inflow since December 2025 and the biggest of the year to date. That extended the streak to five consecutive sessions and pushed cumulative net inflows to a record $1.22 billion.

The on-chain picture supports it. Solana processed 4.2 billion transactions in July. Stablecoins on the network sit around $15.94 billion, with weekly DEX volume near $19.74 billion, and tokenized assets on Solana are approaching $4 billion. Galaxy Digital launched SOL-backed lending on 26 August, letting holders borrow against staked SOL without selling, which adds a channel for holding rather than rotating out.

Corporate treasury demand is present too. Forward Industries holds over 6.9 million SOL and runs its own validator.

What could break this?

The overbought reading, the gap between voting and shipping, and Bitcoin itself.

The most immediate risk is positioning. An RSI in the 80s after a 46% run is the textbook setup for a sharp unwind, and yesterday's $17.51 million in long liquidations showed how quickly it happens when a breakout fails. The first attempt at $102.88 was rejected within hours.

The second risk is the gap between a vote passing and supply actually changing. If traders bought a supply shock that will not touch circulating SOL for months, the catalyst is spent while the fundamentals are unchanged. Votes that only authorise development are the easiest kind to overprice.

On the downside, the levels to watch are $94.42, the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement, then $88.18, and the 200-day EMA near $81.15 below that.

The third risk is the one nobody controls. Bitcoin needs to hold the $75,000 to $76,000 zone. High-beta assets that have run 46% do not fall proportionally when the market turns, they fall harder, and SOL currently carries elevated funding. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote on 28 August, which puts a macro event directly in front of a heavily positioned market.

Solana is outperforming Bitcoin, and unlike most claims of that kind this month, it has identifiable reasons behind it: record ETF demand, genuine network usage, and a credible supply argument. Whether the outperformance survives contact with an overbought chart and a governance process that has only just begun is a separate question.

Nine straight sessions have brought in $1.4 billion, with Thursday marking the funds' strongest day in 10 months.

Two majors proposals are set to pass, its leading DATs are back, and Schwab is offering SOL to its clients—quite the setup for Solana.

The 20.21 BTC was linked to marketplaces running between 2016 and 2019, and the man who held it died before it was forfeited.

HMRC's first breakdown shows 17,600 people declared £1.38 billion, most of them under 55 and 87% of them men.

Rita Lin vacated the supply chain designation and issued a permanent injunction, refusing the government even a seven-day stay.

Binance adds MARA and 4 TradFi assets as a massive flight from broad ETFs triggers a historic $87 million single-stock risk wave.

A collection of fixes for Single Asset Vaults, the Lending Protocol, Automated Market Makers and pseudo-accounts eyes September activation.

XRP loses the race to smaller assets on ETF market right now.

The majority of Bitcoin's circulating supply is back in profit after its recent price breakout saw investors recover their losses. However, there is still about $617 billion in Bitcoin investments at a loss.

Dogecoin (DOGE) forms a bullish flag on the hourly chart, teasing a 30% rally toward $0.115 if buyers break the critical $0.090 resistance.

Key Highlights

• Pershing Square Capital’s recent 13-F disclosure reveals three major additions: Netflix, Visa, and Mastercard, bringing total holdings to 14 stocks
• Netflix stock has declined 32% year-over-year, with current P/E of 26 compared to historical five-year average of 36
• Since its 2004 inception, Ackman’s fund has posted 16% annualized returns, outperforming the broader market’s 11% average
• Both Visa and Mastercard show P/E multiples of approximately 33, hovering at or beneath their five-year historical averages
• Digital currencies pose emerging competitive risks to traditional payment processors like Visa and Mastercard

In a significant portfolio reshuffling, Bill Ackman—the billionaire investor who leads Pershing Square Capital Management—has disclosed three notable acquisitions in his firm’s most recent 13-F regulatory filing. The activist investor added streaming giant Netflix alongside payment processing powerhouses Visa and Mastercard to his famously concentrated 14-stock investment portfolio.

Netflix, Inc., NFLX

Since its January 2004 launch, Pershing Square has achieved remarkable cumulative net returns totaling 2,644%. This translates to approximately 16% in annualized gains, significantly surpassing the stock market’s 11% average performance during the identical timeframe.

The fund’s top holdings currently feature Uber valued at $2.5 billion, Microsoft at $2.3 billion, and Amazon at $2.0 billion. Among the new additions, Netflix represents a $934 million position, while both Visa and Mastercard each account for roughly $1.1 billion in market value.

Ackman’s investment philosophy centers on identifying undervalued companies and maintaining extended holding periods. This value-oriented, patient approach appears to inform his rationale for these three fresh portfolio entries.

Netflix: A 32% Decline Creates Value Opportunity?

The streaming platform’s shares have experienced approximately 32% depreciation over the trailing twelve months. Netflix currently commands a P/E multiple of 26, substantially lower than its five-year historical average of 36.

Data from GuruFocus indicates Netflix achieves a GF Score of 90 out of 100, earning maximum ratings in both profitability and growth categories. The platform’s calculated intrinsic value stands at $101.08, while recent trading activity occurred near $79.84, implying the stock potentially trades at a 21% markdown to fair value.

The entertainment company boasts a global subscriber base exceeding 300 million and continues pursuing international expansion opportunities. Management has introduced advertising-supported subscription options as an additional revenue generation strategy.

While fundamental metrics appear robust, the stock registers a momentum score of merely 2 out of 10, indicating near-term headwinds. Corporate insiders have also executed over $49 million in stock sales during the most recent three-month period.

Visa and Mastercard: Established Leaders Facing Emerging Challenges

Visa currently trades at a P/E multiple of 33, approximating its five-year historical average of 32. The payment processor’s shares have appreciated 17% year-over-year and have delivered average annual returns approaching 22% across fifteen years.

Mastercard similarly commands a P/E ratio of 33, modestly beneath its five-year average of 37. The company’s long-term performance mirrors Visa’s with 22% average annual returns over fifteen years, though recent performance shows just 1.6% appreciation over the past year.

These two corporations handle the overwhelming majority of worldwide electronic payment transactions and are positioned as long-term beneficiaries of the ongoing digitization of financial commerce.

Cryptocurrency represents an identified competitive threat to both payment networks. Additionally, regulatory authorities may intensify oversight given the duopolistic market position these two companies maintain within the payments ecosystem.

According to Forbes, Ackman’s personal net worth has recently climbed to $8.9 billion.

The post Billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Snaps Up Netflix (NFLX), Visa (V), and Mastercard (MA) appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• BYD second-quarter profit rises 30% as overseas EV sales strengthen margins.
• Overseas vehicle sales jump nearly 68%, giving BYD stronger earnings support.
• BYDDF falls 1.98% even as quarterly profit returns to year-over-year growth.
• China demand stays weak, but export growth helps improve BYD profitability.
• BYD boosts R&D and global expansion as overseas markets drive stronger margins.

BYD Company Limited (BYDDF) fell 1.98% to $11.40 after the automaker released mixed first-half results. However, second-quarter profit returned to growth after four straight declines, supported by strong overseas vehicle sales. Export momentum improved margins, while weak Chinese demand and fierce price competition continued to limit broader earnings growth.

BYD Company Limited, BYDDF

BYD Second-Quarter Profit Returns to Growth

BYD reported second-quarter net profit of 8.2 billion yuan, up 30% from a year earlier. The increase ended four consecutive quarterly declines and reversed the 55% profit drop reported in the first quarter. However, the result missed major bank forecasts, which had indicated average second-quarter profit growth near 48%.

Second-quarter revenue declined 3.2% to 194.6 billion yuan, extending the company’s revenue contraction for another quarter. Still, the decline improved from the 12% fall recorded during the first three months of 2026. A stronger overseas sales mix supported margins and helped profit rise despite lower quarterly revenue.

For the first half, BYD generated 344.82 billion yuan in revenue and 12.33 billion yuan in net profit. Revenue fell 7.13% year over year, while attributable net profit declined 20.54% during the period. Meanwhile, operating cash flow rose 17.3% to 37.34 billion yuan, and cash reserves reached 167.4 billion yuan.

Overseas EV Sales Surge Nearly 68%

BYD exported about 792,000 vehicles in the first half, rising nearly 68% from a year earlier. Exports represented about 44% of total vehicle sales, reducing the company’s dependence on its weaker domestic market. Second-quarter overseas sales reached 471,091 units, up 82.46% year over year and 46.68% from the previous quarter.

Export growth also supported profitability, with first-half gross margin rising to 18.85% from 18.01% last year. BYD’s overseas business posted a 22% gross margin as operating revenue from those markets increased 34%. That improvement helped offset weaker pricing in China and rising costs linked to the company’s global expansion.

BYD continued expanding in Europe and Southeast Asia and recently entered Japan’s popular mini-car segment. Meanwhile, combined sales from Denza, Fang Cheng Bao, and Yangwang increased 61% during the first half. Those premium brands represented 12.8% of passenger vehicle sales, supporting a stronger product mix.

China Competition Keeps Pressure on BYDDF Stock

BYD sold 1,808,511 new energy vehicles in the first half, down 15.72% from a year earlier. However, second-quarter sales declined only 3.24%, compared with a 30.01% drop during the first quarter. July sales then rose 21.76% to 419,211 vehicles, marking the third consecutive month of annual growth.

Chinese demand remained weak as lower trade-in support, property weakness, and income concerns affected vehicle purchases. At the same time, heavy price competition continued to pressure domestic margins across the electric vehicle market. Overseas expansion also increased spending on tariffs, marketing, research, logistics, and longer inventory cycles.

BYD invested 28.9 billion yuan in research and development during the first half, exceeding twice its net profit. The company has now spent more than 270 billion yuan on research while advancing battery and charging technologies. BYD also reached 10,000 flash charging stations, while energy storage orders remain scheduled through 2028.

The post BYD Company Limited (BYDDF) Stock: Profit Rebounds 30% as Overseas EV Sales Surge 68% appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• BYD delivered its strongest quarterly earnings in three years, with Q2 net profit climbing 30% to reach 8.2 billion yuan
• Despite positive profit growth, the 30% increase fell short of the 48% analyst consensus, triggering a stock selloff
• First-half revenue declined 7.13% year-over-year to RMB344.8 billion amid challenging domestic market conditions
• International shipments surged 71% during H1, exceeding 790,000 units and representing 44% of the company’s total sales volume
• The automaker aims to operate 20,000 FLASH Charging stations across China by December 31, significantly expanding from the 7,018 locations operational at mid-year

Shares of BYD retreated on Thursday even as the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer announced its strongest quarterly profitability in three years. The stock has declined approximately 4.5% since the beginning of the year. The underwhelming earnings performance relative to expectations was the primary catalyst behind the market’s negative response.

BYD Company Limited, BYDDY

The company’s second-quarter net profit reached 8.2 billion yuan (equivalent to $1.22 billion), representing a 30% increase compared to the same period last year. Wall Street analysts had projected a more robust 48% growth rate, creating a significant shortfall that disappointed investors and drove selling pressure.

Quarterly revenue decreased 3.2% to 194.6 billion yuan during Q2. This decline followed an even more pronounced 12% contraction in the first quarter, extending the company’s revenue downturn to four consecutive quarters.

Looking at the full first-half performance, total revenue contracted 7.13% to RMB344.8 billion. Net profit attributable to shareholders fell 20.54% to RMB12.3 billion during the same period.

Management attributed the softer results to sluggish demand within China’s domestic market and intense pricing pressure across the industry. Decreased government trade-in incentives, a struggling real estate sector, and cautious consumer spending behavior have collectively suppressed vehicle demand throughout the Chinese market.

International Markets Drive Volume Growth

The company’s international performance provided a notable positive offset. BYD’s export volumes soared 71% during the first half, surpassing 790,000 units shipped to international markets. These overseas sales now constitute 44% of the company’s total volume.

Gross margin metrics showed improvement, reaching 18.85% in H1 compared to 18.01% in the prior-year period. Company management attributed this margin expansion primarily to its expanding international vehicle operations.

BYD continues to broaden its international manufacturing presence through new production facilities in Brazil and Hungary. The automaker also introduced an affordably-priced electric vehicle model in the Japanese market last month.

However, industry observers have identified potential headwinds. Escalating tariffs in certain international markets, combined with increasing expenditures on marketing initiatives and research and development, may constrain the profitability potential from the company’s global expansion strategy.

“Overseas markets are providing growth, but higher tariffs in some countries, together with rising marketing and R&D costs, are potentially limiting the profit upside,” said Yale Zhang, managing director at Shanghai-based research firm Automotive Foresight.

Aggressive Charging Network Expansion

BYD is pursuing an ambitious charging infrastructure buildout. The automaker has set a target of 20,000 operational FLASH Charging stations throughout China by the end of this year, representing a nearly threefold increase from the 7,018 stations operating at the conclusion of June.

Additionally, the company has outlined plans to establish 6,000 FLASH Charging locations in international markets as part of its worldwide expansion strategy.

Management anticipates its smart terminal division will experience a structural turnaround beginning next year, supported by new product launch cycles and technology upgrades from existing customers.

The investment community maintains an overall optimistic outlook on the stock. The consensus analyst recommendation stands at buy, with 28 of 31 analysts assigning either buy or strong buy ratings. The median 12-month price objective sits at HK$126.00, implying approximately 37% upside from the August 28 closing price of HK$91.95.

Shares are currently valued at 15 times projected forward earnings, down from a forward P/E ratio of 18 recorded three months earlier.

Chinese regulatory authorities identified BYD and several other automotive manufacturers in a compliance inspection report highlighting documentation discrepancies, according to findings published on August 28.

The post BYD (BYDDY) Stock Drops After Quarterly Earnings Miss Analyst Targets appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Walmart shares started trading at $102.63 Friday, representing a decline of nearly 24% from the 52-week peak of $135.15 reached in May.
• Second quarter comparable U.S. sales registered 2.6%, falling short of the 3.8% consensus forecast, triggering a 9.2% single-day decline.
• The company’s advertising segment expanded 38% annually, with Walmart Connect posting 43% growth, and ad plus membership income representing approximately one-third of total operating profit.
• Following the recent selloff, 29 out of 32 Wall Street analysts maintain Buy ratings, with a consensus price target of $129.57 suggesting roughly 26% potential upside.
• Shares currently trade at approximately 36x forward earnings, significantly higher than the sector’s 15x average, though down from the 46x multiple before first quarter results.

Walmart (WMT) shares have experienced significant turbulence over recent months. Following a peak at $135.15 per share and temporarily achieving a $1 trillion market capitalization, the retail giant has seen substantial value erosion. Friday’s opening price of $102.63 placed the company’s market value around $816 billion.

Micron Technology, Inc., MU

A pair of disappointing quarterly reports triggered the decline. May’s first quarter showed solid revenue expansion of 7.3% compared to the prior year, yet earnings per share projections fell below expectations. Shares retreated approximately 7% following that announcement. The second quarter release on August 20 produced an even sharper response.

Comparable sales for U.S. operations registered 2.6%, substantially below the 3.8% Wall Street consensus. Third quarter EPS guidance ranging from $0.62 to $0.64 also disappointed versus the $0.68 analyst estimate. WMT plummeted 9.2% during that trading session, erasing over $80 billion in shareholder value.

However, the comparable sales figure requires additional perspective. Prescription drug pricing regulation changes negatively impacted the health and wellness segment. Excluding this factor, comparable sales measured closer to 3.4%. While still missing expectations, the underlying performance proved less severe than surface-level metrics suggested.

Second quarter earnings per share reached $0.81, surpassing the $0.74 analyst consensus. Total revenue of $187.94 billion exceeded the $186.64 billion forecast, representing 5.9% year-over-year growth. The company’s return on equity stood at 21.83%.

Digital Operations Continue Strong Momentum

Although comparable sales metrics dominated market attention, Walmart’s digital segments demonstrated robust performance. Worldwide e-commerce revenue expanded 23% year-over-year. Domestic e-commerce sales increased 24%. Marketplace transactions surged 52%, membership fee income advanced 17%, and store-fulfilled delivery services grew 43%.

The advertising division emerged as the clear winner. Total advertising income climbed 38%, with Walmart Connect specifically posting 43% growth. Industry analysts estimate gross profit margins for the advertising operation approach 70%. Combined advertising and membership revenue now generates approximately one-third of Walmart’s total operating income, despite constituting a small portion of overall sales.

Walmart Connect operates on a simple but effective framework. Consumer packaged goods brands pay for prominent placement when customers search the platform. Each transaction generates dual revenue streams—retail margin from the purchase plus advertising fees from brands seeking visibility.

Premium Valuation Persists Despite Compression

WMT shares remain expensive by traditional metrics. Trading near 36x projected earnings, the stock commands a significant premium over the industry’s 15x average and the company’s historical five-year average of approximately 30x. Prior to first quarter results, the multiple reached 46x. Before second quarter earnings, it stood at 38x. Two consecutive valuation resets have provided some relief.

Despite recent weakness, Wall Street sentiment remains overwhelmingly positive. Among 32 analysts tracking WMT, 29 maintain Buy recommendations.

The consensus price target stands at $129.57, indicating approximately 26% appreciation potential from present levels. Jefferies maintained its Buy rating with a $120 objective. Both Guggenheim and Mizuho established $130 targets.

Regarding insider activity, Executive Vice President Daniel Danker divested 50,644 shares on August 26 at an average price of $105.35, executed through a predetermined 10b5-1 trading arrangement to satisfy tax liabilities associated with vesting stock compensation.

The post Walmart (WMT) Stock Down 24% From Peak as Ad Revenue Surges 38% appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Shares of SK Hynix increased 2.3% to reach $161.61 during Thursday’s trading session, fueled by positive analyst sentiment and robust AI memory market expectations tied to Nvidia.
• The South Korean semiconductor giant officially launched construction on its $4 billion+ manufacturing complex in West Lafayette, Indiana, marking its inaugural U.S.-based high-bandwidth memory packaging operation.
• The West Lafayette facility is projected to create approximately 1,000 direct positions, with cleanroom operations beginning by October 2028 and full-scale production commencing in late 2029.
• Federal support includes up to $458 million in grants and $500 million in loan commitments via the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act program.
• Analysts maintain a consensus “Buy” recommendation with a mean price target of $248, though challenges from Chinese manufacturers and potential profit-taking pose near-term headwinds.

Shares of SK Hynix advanced 2.3% during Thursday’s session, closing at $161.61 after reaching an intraday peak of $164.73. The previous session saw the stock finish at $158.02.

SK hynix Inc., SKHY

The upward momentum followed a favorable analyst revision and heightened enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence memory chip demand, bolstered by encouraging forecasts from Nvidia.

The headline event was the ceremonial groundbreaking at SK Hynix’s forthcoming West Lafayette, Indiana manufacturing campus. The semiconductor manufacturer intends to allocate over $4 billion to develop the 133.5-acre property.

This represents the company’s inaugural high-bandwidth memory packaging operation on American soil. During the ceremony, CEO Kwak Noh-Jung articulated the company’s vision to establish Indiana as a critical U.S. memory semiconductor center by the end of the decade.

The cleanroom facilities are slated to become operational by October 2028. Volume manufacturing of advanced HBM products is planned to commence during the latter half of 2029.

At full capacity, the campus is anticipated to support roughly 1,000 employees. Factoring in construction, ongoing operations, and supplier ecosystem development, the initiative could generate approximately 7,000 combined direct and indirect employment opportunities.

Semiconductor wafers manufactured at South Korean facilities will be transported to Indiana for advanced packaging and quality testing before distribution to American clients. SK Hynix indicated it is currently assessing over 100 potential suppliers for materials, components, and manufacturing equipment.

Federal incentives from the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act underpin the Indiana investment. SK Hynix has secured commitments for up to $458 million in direct grants alongside up to $500 million in financing through the initiative.

Wall Street Perspective

Market analysts express considerable optimism regarding SKHY. Recent coverage from Royal Bank of Canada, William Blair, UBS, Barclays, and Stifel Nicolaus predominantly features “Buy” or “Outperform” designations.

The average analyst price objective stands at $248, representing significant upside from Thursday’s levels. UBS maintains a $204 target, Stifel Nicolaus established a $240 objective, while Barclays adjusted its target downward from $330 to $300 yet retained an “Overweight” stance.

Nvidia’s commitment to approximately $279 billion in memory product procurement has emerged as a primary catalyst for bullish sentiment. Bank of America highlighted constrained supply dynamics and prospective long-term supply contracts as fundamental drivers for its positive outlook.

Potential Challenges

Despite positive momentum, SK Hynix confronts several obstacles. China’s YMTC alongside other regional memory manufacturers are intensifying competitive pressures, potentially impacting pricing structures going forward.

The substantial planned capacity expansion also elevates capital expenditure demands. Some market participants are securing gains in what has evolved into a concentrated position, with memory semiconductor stocks showing divergence from broader chip industry trends.

SK Hynix delivered earnings per share of $8.48 in its latest quarterly report, generating revenue of $51.19 billion. Current analyst projections estimate full-year EPS of $25.48.

The post SK Hynix (SKHY) Stock Climbs 2.3% Following $4B Indiana Manufacturing Plant Groundbreaking appeared first on Blockonomi.

XRP has staged a sharp recovery from its August lows against USDT, breaking above the descending large channel and reclaiming key moving-average levels. However, the rally has now reached a major resistance area around $1.50, while momentum is beginning to cool down.

The broader structure is therefore improving, but the token still needs a sustained breakout above this supply zone. Meanwhile, the XRP/BTC pair is also lagging behind, which is a notable development to watch.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

XRP spent much of the year trading inside a broad descending structure, with the descending trendlines defining the dominant downtrend. The latest move represents a significant structural shift, as price surged from around $1.00 and decisively broke above the upper descending trendline as well as the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, located around $1.15 and $1.30 levels, respectively.

The breakout pushed XRP to a local high with a long wick near $1.70 before the price retraced sharply. XRP is currently trading around $1.41, meaning the initial breakout impulse has already undergone a meaningful correction.

The main resistance is now concentrated between $1.45 and $1.55. This zone previously acted as a major supply area and has once again capped the recovery. A daily close above $1.55 would strengthen the bullish case and could open the way toward the larger $1.85-$1.90 resistance zone.

On the downside, the 100-day and 200-day moving averages are the dynamic support levels to watch. Holding above them would keep the bullish reversal thesis intact.

Momentum has also improved dramatically. The RSI surged above 75 during the breakout, entering overbought territory, but has since pulled back toward the mid-70s. This cooling is not necessarily bearish by itself, as it could simply indicate that the market is digesting the vertical rally. However, continued RSI deterioration while XRP remains below $1.50 would increase the risk of a deeper retracement.

The BTC Pair

The XRP/BTC chart provides an important additional perspective. XRP also broke sharply higher against Bitcoin after spending months inside a descending channel. The move briefly lifted the pair from roughly 1,500 sats to above 2,000 sats, although a substantial portion of that advance has already been retraced.

The immediate resistance is still around 2,000 sats, where horizontal supply and the upper boundary of the descending channel converge. A sustained breakout above this region would indicate that XRP is beginning to outperform Bitcoin on a more structural basis, which could lead to a structural rally for Ripple in the coming months.

However, as already mentioned, the recent spike above roughly 2,000 sats was rejected, producing a long upper wick and subsequent weakness. The pair has subsequently fallen back below its 200-day moving average, which is located just above 1,800 sats.

This makes the current area important, as holding around 1,700 sats and above the 100-day moving average could allow XRP/BTC to stabilize and attempt another attack on resistance, whereas losing this region would expose the deeper fair-value-gap area below 1,700 sats.

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP Looks Bullish Against USD but the BTC Pair Tells a Different Story appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Circle’s Internet Group will put its name and USDC branding on the front of Chelsea Football Club’s shirts from the 2026/27 season, a principal partnership announced on Friday that makes its on-pitch debut on Sunday, August 30, when the men’s side hosts Brighton in their first home Premier League match of the campaign.

The agreement covers the Men’s, Women’s, and Academy kits. Neither company disclosed the value or length of the deal, though Chelsea’s commercial executives had reportedly held out for £60 million to £65 million a year for the slot; reports and rumors put the reduced asking price at around £45 million.

“We built USDC on the belief that money should work seamlessly for everyone everywhere, the way the internet does. Partnering with Chelsea connects us with a global sports community built on that exact same borderless vision,” said Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder and CEO of Circle.

Circle @ChelseaFC

USDC is coming to global football.

Circle is proud to partner with Chelsea FC, one of the most recognized football clubs in the world.

Beginning with the 2026/27 season, Circle and USDC will appear on the front of Chelsea’s Men’s, Women’s, and Academy… pic.twitter.com/RYgh9rtylg

— Circle (@circle) August 28, 2026

Shirt Front Almost Empty Since 2023

Interestingly, Chelsea last began a season with a front-of-shirt partner in 2022/23, the final year of telecoms firm Three’s contract.

Sports data company Infinite Athlete filled the slot for the remainder of 2023/24 in a deal ESPN put at £40 million, Dubai property developer DAMAC appeared late in 2024/25, and industrial AI firm IFS carried the shirt from February to the end of last season.

Chelsea opened the current campaign with a blank shirt front for a fourth consecutive year.

“Circle is changing how money moves around the world, and we’re changing what it means to be a global football club. This is more than a logo on a shirt, it represents a partner who’s building something,” said Todd Kline, President of Commercial at Chelsea FC.

The branding also reaches the women’s team as it moves into the 40,000-capacity Stamford Bridge. “We are excited to introduce Circle and USDC to the Chelsea Women family for our inaugural season at Stamford Bridge,” said Aki Mandhar, CEO of Chelsea FC Women.

USDC Circulation Tops $73 Billion

Circle reported $73.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of the second quarter, up 19% year over year, alongside $14.8 trillion in on-chain transaction volume for the three months. The company, which completed its IPO in the second quarter of 2025, is preparing a September 16 public mainnet launch for its Arc blockchain, with BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard among the founding validators.

Similarly, Tether, issuer of the rival USDT stablecoin, took a minority stake in Juventus and later lodged a binding all-cash offer for Exor’s 65.4% controlling stake in the Italian club, a buyout the holding company rejected within a day.

The post Circle Puts USDC on the Front of Chelsea’s Shirts in Principal Partnership appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Washington, United States, August 28th, 2026]

As prediction-market volume hits record highs and regulators circle, identically worded midterm questions are trading several points apart depending on the venue. Predictions.io now tracks 9,700+ markets across Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold in one place – with free fee and odds calculators so traders can see what a price actually costs them.

Prediction markets have never been bigger, or more contested. Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US together posted a record $50.59 billion in combined volume in July, with Kalshi accounting for roughly 74.5% of the total. In the same month, New York City opened a probe into both leading venues, a Washington judge ordered Kalshi to halt most wagers in the state, and the CFTC began an internal review of so-called “mention markets.”

Amid that scrutiny, a simpler question has gone largely unexamined: when two venues list the same question, do they agree on the answer?

Often, they do not. On identically worded midterm markets tracked by Predictions.io, “Blue tsunami in 2026?” was priced at 44.5% on Polymarket and 36.0% on Kalshi. “Blue wave in 2026?” showed 82.5% against 74.0%. Both gaps are 8.5 percentage points — on questions whose wording is identical on the two venues. Across a sample of directly comparable binary markets live on more than one venue, the median gap was more than four points, and nearly half of the pairs differed by five points or more. (Prices as of 05:08 UTC on 28 August 2026; both venues’ live prices are shown side by side on Predictions.io.)

Those gaps matter to anyone quoting a single number. A market priced at 44.5% on one venue and 36.0% on another does not have one “market-implied probability” – it has two, and which one gets cited is arbitrary unless the reader is told both.

“A single venue’s price is a data point. The spread between venues is the information. When the two biggest markets in the world disagree by seven points on the same sentence, that disagreement is the story – and nobody who runs one of those markets is in a position to report it.” said spokesperson of Predictions.io

Predictions.io aggregates markets from Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold, matching equivalent questions across venues so the same event can be compared directly. The platform currently tracks more than 9,700 event pages across 23 categories including US politics, economics, crypto, sport and geopolitics.

Alongside the comparison pages, Predictions.io publishes two free tools:

● Fee Calculator — enter any trade and see the fee, total outlay and effective all-in price on each venue, including Kalshi’s 0.07 × P × (1−P) taker formula and maker discount against Polymarket’s zero-fee standard markets.

https://predictions.io/tools/fee-calculator

● Odds Converter — convert American, decimal and fractional odds into implied probability and prediction-market prices, and see the vig-free line.

https://predictions.io/tools/odds-converter

A direct venue comparison is available at https://predictions.io/compare/polymarket-vs-kalshi, and live midterms markets at https://predictions.io/lobby/us-politics.

Predictions.io operates no market and takes no position in any contract. It is a data and comparison service, not an exchange, broker or investment adviser.

About Predictions.io

Predictions.io is an independent aggregator of prediction markets, bringing prices from Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold into a single view so the same question can be compared across venues. It publishes free tools for traders and journalists, including a cross-venue fee calculator and odds converter.

Users can learn more about Predictions.io here: https://predictions.io/

Predictions.io socials: https://bio.site/predictions.io

The post Same Election Question, Two Different Odds: Predictions.io Launches Free Cross-Venue Comparison Tools appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The broader cryptocurrency market has registered a solid uptick over the past week, with Solana (SOL) standing out as one of the biggest gainers.

Ethereum briefly climbed past $2,500, prompting analysts to turn even more bullish on the asset, while Bitcoin may not be out of the woods yet.

SOL’s Pump

Solana’s native token has soared by 40% over the past week, and earlier today (August 28), it jumped to almost $110, its highest level witnessed since January this year. As of this writing, it trades at around $105 (per CoinGecko), boasting a market capitalization of roughly $61 billion.

The improved condition of the crypto sector appears to be the main catalyst for the ascent, while rising institutional interest may also be a positive factor. According to SoSoValue, spot SOL ETFs have recorded eight consecutive green days; the last time this was observed was in May 2026. Another optimistic element is the return of the whales, some of whom spent millions of dollars to re-enter SOL’s ecosystem.

Analysts on X are predominantly bullish on the asset. Daan Crypto Trades claimed that everything “looks good” as long as the price remains above $98, whereas SKYLINE argued that it is only a matter of time before SOL rises beyond $150. X user Fuel is even more optimistic, envisioning an eventual explosion to $1,000.

Meanwhile, Sweep took a cautious tone, saying that a collapse to $70 remains possible. However, “after that, Solana will go parabolic,” he added. If you are curious to check additional SOL forecasts, take a look at our video here.

What’s Next for ETH?

Several hours ago, the second-largest cryptocurrency briefly surpassed $2,500 before slightly retreating below that level. That mark seems to be a major turning point, with X user Gerla suggesting that a clean break above could mark the beginning of a new bull run.

For his part, Ted claimed that a weekly close beyond $2,550 could be followed by a further pump to $3,000. The shrinking amount of ETH stored on exchanges supports the bullish outlook. According to Santiment, holders have withdrawn 1.4 million coins from centralized platforms since June, effectively decreasing immediate selling pressure.

Of course, there are some pessimists as well. X user Nonzee, who recently envisioned a short-term crash in BTC to $45,000, opined that ETH could nosedive to $1,500 before starting a fresh rally.

BTC in Danger

The primary cryptocurrency has been hovering in the $79,000-$81,000 range over the past few days, indicating a strong uptrend relative to levels at the beginning of the month.

Nonetheless, some market observers did not rule out a possible collapse ahead. Gerla believes that BTC must take a clean break above $82,000 or otherwise it risks falling below $60K. X user cyclop shared a similar thesis, claiming that if the asset fails to hold beyond $83,000, it could drop to $50,000 by November.

The analytics platform CryptoQuant is more optimistic, arguing that the current conditions may represent the early phase of a bull run. At the same time, the firm noted that the price needs a daily close above $83,000 for confirmation.

The post Solana’s (SOL) Strong Rally, The Latest Ethereum (ETH) Forecasts, and More: Bits Recap August 28 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin (BTC) is hovering near $80,000 with a $6.36 billion Deribit options expiry due today.

With roughly 81,000 contracts set to expire and max pain at $69,000, the setup could leave the OG cryptocurrency vulnerable to large moves as traders close, roll or hedge positions.

Bitcoin Options Expiration Puts $6.36B at the Center of Friday’s Trading

That expiry carries a 0.85 put/call ratio, meaning there are slightly more call contracts than puts. Calls become more prominent from about $66,000, with sizeable positions around $70,000, $72,000, $74,000 to $75,500, and $78,500 to $80,500.

Max-pain at the $69,000 level is the price at which the combined payout to option holders would theoretically be lowest. It does not mean Bitcoin will fall there, and dealer hedging can sometimes create a temporary pull toward that level as expiry approaches, although it is more a reference point than a firm magnet.

This settlement arrives after Bitcoin added more than $16,000 in less than a week, moving from a break above $65,000 to more than $81,000 before pulling back. CoinGecko data at the time of writing put Bitcoin about $300 below the $80,000 level, with the asset having gained slightly more than 1% in 24 hours, 6% over seven days, and 25% across the last month.

The options event is seen as capable of producing “sharp price swings” in either direction. If BTC holds near $80,000 or climbs, call holders stand to benefit, and dealer hedging could add buy pressure. If the selling takes hold, hedges could move the other way and deepen a decline toward $70,000 or below. But a quieter outcome is also possible if Bitcoin stays between roughly $75,000 and $80,000 while positions are closed or rolled.

Short Covering Leaves Bitcoin Rally Facing Test

Bitcoin’s latest move is also being questioned on the demand side. As CryptoPotato reported earlier, QCP Research said part of BTC’s recent rise came from short covering, with open interest falling as prices climbed. ETF inflows were nearing the 95th percentile of the past year, providing spot demand, but QCP warned that the rally could become fragile if short covering fades without enough new buying.

That leaves Friday’s expiry as a near-term test of an already extended move, although the options data does not predict where Bitcoin will settle.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about BTC’s latest move alongside what the current RSI reading suggests, take a look at this video.

The post Bitcoin Rally Faces a Massive $6.36B Options Expiry Test Today appeared first on CryptoPotato.