The failed vote highlights the ongoing regulatory uncertainty in crypto, impacting market stability and investor confidence significantly.

The post Bitcoin social volume spikes during failed CLARITY Act vote appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The merger positions Fortitude as a unique player in the crypto mining sector, potentially reshaping market dynamics with its Zcash focus.

The post Fortitude Mining Holdings names Jaime Leverton CEO ahead of NASDAQ merger appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The RBI's bond sales signal a strategic shift to stabilize borrowing costs, potentially impacting economic growth and currency stability.

The post Reserve Bank of India sells 500 billion rupees in bonds to drain massive liquidity surplus appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Singapore's export surge highlights its pivotal role in the AI supply chain, potentially reshaping global trade dynamics and partnerships.

The post Singapore’s electronics exports surge 131.8% as AI boom rewrites trade data appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Japan's investment in a US semiconductor fab could strengthen bilateral trade ties, boost tech collaboration, and reshape global chip supply chains.

The post Japan considers buying GlobalFoundries US fab with tariff funds appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Peter Schiff: “The Fed Has Already Lost The Battle Against Inflation” & BTC vs GOLD Debate

Peter Schiff says the bond market didn’t break recently, it broke in 2020, and everything since has been a slow unwind. Across this conversation with Grace Remington and Sean Hagan, he connects rising Treasury yields, the Fed’s expected rate decision, the dollar’s loss of purchasing power, and the central bank rush into gold. He argues that a stock selloff driven by higher rates would be deeply bearish for Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, and that political capital in Washington has already turned against it. The episode ends with Schiff and the hosts going head to head on whether anything actually backs Bitcoin.

00:00 — Peter Schiff says the bond market already broke in 2020
01:44 — How long the Treasury bear market could realistically last
04:18 — What Schiff would enact to actually bring inflation down
06:32 — Spending cuts, higher rates, and the recession nobody will accept
07:39 — Are we in the early stages of a dollar crisis?
08:26 — Rate hike odds and whether Warsh surprises the market
10:51 — Why Schiff calls it a cosmetic hike with no credibility behind it
12:33 — Why gold ran to 5,500 while Bitcoin lagged 23% off its highs
14:20 — Bitcoin priced in gold and the case that it peaked in 2021
17:29 — Tokenized gold vs Bitcoin: counterparty risk and what backs money

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

This post Peter Schiff: “The Fed Has Already Lost The Battle Against Inflation” & BTC vs GOLD Debate first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Wobbles Before Settling After Fed Raises Rates 

Bitcoin’s price swung before settling largely unmoved over a 24-hour period after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates — as expected — for the first time since 2023. 

The leading cryptocurrency was recently priced at nearly $75,813 after dropping as low as $75,355 in the hour after the U.S. central bank gave its decision to increase the benchmark federal funds rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%. 

Over a seven-day period, the coin is down nearly 4%. 

Traders had bet there was a more than 90% chance that the Fed would raise interest rates ahead of its September meeting. Major Bitcoin trades therefore likely happened before Wednesday. 

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh didn’t reveal much about the central bank’s next moves but made it clear that price stability in the U.S. was its number one priority. 

“The decision we made today was a sober decision, serious decision, responsible decision, one that we have been preparing for and thinking about in my 110 or 120 days here,” Warsh said. 

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

Wash — who has previously praised Bitcoin — said last month in his first major speech as head of the U.S. central bank that inflation was too high and had to be brought down. 

The new chair is seemingly going against President Donald Trump’s wishes; the president has repeatedly called for lower interest rates and even threatened to fire the ex-Chair of the Federal Reserve for refusing to do so. 

In a post on his Truth Social platform last week, the president wrote: “We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like ‘the old days.'”

When asked by reporters about what he would say to the president, Wash replied: “I’ve got nothing for you on a discussion with the president.”

Bitcoin typically does well in a low interest rate environment because there is more liquidity to buy the asset. 

The U.S. is currently in the midst of an affordability crisis and war in the Middle East has pushed up the price of oil, in turn compounding the problem as the cost of everyday goods in the world’s largest economy rises.

This post Bitcoin Price Wobbles Before Settling After Fed Raises Rates  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Chairman Says Agency Will Write Crypto Rules After Clarity Act Vote Fails

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig has said that the top regulator will go ahead and use its powers to advance crypto legislation despite the Clarity Act being blocked. 

In a Wednesday statement released on X, Selig said that the regulator would still help U.S. President Trump “get the job done.” 

Lawmakers blocked the Clarity Act on Tuesday in a procedural vote, with the long-awaited legislation missing the 60 votes needed to advance it. The bill aims to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. 

“Americans deserve regulatory clarity, legal certainty, and consumer protections in crypto asset markets,” Selig wrote. 

“President Trump promised to deliver a future-proof crypto asset regulatory market structure one way or the other, and we will help him get the job done using our existing statutory authorities.

“The U.S. is and will remain the crypto capital of the world. The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.”

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

Regulators are now more crypto-friendly since President Trump appointed them and took the White House and are widely expected to continue pushing rules that help the crypto space. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission last month proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead despite a vote on the Clarity Act stalling. 

Despite being passed by the House of Representatives last year, the Clarity Act was in a deadlock for most of this year after the banking lobby clashed with lawmakers and crypto businesses over whether platforms like Coinbase should be able to pay customers yield. 

Some lawmakers have sought to change wording in the bill regarding ethics, and a new bill started circulating in July. The draft bans government officials from promoting and making money from crypto. 

But other Democratic lawmakers said it still fell short; a number of pro-crypto Republicans accused Democrats of deliberately playing politics and delaying the bill. 

This post CFTC Chairman Says Agency Will Write Crypto Rules After Clarity Act Vote Fails first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Is on Sale and Should Be Accumulated, Says Morgan Creek Capital CEO

Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko has said that bitcoin’s fair value is $105,000 based on Metcalfe’s Law. 

Speaking on Bitcoin Magazine TV on Wednesday, the investment management firm said that now was the best time to buy the leading cryptocurrency as it is “on sale.” 

Metcalfe’s Law, an observation by Internet entrepreneur Robert Metcalfe, states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users. Bitcoin touched a high in October 2025 of $126,080 but was recently trading 40% lower than that, at $75,701. 

“So the fair value of bitcoin today, based on Metcalf’s law — Tim Peterson runs a model that tracks this really nicely — it’s about $105,000, but it’s $75,000,” Yusko said.  

“Okay, so it’s on sale — you should accumulate things that are on sale.”

Yusko went on to say that bitcoin was the best way to protect one’s value and that investing in companies wasn’t good for the long-term. 

“The problem is over a 30-year period, equity, 85% of companies disappear over 30 years. It’s amazing stat,” he said. 

“What you really need is something to protect your value — and historically, for 5,000 years, there was one asset: gold.”

“Now we’ve got gold and bitcoin,” he added. 

Bitcoin started rallying in August following news that the U.S. Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets have benefited.  

Since then, some experts have said that the so-called debasement trade — when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value — is back and will benefit bitcoin. 

The trade was hot last year, and helped bitcoin’s run, but the digital asset lost steam after October as traders turned their attention to stocks related to artificial intelligence. 

This post Bitcoin Is on Sale and Should Be Accumulated, Says Morgan Creek Capital CEO first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Quantum Issue: To Freeze Coins Or Not

Bitcoin’s quantum debate is quite a quagmire. This is not merely a technical debate regarding the trade-offs of different types of cryptography and their strengths against a theoretical quantum computer. It is a debate about which properties of Bitcoin’s ethos are strongest when it is faced with a difficult dilemma: uphold the promise that valid coins remain spendable by their owners, or favor supporting the security of the system by not allowing a significant portion of its monetary supply to be raided via a vulnerability that was well known for many years.

The conundrum at the crux of this controversy is that every serious option violates a principle that Bitcoin users care about. Doing nothing may preserve today’s consensus rules while allowing future quantum-capable actors to take coins whose owners never consented. Freezing vulnerable coins may prevent that theft, but it retroactively invalidates long-standing spending conditions. A forced migration to quantum-resistant signatures may be prudent engineering, but it can also look like a deadline-backed confiscation regime. The debate is ugly because there is no clean path that perfectly preserves property rights, economic predictability, censorship resistance, backward compatibility, and user sovereignty all at once.

This is why I consider the problem to be fascinating. It’s multifaceted: simultaneously technical, sociological, philosophical, and economic in nature. Thus any serious discussion of the problem must consider every angle.

Throughout this essay I’ll be making the case that the quantum migration debate is far more nuanced than just a question between freezing or not freezing vulnerable bitcoin. Rather, it’s a question of how to minimize total property-rights violations once elliptic curve signatures no longer reliably authenticate rightful ownership.

The Quantum Threat

Bitcoin’s current authorization scheme to ensure that funds are only spent by their rightful owners depends on elliptic-curve cryptography. Legacy ECDSA signatures and Schnorr signatures both use the secp256k1 elliptic curve. Under ordinary classical computing assumptions, deriving a private key from a public key is computationally infeasible. A cryptographically relevant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm changes that assumption: once a public key is available, a sufficiently capable quantum attacker could derive the corresponding private key and sign a transaction to spend the funds that would be accepted as valid by the network. Quantum computers threaten to break the public-key-to-private-key hardness assumption behind ECDSA and Schnorr.

That distinction matters because not all Bitcoin outputs expose the same information at the same time. Some output types reveal a public key immediately and remain vulnerable indefinitely. Others hide the public key behind a hash until the owner spends. This creates two broad attack classes. A long-range attack targets outputs whose public keys are already visible on-chain, such as old pay-to-public-key outputs and Taproot outputs. A short-range attack targets coins at the moment of spending: the owner broadcasts a transaction, the public key becomes visible, and a fast quantum attacker attempts to derive the private key quickly enough to replace or front-run the transaction.

The mining threat is different. Grover’s algorithm can in theory speed up brute-force searching for a valid block hash, but it only provides a quadratic speedup while Shor’s algorithm provides a superpolynomial speedup. Thus the competitive advantage is far less practical to bother using a quantum computer for mining.

The Quantum Quantum Threat

Amusingly, the threat of quantum computers is itself in a quantum state of superposition. A quantum computer worth worrying about may or may not be built and no one can prove or disprove that it will happen. Quantum skeptics don’t dispute that Shor’s algorithm could break ECC. They claim there is no good reason to believe we will ever build the kind of powerful, fault-tolerant quantum computer needed to run Shor’s algorithm at a cryptographically relevant scale.

Everyone agrees that breaking ECC isn’t possible with today’s noisy quantum processors. It requires many reliable logical qubits, extremely low error rates, lengthy computations with high coherence, and quantum error correction running successfully at scale.

A strong skeptical argument is that the quantum fault-tolerance threshold theorem depends on assumptions that may not be physically satisfiable with the required precision. Such assumptions include sufficiently independent noise, sufficiently accurate gates, limited unwanted interactions, and the ability to keep errors below an acceptable threshold across a huge system. Mikhail Dyakonov argues that the theorem assumes idealized conditions and does not tell us the real engineering precision needed to satisfy every assumption in an actual device.

Gil Kalai’s criticism is more structural. His argument is that realistic quantum systems may suffer from correlated noise and noise accumulation that prevent the formation of high-quality quantum error-correcting codes. In his 2011 paper, he proposes that physical realizations of quantum codes, correlations in stochastic systems, and accumulated noise could lead to failure of scalable quantum computers.

This may be the strongest skeptic argument: quantum error correction works only if the noise is tameable. If real high-qubit systems generate adversarially correlated errors, then adding more qubits may very well make the computer more fragile and unreliable.

Quantum scalability is a major unknown. Skeptics argue that progress from 50, 100, or 1,000 physical qubits does not automatically extrapolate to millions of physical qubits or thousands of logical qubits. Quantum systems are analog, delicate, and coupled to their environment. The engineering challenge is not just “make more qubits”; it is “make more qubits while suppressing crosstalk, leakage, correlated errors, calibration drift, thermal effects, measurement errors, fabrication variation, and control noise.” This is why critics reject simple timeline extrapolations. They view “we increased qubit count by X this decade, so we will break ECC by year Y” as weak reasoning.

Finally, quantum computer demonstrations have shown that current devices can only outperform classical simulations on carefully selected sampling tasks. Critics have a good point that this says little about executing long, structured algorithms like Shor’s algorithm with enough reliability to recover a 256-bit ECC private key.

Why Post-Quantum Migration Matters

Assuming that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer appears, merely adding the option for Bitcoiners to use post-quantum cryptography won’t be sufficient to stop a quantum attack. The total set of quantum-vulnerable bitcoin includes early pay-to-public-key coins, coins controlled by reused public keys, Taproot outputs, and cases where public keys or extended public keys have been revealed outside the chain. One striking figure is the concentration of BTC in old P2PK outputs, which are a tiny fraction of UTXOs by count but represent a much larger share of value, about 1.7 million BTC. Broader estimates via on-chain analysis of output types, activity patterns, and known ownership lead us to believe that at least 2.6 million BTC would remain vulnerable even if all active Bitcoin users migrated their wallets to post-quantum cryptography.

As such, even with opt-in post-quantum (PQ) cryptography, we should expect there to be a systemic risk sized pool of vulnerable coins lingering indefinitely. These coins could be employed by a quantum attacker to harm the system in a wide variety of ways – not just via selling them and dropping the spot price of BTC. Thus, protecting those vulnerable coins from a quantum threat requires some sort of rule changes that would effectively “lock out” a quantum attacker.

The rhetoric around this issue often uses terms like “confiscation,” “burning,” “freezing,” “stealing,” or “recovery,” but these describe different mechanisms. A freeze would not transfer coins to the state, miners, developers, or some recovery fund. In its most basic form, it would mean changing consensus rules so that certain outputs can no longer be spent using vulnerable ECDSA or Schnorr signatures. That is why advocates sometimes say “burn” rather than “confiscate”: the coins are not reassigned; they become unspendable via their private key. But for a rightful owner who still has the original key, the practical effect can still feel confiscatory: a spend that used to be valid is no longer valid.

BIP-361 divides the migration concept into phases. First, once a quantum-resistant address type exists, the Bitcoin network would stop allowing new coins to be sent to quantum-vulnerable addresses. Later, after a multi-year window, legacy ECDSA and Schnorr spends would become invalid. Finally, there remains the question of recovery options for users who can prove, without solely relying upon broken ECC, that they are the legitimate owner – such as through a zero-knowledge proof derived from a seed phrase or HD wallet structure. The proposal’s primary purpose is not to pick a post-quantum signature algorithm; rather the goal is to create incentives and deadlines so that users, exchanges, custodians, wallets, and institutions actually migrate in a timely fashion and thus allow us to deprecate ECC in order to prevent a quantum attack.

The Case for Freezing

The strongest pro-freeze argument starts from a simple claim: a quantum attacker who derives a private key from a public key is not the legitimate owner in any morally meaningful sense. Under this view, “just let vulnerable coins be taken” is not neutrality; it is allowing a new class of actors to loot old outputs because the protocol failed to strengthen a lock that is known to be weak. Freeze advocates argue that the resulting harm from allowing quantum theft is not just to negligent owners but to all holders, because a successful quantum sweep would redistribute wealth to whoever possesses early quantum capability. This is problematic because that amount of bitcoin in a single actor’s hands who spent relatively little resources to obtain them can be quite dangerous for the ecosystem’s security. Bitcoin’s security model assumes economically rational participants that are incentivized to protect the value of their coins, but a quantum-capable actor has the potential to break that assumption. The pro-freeze position is that Bitcoin should not reward the first entities to break ECC with ammunition that could be leveraged to harm the system.

This argument is especially true for coins believed to be lost. If lost coins are suddenly recoverable by quantum attackers, the circulating supply effectively increases. That does not violate the formal 21 million cap, but it does change the economic landscape: coins that the market may have treated as inert can re-enter circulation, possibly rapidly and in concentrated hands.

The pro-freeze side also argues that the threat is not limited to ordinary profit-seeking. A quantum-capable adversary could attack Bitcoin politically, destabilize markets, undermine public confidence, grief the network for many years, or even acquire enough hashrate to 51% attack the network. Analysis of the game theory in play shows that we can’t simply assume an attacker sweeps vulnerable BTC to sell it and ride off into the sunset; there is a far wider range of strategies and undesirable outcomes.

A related argument is about market panic. Pieter Wuille’s comments in the mailing-list debate sharpen this point: the medium-term danger may be not only an actual cryptographically relevant quantum computer, but the credible belief that one may exist soon. If markets come to believe that a large share of Bitcoin’s supply can be seized at any moment, merely offering voluntary post-quantum outputs may not be enough to restore confidence. A credible plan to disable vulnerable spends could itself be a sufficient reassurance mechanism.

The pro-freeze camp also sees deadlines as necessary because voluntary migration is likely to be slow. People procrastinate; institutions move slowly; hardware wallets, exchanges, custodians, estate plans, multisig coordinators, and cold-storage procedures all need time to implement changes and plan for migrations. Matt Corallo has argued that Bitcoin should add a simple post-quantum capability well in advance of it being necessary, because wallets need to start embedding or committing to quantum-resistant public keys long before any later emergency decision about freezing vulnerable UTXOs becomes credible.

There is also a fiduciary responsibility argument. Public companies, ETFs, custodians, and exchanges will be unable to ignore a known migration deadline. A locked-in consensus change gives compliance departments and risk committees something concrete to act on. It also turns an abstract future threat into a project plan: upgrade software, generate new addresses, move funds, verify backups, communicate with customers, and complete migrations before a known date. BIP-361 explicitly argues that exchanges and custodians would face fiduciary and legal pressure to act once a deadline exists.

It’s also worth noting that all of this migration planning is applicable to more situations than just the emergence of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. Most of the arguments in this debate apply to ANY situation where ECC is known to have been weakened. Generally speaking, cryptography tends not to withstand the test of time and any given cryptographic algorithm tends to be weakened over long time frames (decades) as researchers find flaws and develop new techniques that break prior assumptions.

Finally, freezing advocates argue that Bitcoin has always depended on users enforcing rules that protect the system as a whole. A soft fork that objectively disables a known-insecure spend path is not the same as arbitrary political confiscation, in their view. The proposed line is not “these people are disfavored” but “these script types require cryptography that no longer meets the bar for Bitcoin’s security assumptions.” If the rule is mechanical, objective, announced years in advance, and paired with a viable migration path, proponents argue that it is more akin to replacing a broken lock than blacklisting an owner.

Anti-freeze Arguments

The strongest anti-freeze argument starts with the opposite premise: Bitcoin’s social contract is that a valid coin remains spendable by the holder of the corresponding key under the consensus rules accepted when the coin was received. Retroactively invalidating that spend path crosses an inviolable line. It turns “not your keys, not your coins” into “not your upgraded-by-deadline, not your coins.” Even if no one else receives the frozen coins, the original owner loses practical control. That is why critics describe forced freezing as confiscatory, not merely protective.

This objection is not just sentimental. Bitcoin’s credibility depends heavily on the expectation that developers and node operators will not pick winners and losers among UTXO owners. A freeze aimed at “vulnerable coins” may be technically objective, but it still targets a subset of owners based on past address choices, wallet design, dormancy, or inability to act. Critics worry that once the network accepts retroactive invalidation for one reason, future coalitions may find other reasons: sanctions, theft recovery, inheritance disputes, state pressure, “obviously” lost coins, or other emergencies.

A second objection is that freezing cannot distinguish between lost coins, careless owners, dormant owners, imprisoned owners, dead owners with heirs, users in hostile jurisdictions, timelocked arrangements, forgotten cold storage, and deliberately long-term savers. Bitcoin has many users whose goal is to avoid being forced to stay online and responsive to policy changes. A person who stored coins safely for decades should not necessarily lose them because the rest of the network later declared their storage method obsolete. It’s worth noting that there is an incentive conflict between active current holders who benefit from reducing the effective supply and inactive rightful owners who may be unable to take action to defend themselves.

A third objection is uncertainty. A cryptographically relevant quantum computer may arrive later than expected, may not arrive in the form feared, may remain secret for some time, or may be countered by less drastic tools. If Bitcoin permanently burns millions of coins and the threat does not materialize on the assumed timeline, the network will have committed an irreversible self-inflicted property-rights violation. Critics therefore argue that premature freezing is worse than measured preparation.

A fourth objection is governance and legitimacy. Freezing vulnerable coins would be one of the most controversial consensus changes in Bitcoin’s history. Some have warned that announcing a freeze of old UTXOs could damage Bitcoin’s image more than a quantum attack itself and could produce a major fork in which one side accepts the freeze and another preserves old spendability. In that scenario, the “solution” creates a new political attack surface: exchanges, custodians, miners, and users must choose which chain’s property-rights model they prefer.

A fifth objection is legal risk. Some participants in the mailing-list debate warned that developers, companies, or miners involved in consciously changing code to freeze funds could face liability claims from owners whose coins become unspendable. Even if those claims ultimately fail, the legal process itself could chill development, divide institutions, and make consensus coordination harder.

A sixth objection is technical humility. Post-quantum cryptography is real, but not free. NIST has standardized ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, and ML-KEM, with more work continuing, yet Bitcoin has unusual constraints: every byte matters, verification cost matters, wallet compatibility matters, and consensus failures are catastrophic. Chaincode’s comparison of candidate schemes in their quantum deep dive report shows why the choice is not trivial: post-quantum signatures and keys can be much larger than Schnorr or ECDSA, and schemes differ sharply in maturity, signature size, public-key size, signing cost, verification cost, and assumptions.

That makes critics wary of forcing migration before the destination is mature. A bad post-quantum migration could reduce throughput, raise fees, bloat the UTXO or witness data burden, introduce new cryptographic assumptions, or force another migration later if the chosen algorithm weakens. Conventional Schnorr signatures are tiny compared with many hash-based post-quantum signatures, while lattice based cryptography has other trade-offs and maturity questions. On a related note, given the larger data sizes of signatures, this will increase the cost of transacting on chain and could price out less wealthy users.

Doing Nothing vs Doing Something

As I stated over a year ago in my first essay on this topic: if quantum computing becomes a threat to Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), an inviolable property of Bitcoin will be violated one way or another.

You’re probably familiar with the fundamental principle coined by Andreas Antonopoulos:

“Not your keys, not your coins.”

I posit that the corollary to this principle is:

“Your keys, only your coins.”

The point is that keys don’t merely authorize spending, but that signatures are supposed to be unforgeable evidence of control by the legitimate keyholder. A quantum-capable entity breaks the corollary of this foundational principle. We secure our bitcoin with the mathematical probabilities related to extremely large random numbers. Your funds are only secure because truly random large numbers are safe from being discovered by anyone else in the world.

The do-nothing position is often caricatured as “let quantum thieves steal everything.” Taking a noninterventionist stance against quantum theft is certainly principled: Bitcoin is a voluntary bearer asset governed by rules, and users are responsible for managing known risks. If a coin is encumbered by a script that becomes weak over decades, perhaps that is no different from losing a seed phrase, using weak entropy, trusting an insecure custodian, or failing to follow any number of other best practices. Under this view, the network’s job is not to guarantee the security of every historical locking script forever; rather it’s to enforce the rules as written.

This camp can also state that total supply is the only guarantee of the network, not effective circulating supply. The 21 million cap does not say “21 million minus coins assumed lost.” It says no more than 21 million coins will be issued. If a lost-looking coin later moves because its key is found, inherited, cracked through poor entropy, or recovered through quantum attack, the total issued supply has not changed. That argument is unsatisfying to people who see quantum funds sweeping as theft, but it is internally consistent: protocol rules define validity, not subjective moral beliefs about rightful ownership.

The do-nothing side also values operational simplicity. Any freezing rule requires defining what constitutes a vulnerable bitcoin redeem script, choosing activation dates, coordinating wallets and miners, communicating to users, handling edge cases, and absorbing political fallout. Doing nothing avoids a contentious consensus change. If post-quantum tools become available, users who care can migrate voluntarily, while users who do not migrate bear their own risk.

But the weakness of the “pure do-nothing” perspective is that it treats quantum theft as an individual-risk problem when it may actually become a system-risk problem. If enough coins are exposed, and if the market believes a capable attacker can use them to harm the ecosystem, the damage is not confined to owners who failed to migrate. It affects public confidence in the system which then cascades into negative pressure on the exchange rate, thermodynamic security (miner revenue,) and the revenue of many Bitcoin businesses. That is why even many people uncomfortable with freezing still support early preparation.

Apathetic “code is law” Bitcoiners are free to do nothing, but they should not delude themselves into thinking that they can stop others from trying to do something.

Alternative Proposals

Because “freeze all vulnerable UTXOs” and “do nothing” are both brutal in their own ways, much of the interesting work is in alternative proposals that would help users retain their property rights in the face of a quantum threat.

1. We could prevent new vulnerable outputs while not yet freezing old ones. This is the least coercive part of forced migration. Once a safer output type exists, consensus or policy rules could discourage or even disallow sending bitcoin into vulnerable locking scripts. That reduces future damage without immediately invalidating old property claims. BIP-361 includes this as Phase A, and several critics are more open to this kind of forward-looking restriction than to permanent retroactive burns.
2. Alternatively, the network could enforce a temporary lock rather than permanent burn. Boris Nagaev suggested that if old EC spends must be disabled, the lock could include a future re-enable height or some other mechanism that gives the community time to build recovery paths. Conduition explored how such a phase might interact with P2QRH/P2MR-like outputs and warned that simply banning all EC checks could accidentally affect hybrid constructions unless the rule is designed carefully. The appeal of a temporary lock is political as much as technical: it signals emergency containment rather than permanent confiscation.
3. Another option is rate-limiting, represented by the Hourglass proposal. Hourglass V2 focuses on old P2PK coins and would restrict spending so that only one P2PK input could be spent per block, with a net limit of one BTC per block from those outputs. Its authors present it as a way to avoid both immediate burning and unconstrained quantum liquidation: coins are not destroyed, but their ability to flood the market is throttled. The proposal estimates that unconstrained P2PK sweeping could be extremely fast, while the one-BTC-per-block design would stretch full P2PK movement over decades.
   
   Hourglass has its own critics. Opponents argue that it still violates permissionless spending by imposing special restrictions on a class of otherwise valid coins. It may also create a long-running race between legitimate owners and quantum attackers rather than resolving ownership. Some critics say that if the quantum threat is real, taking decades to clear exposed P2PK outputs gives attackers plenty of time; if the threat is not real, the rule is needless interference.
4. There is the concept of commit-delay-reveal, sometimes discussed through Guy Fawkes-style constructions. The basic idea is that a user first commits to a future spend in a way that a quantum attacker cannot exploit immediately, waits for the commitment to become deeply confirmed, and later reveals the secret needed to validate the spend. This can prevent a short-exposure quantum attacker from seeing a public key and instantly stealing the coin before confirmation. Chaincode describes commit-delay-reveal as opt-in and potentially useful, while the Optech summary notes that these schemes can let safely spendable bitcoins avoid destruction and reduce migration urgency.
5. Quantum safe funds recovery without EC signatures, especially for HD wallets, should be feasible. Or Sattath and others discussed “signature lifting” ideas where the owner proves knowledge of a seed or derivation path rather than proving control through the vulnerable public key. Olaoluwa Osuntokun built a proof-of-concept using zk-STARKs to prove that a Taproot BIP-86 output key was generated from a BIP-32 seed path. This would certainly be a last resort scenario for procrastinators to recover funds, given that the latest optimized version of the scheme requires a 200 KB proof. It would certainly price out recovery of small UTXOs, because a best case scenario would likely cost several hundred dollars in transaction fees but could easily run into the thousands or tens of thousands at higher transaction fee rates.
   
   This recovery path is attractive because it changes the moral shape of the debate. If rightful owners can later recover frozen coins through non-EC proofs, freezing no longer has to mean permanent destruction. But the costs are serious: large proofs, complex verification, privacy leakage, wallet-derivation assumptions, inability to cover every historical wallet type, and the danger of adding novel cryptography to Bitcoin consensus. Critics of the zk-STARK approach emphasized that megabyte-scale proofs and multi-second verification times are difficult to reconcile with Bitcoin’s conservative design.Though further research is already finding optimizations that are more efficient.
6. Dual-signature or market-driven migration. Marc Johnson and others suggested enabling quantum-resistant outputs, allowing optional dual signatures, giving fee or policy incentives, and letting users choose their own risk instead of imposing a hard loss deadline. This approach preserves property rights better than forced freezing, but it won’t solve the systemic-risk problem if too many high-value coins remain exposed.

Tricky Technical Trade-offs

The migration debate cannot be fully separated from the choice of quantum-resistant signatures because the size of signatures will affect the system throughput. NIST’s post-quantum standards provide a serious foundation: FIPS 204 standardizes ML-DSA, FIPS 205 standardizes SLH-DSA, and FIPS 203 covers ML-KEM for key establishment. But Bitcoin needs digital signatures and script-compatible ownership proofs, not just general-purpose cryptographic standards. A scheme suitable for TLS or government communications is not automatically ideal for a blockchain with limited block space and global verification requirements.

Hash-based signatures are conservative and appealing because their assumptions are simple, but they are large. Lamport-style signatures can be enabled in some form with script upgrades such as OP_CAT, but the Taproot key-path problem remains: if a Taproot output has a quantum-vulnerable key path, placing a Lamport signature in the script path does not make the whole output quantum safe unless the vulnerable key path is removed or disabled. BIP-347’s OP_CAT discussion explicitly notes this problem.

Lattice signatures such as ML-DSA offer more compact signatures than many hash-based options, but they bring different assumptions and implementation risks. Falcon-style signatures are compact but historically more delicate to implement. SPHINCS+/SLH-DSA is conservative but large. Experimental schemes may be attractive on paper but too immature for Bitcoin consensus. This is why a credible migration plan likely needs algorithm agility, test deployments, wallet experiments, careful fee modeling, and perhaps multiple acceptable post-quantum paths rather than a single rushed winner.

The block space problem is severe but not intractable. Chaincode estimates that migrating all UTXOs would take roughly 76 to 142 days if migration consumed all block space, and 305 to 568 days if it consumed 25% of block space. That is just raw migration throughput; it does not include human coordination, wallet upgrades, institutional approvals, support for air-gapped signing, hardware replacement, accounting workflows, etc.

A full timeline for UTXO set migration is measured in years, not weeks. Chaincode’s high-level estimate sketches a best case of roughly five years and a worst case closer to fifteen years for research, BIP work, implementation, deployment, and migration. The same report notes that in an emergency the timeframe could potentially be accelerated to 2 years, but historical emergency protocol fixes are not really analogous because the quantum migration problem touches every layer of the ecosystem.

The Ethics of Property Rights

The moral disagreement comes from two competing definitions of ownership.

The anti-freeze side supports a “code is law” perspective: ownership means control under the consensus rules. If an output is spendable by an ECDSA or Schnorr signature, then disabling that spend path violates the owner’s property rights. The network does not know whether a coin is lost, abandoned, inherited, intentionally dormant, or inaccessible for temporary reasons. Therefore, freezing is collective punishment imposed on a subset of users for failing to follow a new migration demand.

The pro-freeze side says ownership cannot mean “anyone who can break the cryptography gets the coin.” Bitcoin’s signatures are intended to authenticate the legitimate keyholder, not to create a prize for whoever first builds a machine that defeats the authentication scheme. If quantum capability turns public keys into private keys, then an EC signature no longer carries the same moral information it carried before. Under this view, refusing to freeze is not neutrality; it is a security failure to knowingly allow a compromised authentication mechanism to transfer wealth.

Both positions are coherent. The first protects rule stability and bearer-asset finality. The second protects the deeper intent of the locking script. The painful point is that Bitcoin’s consensus rules are the only practical arbiter. The protocol cannot read intent. It can only accept or reject transactions according to rules. Any attempt to encode “rightful ownership” after ECC breaks either becomes overly broad, relies on new proofs, or leaves some victims behind.

I submit that property rights have been violated on Bitcoin before. Allow me to introduce you to the Value Overflow Incident as it is commonly known.

On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74,638 contained a transaction that created 184,467,440,737.09551616 bitcoin for three different addresses. Two addresses received 92.2 billion bitcoins each, and whoever solved the block got an extra 0.01 BTC that did not exist prior to the transaction. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn’t account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed.

A new version of the client was published within five hours of the discovery that contained a soft-forking change to the consensus rules that rejected output value overflow transactions. The blockchain was forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the “bad” blockchain, the “good” blockchain overtook it at a block height of 74,691 at which point all nodes accepted the “good” blockchain as the authoritative source of Bitcoin transaction history.

The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the chain with the greatest cumulative proof of work. Therefore, the bitcoins created by it do not exist either.

Thus, from a pure property rights perspective, the person who followed the rules of the network at the time had their property confiscated from them because the overwhelming majority of other actors on the network considered their action to be undesirable and a threat to the network.

Anti-freeze folks will likely say that this is not a problem because the INTENT of protocol rules is what matters, and the intent was for the network to guarantee a maximum supply of 21 million BTC. I would tend to agree, and make the counter-claim that the INTENT of using ECC to secure BTC is to ensure that it’s infeasible for anyone to guess your private key.

Economic Stakes

A sudden sweep of funds by a quantum-capable entity could affect Bitcoin through several channels.

1. Coins thought dormant would re-enter circulation, increasing the effective bitcoin supply.
2. Markets could panic before any actual sweep if credible evidence appears that a CRQC exists or is near.
3. Miners could be affected if price falls sharply, because their budget is tied to block subsidies and fees in BTC terms converted into operating revenue.
4. Exchanges and other businesses could face operational stress and massive drops in revenue if customer deposits are exposed or if market structure breaks under uncertainty.

“Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” – Satoshi Nakamoto

If true, the corollary is:

“Quantum recovered coins only make everyone else’s coins worth less. Think of it as a theft from everyone.”

If a large amount of BTC is permanently lost, remaining holders benefit from a lower effective circulating supply. If quantum attackers revive those coins, remaining holders lose that benefit. Critics of freezing respond that this is exactly why active holders have a conflict of interest: they may prefer burning dormant coins because it makes their own coins scarcer. That is not a trivial objection. A freeze can be framed as protecting the network, but it can also be framed as enriching active holders at the expense of inactive ones.

That conflict is why the specific definition of vulnerable coins matters greatly. Freezing only ancient P2PK outputs with already exposed public keys is easier to justify than freezing every vulnerable output, because the funds are far more likely to be lost. Freezing Taproot outputs is more complicated politically because Taproot is recent and intentionally adopted by users who were following modern wallet guidance. Freezing reused outputs raises another problem: the vulnerability may come from user behavior rather than address type. Freezing based on on-chain public key leakage is also a half measure because the chain can not know what was leaked off-chain; many wallets share their xpubs with third parties, for example.

A broad freeze could therefore be both underinclusive and overinclusive. It could miss off-chain exposed keys while capturing dormant but legitimate owners. A narrow freeze could reduce the worst risk but leave enough vulnerable value to sustain panic. This is why I believe the optimal solution is complex and requires a multi-phased approach, rescue proofs, and objective script rules rather than discretionary address lists.

Herding Cats

Bitcoin is an anarchic system of rules without rulers. It has no authority that can dictate changes to consensus rules. A rule to deprecate ECC would need broad agreement among node operators, miners, exchanges, wallets, custodians, merchants, and users. In formal terms, many proposals are soft forks: they make previously valid spends invalid under stricter rules. But in social terms, a soft fork that disables old coins is much heavier than an ordinary tightening rule. It directly affects property expectations.

This governance problem gets worse under emergency conditions. If Bitcoin waits until there is credible proof of a CRQC, the community may have to act during panic, misinformation, market stress, and adversarial pressure. But if Bitcoin acts too early, it risks freezing coins before the threat is real enough to justify it. Chaincode explicitly warns that planning and communication should happen before the threat becomes acute, while also acknowledging that stakeholder coordination, regulation, taxation, and user communication are major obstacles.

This creates a paradox. The best time to design a quantum migration is before it is urgently needed. The hardest time to persuade people to accept controversial measures is also before they are urgently needed. Once the emergency is obvious, technical and social options narrow dramatically. In short, because: Bitcoin moves slowly, some action must happen before the relevant computer arrives if we want a non-chaotic outcome.

A credible process therefore matters almost as much as the final rule. The community would need clear definitions, simulations, reference implementations, wallet support, testnet deployments, activation thresholds, recovery research, and communication to nontechnical users. Without that, an ECC deprecation proposal would look like coordination against dormant holders. With it, even opponents could at least evaluate concrete trade-offs instead of reacting to abstractions.

Governance Game Theory

The threat of a quantum attacker is similar to The DAO incident that Ethereum had to deal with in 2016. In other words: the ecosystem had time (about a month) to take action to stop an attacker from getting away with taking ownership of 5% of all ETH at the time. For 5% of all ETH to go into the hands of a malicious actor was considered to be a systemic risk.

To put this in context, from my own analysis of the blockchain I think a reasonable estimate for the number of lost coins with exposed public keys is roughly 2,600,000 BTC, or 13% of the current total supply. In other words, this is about how much BTC I expect would be unable to migrate to a quantum safe locking script if we come to consensus on implementing a post-quantum signature scheme.

However, note a crucial difference between the DAO situation and this one. With the DAO, the Ethereum community had to hard fork in order to regain control of stolen tokens. With a BIP-361 style change, it would be a soft fork. Which is to say:

Opposing the DAO fork was relatively easy: needed not to do anything and stayed on the chain with the original set of rules. That chain is now known as Ethereum Classic.

Opposing a quantum migration soft fork, assuming it has a supermajority of hashrate, would require dissenting users to coordinate a User Rejected Soft Fork, which has never been done before.

The Slippery Slope of Centralization

Some have stated that a forced migration proposal like BIP-361 is untenable because it would set precedent for “centralized planning” over who gets to use Bitcoin. In other words, this could lead to similar types of freezing to stop anyone who is considered a “bad actor” from using the system, such as in response to major thefts and hacks.

We already know that nothing about Bitcoin’s rules is truly immutable. It’s not possible to create a protocol that is impossible to change – the best you can do is to align incentives that make it unlikely to change. In the case of proposing changes as controversial as altering ownership / the money supply, you should expect that such proposals only have the slightest glimmer of being accepted if the alternative is expected to be detrimental to nearly all Bitcoiners.

As for the claim that it will lead to protocol-level confiscation in response to hacks and such, it’s simply not possible for an ecosystem as distributed as Bitcoin to coordinate a response fast enough to outpace an individual actor. To be more precise: trying to blacklist a specific address / set of addresses is infeasible because the “target” of such a protocol-level blacklist would simply move their funds faster than the ecosystem could coordinate freezing them.

Prior Precedents

The DAO was a special case in which a decentralized community actually had time to react to a massive theft, because The DAO’s smart contract essentially had a “cooldown rule” that made them have to wait for a month after initially redirecting funds into their own control before they could send them anywhere else, such as to “cash out.” As such, there was time to gather consensus from the wider ecosystem (they even conducted coin voting) in order to pass a pretty controversial hard fork.

What was the end result? We can actually observe how the market reacted. Despite all of the controversy, the economic reality was clear. Ethereum Classic, which abided by “code is law” and “do nothing” perspective, allowing the attacker to retain control of 5% of the network’s tokens, struggled to even reach 10% of the market value of interventionist Ethereum, which changed the rules of the network in order to return funds to their rightful owners.

As previously mentioned, Bitcoin also had the Value Overflow Incident in which bitcoin created by someone who was just “following the rules of the protocol” had them taken away by a coordinated consensus change.

These are stark examples of why I believe that economic incentives can and will trump moral and philosophical principles. Some will surely say that Ethereum and Bitcoin have little in common, and it’s certainly true that these different networks tend to have very different ethos and driving factors. But from an economic perspective, they share the same incentive structures with regard to a malicious entity controlling a substantial portion of the market cap. Bitcoin in 2026 is a very different ecosystem from Bitcoin in 2016. Consider all of the new entrants, many of which did not adopt BTC as a result of the libertarian standpoint.

It’s a pretty tough sell to get mainstream audiences to believe that bad actors should not be stopped if there is a means to do so. It’s an even tougher sell to tell companies and institutions that are making millions if not billions of dollars off of managing an asset that they should stand idly by and watch an existential threat to their business line carry out an attack that can be prepared for not just months, but potentially years or decades ahead of time.

Framing Matters

I think the worst possible framing of this debate is “quantum safety versus irresponsible users.” That trivializes the property-rights objection. Another terrible framing in my mind is “freezing is always theft, therefore no preparation is needed.” That trivializes the systemic-risk problem and overlooks the options we have to help protect property rights.

Matt Corallo has astutely pointed out that the debate over deprecating the use of vulnerable signatures is interesting because it can be framed in very different ways that sound the same on the surface.

1. “Protect people’s property rights to the greatest extent possible.”
2. “Don’t freeze anyone’s coins.”

The first perspective supports freezing ECC spends while also adding the maximum number of ways to safely recover funds (BIP-32 proofs, pre-Q-day commitments for non-BIP-32 wallets and timelocked coin wallets, etc).

The second stance actually minimizes the number of people who get to keep their coins and maximizes theft exposure. But it’s far simpler and avoids a controversial fork.

Thus I think this is not a binary debate of “to freeze or not to freeze.” Rather, a superior framing of the problem is: what is the optimal set of rules that minimizes property rights violations under conditions where the original cryptographic authentication mechanism is no longer reliable to authenticate rightful ownership?

Under that framing, deprecation of ECDSA signatures becomes more defensible if several conditions are met.

1. There must be a widely reviewed quantum-resistant destination. Users cannot be coerced to migrate into a half-baked or experimental mechanism. The destination may be P2MR plus future PQ script paths, a standardized and well-vetted PQ signature type, a commit-reveal construction, or a hybrid. But it must be usable by ordinary wallets and institutions, not just technically imaginable.
2. The migration window must be long enough for real-world users. Our block space throughput estimates show that raw transaction capacity is only one bottleneck. A serious deadline must account for wallet upgrades, hardware devices, multisig coordination, inheritance, institutional controls, cold storage logistics, and fee spikes. A five-year window may sound long in software terms but may be short for global bearer-asset migration.
3. The deprecation rule should be as objective and narrow as possible. Freezing by named addresses or presumed identity would be poisonous. Freezing by clearly vulnerable spend conditions is more defensible, though still controversial. Even then, designers must avoid accidentally disabling hybrid or recovery constructions that still use EC operations in non-dangerous ways.
4. Frozen funds rescue options are mandatory. A permanent burn maximizes clarity but also maximizes moral injury. Temporary locks, seed-knowledge proofs, commit-reveal paths, or other non-EC ownership proofs may preserve more of Bitcoin’s property-rights ethos. The current recovery ideas are not mature enough to rely on, but they are critical because they change a binary burn-versus-steal choice into a more humane migration path.
5. The community should define warning criteria in advance while accepting that perfect evidence may never arrive. A public CRQC demonstration against secp256k1 would be too late for some attack classes. But vague fear is not enough to justify burning coins. Reasonable criteria might include credible advances in fault-tolerant quantum error correction, government migration deadlines, expert cryptanalytic consensus, observed market stress, or other public signals. The NSA and NIST transitions show that major institutions already consider post-quantum migration a serious planning problem, but institutional caution is not the same as proof that Bitcoin must freeze coins now.

A Goldilocks Problem

A common critique of BIP-361 (other than “quantum computers aren’t real”) is that it is “rushed.” I think this is due to people making incorrect assumptions around activation. No one is claiming that BIP-361 should be activated today or even soon… it’s not even possible until a PQC scheme is activated. Rather, the point of BIP-361 is to have a contingency plan in place in case it looks like the threat is real and a migration becomes desirable.

We settled on a five year migration timeframe for BIP-361 because there are cons to migrating too early and to migrating too late. Migrate too early and we may be imposing great costs upon the ecosystem when it’s not necessary. Also, since post-quantum schemes and quantum safe funds rescue schemes are under active research, migrating too soon could lock us into a suboptimal solution. Migrate too late and we leave the ecosystem open to a systemic threat that could cause massive harm and loss of confidence in the network. We also know it needs to be a multi-year approach because of how long it takes for protocol changes to propagate throughout the ecosystem.

I don’t expect anyone to seriously suggest BIP-361 for activation unless it looks highly likely that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is less than 10 years away.

Deprecation of ECC could eventually become defensible, but only as a last-resort consensus choice after a viable migration path exists, after objective rules are specified, after a long public deadline is published, and after rough consensus is achieved that allowing vulnerable coins to remain spendable via ECC would create greater rights violations than disabling it.

The most intellectually honest conclusion is that both sides of this debate are defending Bitcoin’s principles, just with slightly different interpretations. The ECC deprecation side defends protocol security, system survival, and property rights against quantum attacks. The do-nothing side defends protocol rule stability, censorship resistance, and the rights of inactive users.

The Path Forward

Bitcoin’s quantum problem is not urgent in the sense that users should panic today. It is urgent in the sense that decentralized systems must solve hard coordination problems before they become emergencies. Waiting until a quantum attacker is visible will leave us with the worst set of possible choices.

The next steps for the foreseeable future do not include BIP-361. Rather, we should focus on preparation:

1. reduce address reuse
2. research recovery proofs
3. reduce reliance on xpub sharing
4. research more optimized PQ schemes
5. activate opt-in quantum safe locking scripts
6. develop multiple contingency plans to prepare for various scenarios

Bitcoin’s quantum migration debate is not a choice between respecting property rights and violating them. It is a choice between competing kinds of property-rights failure. We should treat the quantum threat as a realistic but unquantifiable systemic risk, but not use uncertainty as a premise for premature controversial changes.

Even if a cryptographically relevant quantum computer fails to emerge, showing that Bitcoin takes tail risks seriously will boost confidence in the network and reduce uncertainty about its future.

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Quantum Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The Quantum Issue: To Freeze Coins Or Not first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

Bitcoin stayed close to $76,500 on Sept. 17 even as two demand-related indicators weakened: Realized Cap posted its first daily contraction in 28 days, and U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded a second consecutive day of net outflows.

At press time, the latest CryptoSlate Bitcoin market data placed Bitcoin near $76,458, just below the $76,700 True Market Mean identified in Glassnode’s latest analysis. That level is an on-chain cost-basis reference in Glassnode’s framework. Holding near it limits the price damage so far, but the accompanying demand readings do not yet confirm renewed strength.

Glassnode reported that Realized Cap declined on Sept. 15 after increasing for 27 consecutive days. The metric estimates Bitcoin’s aggregate on-chain cost basis by valuing coins at the price when they last moved. Its decline therefore shows coins being repriced lower on that measure, not an equivalent amount of cash leaving the blockchain.

The firm’s Sept. 16 Realized Cap observation was also negative at publication.

The ETF market supplied a separate signal. Farside Investors recorded a $450.4 million net outflow on Sept. 15. Farside reported a further $295.9 million net outflow on Sept. 16.

Those net fund-flow figures do not identify investors or establish that ETF activity caused Bitcoin’s price move. They also do not translate directly into cash leaving the network because crypto exchange-traded products can process creations and redemptions in cash or in kind.

The next support levels

The Sept. 17 price snapshot remained close to the True Market Mean even as both demand-related indicators weakened. That combination supports a measured conclusion: Bitcoin had not suffered a broad breakdown, but the available evidence did not show a clear return of demand either.

Glassnode placed the next important cost basis at roughly $71,300, the average acquisition price for short-term holders in its framework. Below that, it identified a heavier on-chain support zone between $62,000 and $65,000. These levels are reference points rather than guaranteed floors.

The recovery condition is specific. Glassnode said two daily closes back above $76,700, paired with renewed Realized Cap growth, would restore the prior range and weaken the demand-contraction concern. A second close below the threshold would instead confirm the break in its framework and shift attention toward $71,300.

Bitcoin therefore remains at a test rather than a resolution. Reclaiming $76,700 with improving Realized Cap would favor the resilience case. Failure to do so would leave the market leaning on support while two recent demand indicators point the other way.

The post Bitcoin’s Realized Cap contracts for the first time in a month as BTC price faces a $71,300 risk appeared first on CryptoSlate.

GalaChain’s August exploit turned failed transactions into reusable authorization, exposing a security flaw that had survived multiple audits.

The blockchain developed by Gala Games said the attacker used historical signatures from unsuccessful transactions to drain about 2 billion GALA (about $3 million) and dozens of other tokens from nine wallets on Aug. 18.

Its Sept. 14 postmortem depicts an operation prepared before the first unauthorized transfer, with mapped balances, automated submissions, and a weakness spanning both signature verification and replay protection.

Gala patched the flaws after pausing its bridge during the attack. The incident now raises a broader question for blockchain operators: whether systems built around valid signatures and human-triggered emergency controls can respond quickly enough once exploitation has been automated.

Failed transactions became an attack inventory

The attacker arrived with 74 replayable signatures gathered from failed transactions stretching back as far as 55 days, Gala said.

Those signatures were paired with what appears to have been detailed knowledge of the affected accounts. Of 59 account-token combinations targeted during the incident, 56 were drained for their exact balance on the first attempt. The four largest GALA positions were taken in descending order within 18 seconds.

That pattern suggests reconnaissance occurred before exploitation began rather than account balances being discovered transaction by transaction during the attack.

Execution then moved rapidly. Gala recorded 1,066 submissions at a median interval of 4.5 seconds, with 73.9% arriving exactly one block apart.

The historical signatures were valuable because of how GalaChain handled EIP-712 typed-data verification.

Before the patch, the verifier accepted type definitions supplied with the request rather than deriving them from the invoked operation. That allowed a signature covering one set of fields to be presented while another method executed using additional information the signer had never committed to.

One on-chain example shows a TransferToken call processing about 1.64 billion GALA even though the EIP-712 structure supplied for verification described an AddLiquidity operation. The destination, quantity, and token instance used by the transfer were outside the signed structure.

The signature itself was cryptographically valid. The system could not guarantee that the account holder had authorized the economic effects execution ultimately produced.

Gala said investigators found no evidence that the affected users’ private keys, seed phrases, or passwords were compromised. That conclusion relies partly on internal evidence that the company has not published.

A separate replay weakness expanded the pool of signatures the attacker could use.

GalaChain assigned unique transaction keys intended to stop the same signed payload from being submitted more than once. But when a transaction failed, the key could roll back alongside the unsuccessful state changes.

The signature remained visible on the public ledger while the replay key remained available.

Gala said 57 of the 60 historical source transactions linked to the exploit contained at least one failed inner operation, while none completed entirely successfully.

The combination effectively turned unsuccessful historical requests into reusable permissions. An attacker did not need to forge signatures or steal the private keys behind every targeted wallet because authentic signatures had already been published on-chain.

GALA audits missed the interaction between safeguards

Meanwhile, the vulnerability had survived external security reviews before the attack.

Gala said the relevant verification logic was examined during an authorization-focused CertiK engagement in late 2025 and an SDK review by Hashlock in January. Neither identified the signature-scope issue.

The company has not published those reports, making it difficult to determine what each review tested or how extensively it examined the interaction between signature verification and replay protection.

Notably, the replay mechanism itself was introduced after an earlier CertiK finding.

That protection could prevent reuse after a transaction key had been consumed. The Aug. 18 attacker found the boundary where the safeguard stopped applying: failed transactions whose signed payloads had become public while their unique keys remained unused.

Gala subsequently changed both systems.

Signature verification now derives its type information from the operation being called rather than trusting a caller-supplied definition. Requests also include identifiers that bind signatures more closely to the channel, contract, and method being authorized, while expiration timestamps limit how long signed payloads remain valid.

The replay fix persists a unique transaction key even if the underlying business operation fails, preventing the same historical request from remaining available for another attempt.

Those patches close the two weaknesses described in the postmortem. They do not resolve the response-time problem that emerges once a valid-looking attack is already underway.

The first verified unauthorized transfer occurred at 02:21:54 UTC. Gala paused the bridge at 05:09:19 UTC, about two hours and 47 minutes later, and began removing roles from the recipient address at 05:22.

The company has not disclosed when its monitoring first detected the activity, so that interval cannot be treated as its reaction time. Gala said attempts to move assets out through the bridge were rejected after the pause.

The chronology nevertheless shows the disparity facing operators once exploitation reaches machine speed: submissions can arrive every few seconds while detection, investigation and emergency intervention may still require human decisions.

Bridge operators face a machine-speed defense problem

Gala said it has since added per-identity rate limits, behavioral monitoring for high-value accounts and additional review for bridge withdrawals above certain thresholds.

Those measures move security controls earlier in the settlement process, where unusual activity can be slowed before assets leave the system.

They also introduce trade-offs.

Operation-bound signatures, expirations, and replay keys largely enforce the instructions a user actually signed. Rate limits and behavioral triggers require operators to decide what constitutes abnormal activity, while withdrawal holds can delay legitimate users as well as malicious ones.

Gala has described the attacker as using AI-assisted tooling, but that assessment relies on internal evidence the company has not released.

That distinction matters as crypto firms increasingly frame security threats around artificial intelligence. For bridge operators, the more immediate issue is whether automated attackers can exploit valid-looking authorization paths faster than monitoring systems can identify and contain them.

Gala said it has filed a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and sent preservation and freeze requests to platforms involved as it tracks proceeds across four chains.

The longer-term challenge is now likely to shift toward audit scope. Reviews that test signature verification, replay protection, and transaction execution separately may miss vulnerabilities that appear only when those systems interact.

For GalaChain, future audits will have to establish whether similar authorization gaps remain elsewhere in its SDK.

For bridge operators more broadly, the commercial cost of relying on a human-triggered pause rises with every block once an attacker arrives with harvested signatures, mapped balances and an automated submission engine.

The post Hacker turned 55 days of failed transactions into a $3 million master key that drained GalaChain wallets appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On Sept. 16, the Federal Reserve tightened short-term monetary policy while leaving its reserve-management toolkit in place. The Federal Open Market Committee raised the federal-funds target range by a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00% and continued its policy of maintaining ample bank reserves.

The accompanying implementation directive set the interest rate paid on reserve balances at 3.90%, effective Sept. 17. It also retained conditional authority for the New York Fed trading desk to buy Treasury bills and, if needed, other Treasuries with no more than three years remaining to maintain ample reserves.

Each action serves a separate function. A higher administered rate transmits the tighter target range, while reserve-management authority supports the operating system used to keep overnight rates under control. Bitcoin liquidity depends on how those policies reach financial markets, beyond the size of the Fed's balance sheet.

How reserve plumbing differs from QE

QE is designed to ease monetary policy. It typically uses large-scale purchases of longer-term Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities to remove duration risk from private portfolios, press down on longer-term rates and loosen broader financial conditions.

Reserve-management purchases, or RMPs, have a narrower purpose. They add reserves through purchases of bills and other short-dated Treasuries so the Fed can implement its chosen short-term rate as currency, Treasury balances and other liabilities change.

Vice Chair Philip Jefferson made that distinction in January, describing QE as a stimulus tool that removes duration risk and RMPs as an instrument for maintaining ample reserves and effective short-rate control. New York Fed markets chief Roberto Perli separately said the 2026 reserve-management purchases had been entirely in bills and contrasted them with longer-duration purchases used to ease financial conditions.

That division of labor allows Fed assets to rise while the policy stance tightens. Balance-sheet direction records changes in the central bank's assets and liabilities. The purpose, maturity and transmission of the purchases determine what those changes mean for policy.

The September directive continued an RMP framework launched in December 2025, and the New York Fed says the monthly amount is not on a preset path. Its current operations schedule sets RMPs at zero for the Sept. 15–Oct. 14 period. The schedule includes about $15.6 billion of Treasury-bill purchases funded by principal payments from agency securities, a reinvestment flow separate from net RMP buying.

The trading desk retains the capacity to add short Treasuries when appropriate. Its published schedule shows that capacity currently unused for RMPs, sharply limiting claims of an immediate fresh reserve injection.

The earlier purchase totals show why the accounting needs care. Through July 1, the Fed's Monetary Policy Report said the System Open Market Account had bought nearly $250 billion of Treasury bills since early January. About $160 billion came from RMPs and $90 billion from agency-security reinvestments. Over the report's comparison period, total Fed assets rose $151 billion and reserve balances increased $54 billion as other balance-sheet items moved as well.

The latest pre-decision H.4.1 release put total assets at $6.740619 trillion on Sept. 9, up $3.415 billion from the prior week and $134.657 billion from a year earlier. Those figures establish the size and direction of the balance sheet. QE classification instead turns on the purpose and composition of the program.

What the package means for Bitcoin

Bitcoin markets absorbed a quarter-point rate hike alongside the continued ample-reserves framework. The framework is intended to support reserve supply and short-rate control, while the target rate and interest paid on reserve balances moved higher.

The pre-decision money-market readings were consistent with the Fed retaining control of overnight rates. On Sept. 15, the secured overnight financing rate was 3.64% and the effective federal-funds rate was 3.63%, close to the then-current 3.65% interest rate on reserve balances. Overnight reverse-repo take-up was about $0.7 billion.

Those funding readings help classify the reserve policy. The crypto-market figures offer contemporaneous context rather than evidence of transmission. CryptoSlate's Bitcoin market data showed the asset near $76,044 with a 0.13% gain over 24 hours, while Farside Investors recorded $450.4 million of net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds on Sept. 15. Causal attribution to the Fed decision remains unsupported.

Future balance-sheet growth should be judged first by the program itself. The decisive evidence would be its announced purpose, scale and maturity composition, along with whether the New York Fed schedules net reserve-management purchases. A program designed to ease policy by removing substantial duration risk would be materially different from conditional bill purchases used to maintain ample reserves.

Broader transmission still matters to Bitcoin. A convincing liquidity-pivot case would pair easier longer-term financial conditions with stronger crypto demand. Bitcoin prices and ETF flows can reveal investor response, while the Fed program's design determines whether the QE label fits.

For now, the Sept. 16 package is tighter monetary policy implemented through an ample-reserves system. The QE label collapses two separate functions into one balance-sheet number and overstates what the Fed has delivered to Bitcoin.

The post Why the Fed balance sheet is lying to you about the next Bitcoin rally appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin fell to an intraday low of $75,064.82 on Sept. 16, but recovered and reclaimed the $76,000 zone after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's press conference wrapped up.

The S&P 500 fell roughly 0.7%, the Dow dropped 1.2%, and the 2-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.734% in the same window, while Bitcoin held its ground.

Warsh's real signal sat well past the hike itself

The Fed raised its target range 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4.00% in a unanimous 12-0 vote, but fixed-income derivatives had already priced in odds above 90% of that move before the meeting began.

Warsh then said at his press conference that he would be “hard pressed” to call broad financial conditions restrictive. A dot plot released alongside the decision showed 16 of 18 policymakers projecting at least one more hike this year.

That combination raises the bar for every liquidity-sensitive asset well beyond what a single quarter-point move could settle on its own.

Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO, argued the hike itself was never the number worth watching.

In a note to CryptoSlate, he said:

“Rates are likely to stay restrictive for longer than investors had hoped.”

Levin pointed to the median year-end rate near 4% to 4.25%, and also said that he is watching Treasury yields and liquidity conditions more closely than the Fed's headline decision, since Bitcoin has already absorbed much of the higher-rate expectation built into this meeting.

He said that if yields stabilize, the asset can continue to trade on institutional demand and improving liquidity, while adding that a run of additional priced-in hikes would weigh on risk assets broadly.

Four demand gauges have all turned in the same direction for Bitcoin

Glassnode's latest on-chain report shows Bitcoin trading just below its $76,700 True Market Mean, the average price paid by active investors, and every major demand channel weakening at once.

Realized Cap posted its first negative daily reading, breaking a 27-day growth run. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $450.4 million of net outflows on Sept. 15, led by $214.8 million out of FBTC and $161.7 million out of IBIT.

Stablecoin supply sits near $301 billion, flat for the week and roughly 4% below its April peak. Corporate treasury purchases have slowed to just 5,900 BTC over the past three months, a fraction of the 89,000 BTC bought in July 2025 alone.

That leaves those buyers' $80,500 average cost basis sitting overhead now as resistance.

Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Sygnum Bank, framed that slowdown as a structural liquidity question that outlasts any single Fed meeting.

He said:

“Treasury cash balances, private credit creation and stablecoin supply set conditions on a longer clock than any single meeting.”

In his view, the more relevant question is whether those broader liquidity channels tighten alongside monetary policy itself.

The $76,700 line decides which story is true

Glassnode's criteria require daily closes to settle the question, well beyond any single intraday print.

A second daily close below $76,700 would confirm a genuine range break, opening a path toward $71,300, the short-term holder cost basis, and potentially the $62,000 to $65,000 zone where this year's deeper accumulation took place.

Two daily closes back above $76,700, paired with renewed Realized Cap growth, would restore the prior range and put the $80,500 corporate cost basis back in play as the next test higher.

Martin Lee, market insights lead at DWF Labs, sees the immediate danger sitting just below the current price. Lee said that the vulnerable longs sit between $75,000 and $76,000, warning that a sustained hawkish stance would force risk-on assets to reprice around a higher-for-longer reality well past the idea of a single completed hike.

Lewis Huang, an analyst at Bitget, noted that Bitcoin has historically absorbed roughly four times the S&P 500's move on major rate-driven days. Core annual inflation hit a five-year low Sept. 11, with the headline number driven almost entirely by gasoline prices up 3.9% in a month and diesel up more than 60% on the year.

Huang said that those pressures can reverse faster than underlying inflation, adding that there is a real risk that the Fed keeps tightening well past the point where the energy shock that justified it has already faded.

Bitcoin resilience could turn into accumulation or delayed distribution

The bull case has Bitcoin closing back above $76,700 on consecutive days, with Realized Cap growth resuming and ETF inflows returning now that the Fed decision sits in the past.

Matt Mena, senior crypto research strategist at 21Shares, placed his $100,000 year-end target inside exactly that scenario. He pointed to more than $3 billion in Bitcoin ETF inflows over the past two months, and to Bitcoin's history of finding a floor near current levels before reaching fresh highs, as it did once last April's tariff selloff passed.

That target depends entirely on demand data turning, beyond the fact that the hike now sits behind the market.

The bear case has a second daily close below $76,700 arriving alongside continued ETF redemptions and stablecoin supply that stays flat without any real growth.

Under that path, Bitcoin's calm this week gets reread as quiet distribution well short of genuine strength. A break of the $71,300 short-term-holder floor would expose thinning order-book liquidity that Glassnode shows is largely evaporating below $68,000, leaving the deeper $62,000 to $65,000 accumulation zone as the next real test.

Bitcoin passed its first test simply by not falling with everything else this week. Whether that counts as strength depends entirely on numbers that will not be visible until fresh capital either shows up or continues to stay away.

The post Bitcoin holds $76,000 after Fed rate hike, but 4 demand signals flash warning appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Chainflip will set affected liquidity providers’ active TRON USDT balances to zero under a restart plan responding to the 736,442.17 USDT exploit it disclosed on Sept. 12.

The cross-chain swap protocol will first record each provider’s pre-migration balance separately on-chain, preserving the amount Chainflip says it owes even though the active account will read zero. Repayment remains pending.

By Sept. 16, Chainflip said swaps and quoting had resumed across the rest of the network while TRON remained excluded. The service restart leaves providers on the affected route waiting for both the accounting migration and a recovery process.

Chainflip said the attacker removed the USDT from its TRON vault between 01:44 and 03:10 UTC on Sept. 12 by causing six liquidity-provider withdrawals to be paid twice.

The attack exploited how the protocol read instructions attached to TRON transfers. Chainflip said the attacker submitted a transaction its validators had already signed and added a malformed memo. Software monitoring the transfer interpreted the memo as a failed swap and issued a refund on top of the ordinary withdrawal.

The protocol said the TRON vault now holds far less USDT than providers are owed. The restart plan therefore separates the live account balance from the amount tracked for recovery.

How Chainflip will account for the shortfall

Chainflip’s migration plan calls for closing its open TRON/USDT orders and strategies and unwinding related loans and lending positions. The protocol and its software release use the label “trxUSDT” for USDT on TRON.

Each provider’s pre-migration trxUSDT amount will then be written to a separate on-chain balance before the active account balance is reset. Chainflip said this separate record keeps the amount owed available for future payouts.

The recorded amount is distinct from a completed reimbursement, and the provider’s live trxUSDT account will display zero after the migration.

Chainflip has pledged to make affected providers whole. Its public updates do not identify a funding source or payout schedule, document completed payments, or state a definitively recovered amount.

The protocol said it patched the vulnerability by limiting which TRON transfers can carry swap instructions in a memo. The new logic accepts memos attached to a plain TRX transfer or a direct TRC-20 token transfer. It excludes transfers wrapped inside another contract call, blocking the route used to trigger the extra refund.

Chainflip said all other funds were unaffected. The disclosed shortfall, position unwind, and balance reset apply specifically to trxUSDT liquidity providers.

The post Chainflip to reset TRON USDT provider balances to zero following $736,000 exploit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The single biggest macro weight on crypto in 2026 has not been regulation. It has been a barrel of oil. So when the US president puts a date on the end of the Iran war and tells reporters oil will collapse when it happens, that is worth taking apart carefully, especially because the market's answer so far has been to ignore him.

What exactly did Trump say about the Iran war and oil prices?

Speaking in Dublin on September 12, Trump was asked when the war would end. "I think very soon, I think it'll be right after the midterms, actually," he said, adding that oil would fall sharply once the fighting stops. He also said Iran was probably behind the drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West crude pipeline, which the Saudis shut as a precaution after multiple strikes launched from Iraq.

The midterms are on November 3. There is no ceasefire agreement, no negotiation framework, and Tehran has not signed up to any of this. What you have is a forecast from one side of a war, not a timeline.

Why has the oil price gone up instead of down?

Because the physical supply problem has not moved. The Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf's main export corridor before the war, is contested, and flows are still well below prewar levels even along the route the US military has carved out past Oman's coast. At least two vessels were attacked in Hormuz in recent days.

That is why the barrel is priced where it is. Traders are not pricing a speech, they are pricing tankers that cannot sail. Goldman lifted its December 2026 Brent and WTI forecasts by $5 to $85 and $80, and warned Brent could pass $120 in 2027 if Gulf output stays 4 million barrels a day below prewar levels.

Why would cheaper oil be bullish for crypto?

Two channels, one loud and one quiet.

The loud one is the Fed. Energy is the reason inflation has stayed sticky, and the Fed just raised rates by 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4.00%, its first hike since 2023, with Goldman already expecting another in October. Every dollar off the barrel takes pressure off headline inflation, and that is what decides whether this tightening cycle stops or extends. $BTC at $76,452 and down 12.64% year to date is not a story about blockchains. It is a story about real yields.

The quiet one is mining. Energy is the largest ongoing cost in proof of work. Cheaper power improves miner margins, reduces forced selling of newly issued coins, and takes a persistent source of supply pressure off the market. That channel works slowly, but it works.

Has this trade worked before?

Yes, and that is the warning. In March, oil fell hard after Trump said the campaign was nearly complete, with Brent down about 8.5% to $92.50 and US crude off around 9%, while Asian equities rallied on the drop. Six months later the barrel is above $100 again.

The market learned from that. A de-escalation headline now buys a few hours of relief, not a trend. That cuts both ways: if an actual agreement lands, very little of it is priced in, which is precisely what makes it the highest-upside macro catalyst left in 2026.

What should you watch instead of the headlines?

Three things, in order. Whether the Saudi East-West pipeline actually restarts, because that is a supply fact rather than a statement. Whether Hormuz traffic recovers toward prewar volumes. And the Fed minutes on October 7, which will show how much of the hiking path depends on energy.

Until oil is trading with a lower number in front of it, treat the political timeline as an option on crypto upside, not a reason to reposition.

Two events inside 24 hours reset the entire crypto market this week, and neither of them went the way the industry wanted. The Senate killed the biggest piece of crypto legislation in years on Tuesday, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2023. $BTC is still standing at around $76,452, which tells you more about how much of this was already priced in than about how bullish anyone feels.

Here is what actually happened and where every major coin sits right now.

Why Did the CLARITY Act Vote Break Crypto Market Sentiment?

The Senate voted 49 to 50 on the motion to invoke cloture on the CLARITY Act on September 15, falling short of the 60 votes needed and short of even a simple majority. The bill would have built a federal regulatory framework for digital assets, splitting oversight between the SEC and the CFTC.

The failure was not about market structure at all. Democrats objected mainly to the bill's ethics language around presidential crypto holdings, and four Republicans, Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis, also voted against the motion. Republican leaders had released a revised version on Sunday adding new ethics restrictions, but it was not enough.

The industry did not see it coming. The vote was described as a stunning loss for a sector that had been confident enough senators would move the bill forward. Technically the bill is not buried, but with midterms approaching, the calendar is brutal.

One thing worth telling readers: nothing changes for holders tonight. No new rules, no new taxes, no new exchange obligations, and the SEC's Regulation Crypto Assets framework is still open for public comment until October 20, 2026.

What Did the Fed Rate Hike Do to the Bitcoin Price?

Less than you would expect. The Fed raised rates by 25 basis points to a 3.75% to 4.00% target range, the first hike since 2023, on a unanimous vote. $BTC pushed toward $76,300 after the statement, then faded through Chair Warsh's press conference and settled near where it started, around $75,700.

That is the tell. A 25 basis point move that sits at 92% odds going in is not a surprise, it is a scheduled event. The pattern all through 2026 has not been hike equals down and hold equals up. It has been surprise equals move. Majors have since traded back up, with the Fed projecting limited further tightening from here.

The bigger risk sits in October. Goldman is already forecasting another 25 basis point hike in October, pointing to the Fed's own hawkish near-term rate projections.

Why Are Bitcoin ETF Outflows Getting Worse?

This is the part that should worry anyone watching flows rather than headlines. US spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $450 million, the largest outflow since June, as the CLARITY vote sent regulation-sensitive tokens sharply lower. The same move triggered roughly $570 million in liquidations of long positions.

$XRP took the worst of it among the large caps, which makes sense given how much of its thesis depends on US regulatory outcomes. It dropped close to 8% in the 24 hours around the vote while $ETH fell about 3%. Both have recovered part of that since.

Why Is the Zcash Price Still Climbing While Everything Else Bleeds?

$ZEC is the single strangest chart in crypto right now. It is up 16.88% in 24 hours to $1,385 and up 163.90% year to date, on a day when the rest of the market is fighting to stay flat.

The catalyst is institutional, not retail. Grayscale's Zcash Trust ETF (ZCSH) launched on NYSE Arca on August 25 as the first US spot ETF for a privacy coin, pulling in roughly $414 million to $463 million within two weeks. It crossed $500 million in assets under management by September 10.

The regulatory overhang cleared too. The SEC closed its multi-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation without enforcement action in January 2026, and rising shielded-pool adoption, institutional accumulation and concerns around AI-driven surveillance have lifted the whole privacy sector. Privacy is now up 213% since Bitcoin's October 2025 top, with $ZEC alone accounting for roughly 62% of the sector.

There is also a governance upgrade in motion. Token holders voted almost unanimously to cut target block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds as part of the NU7 update, while keeping the Bitcoin-style halving schedule intact. 

Context for readers who need it: only 25 of the 200 largest crypto assets are positive for the year, and the median asset is down 55%. $ZEC is the outlier, not the template.

Crypto Price Update: Where Do $BTC, $ETH and the Majors Stand Today?

Green across most of the board on the 24 hour, red almost everywhere on the year.

🟢 $BTC: $76,452 | +1.25% (24h) | -2.14% (7d) | -12.64% YTD
🟢 $ETH: $2,442 | +2.04% (24h) | -1.19% (7d) | -17.69% YTD
🟢 $BNB: $725.58 | +2.86% (24h) | +0.94% (7d) | -15.95% YTD
🟢 $XRP: $1.30 | +1.75% (24h) | -5.80% (7d) | -29.25% YTD
🟢 $SOL: $100.14 | +3.57% (24h) | -1.05% (7d) | -19.55% YTD
🟢 $ZEC: $1,385.37 | +16.88% (24h) | +13.55% (7d) | +163.90% YTD
🟢 $HYPE: $80.15 | +3.48% (24h) | -3.60% (7d) | +215.18% YTD
🟢 $TRX: $0.3350 | +0.10% (24h) | -1.38% (7d) | +16.93% YTD
🟢 $LINK: $11.20 | +4.71% (24h) | -4.81% (7d) | -8.08% YTD
🟢 $DOGE: $0.08142 | +2.77% (24h) | -4.56% (7d) | -30.58% YTD
🔴 $XMR: $493.00 | -1.84% (24h) | -3.88% (7d) | +13.80% YTD
🟢 $ADA: $0.1992 | +3.46% (24h) | -6.44% (7d) | -40.13% YTD

What Should Traders Watch Next?

Three things. Minutes from this FOMC meeting land on October 7, and they will tell you how close the committee is to a second consecutive hike. The SEC comment window on Regulation Crypto Assets closes October 20, which is now the main US rulemaking channel with the legislative route stalled. And ETF flows, both the Bitcoin outflows and the $ZEC inflows, are the cleanest read on whether institutions are repositioning or leaving.

$BTC holding $76,000 through a failed bill, a rate hike and a $450 million ETF outflow week is not a bullish signal on its own. It does suggest sellers are exhausted rather than eager.

On Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. UTC, Avalanche activates its Helicon network upgrade. For you as an AVAX holder, one thing changes above all: anyone delegating their coins will from that moment have to look more closely at which validator they hand them to. The minimum lock-up in staking falls from two weeks to 48 hours, and at the same time the bar at which a validator still earns rewards at all rises from 80 percent uptime to 90 percent. Together the two shift a slice of the risk onto you.

On September 17, 2026 at 06:57 UTC we queried the validator list directly from the P-Chain and counted how many active operators would fail the new bar. The result follows further down, along with the method. The headline figure first: 37 out of 593.

Helicon on September 22: what changes in Avalanche staking

Helicon is a hard fork, a rule change that every node in the network has to adopt at the same moment. On the Fuji testnet the upgrade has been running since July 28, 2026. For the main network the documentation names September 22, 2026, 3:00 p.m. UTC, which corresponds to 5:00 p.m. Central European Summer Time.

Technically Helicon bundles six so-called Avalanche Community Proposals. An ACP is a numbered proposal to change the protocol, comparable to an EIP on Ethereum. Four of them bear directly on staking, two on transaction execution:

• ACP-273 lowers the minimum duration of a validation.
• ACP-267 raises the required uptime.
• ACP-236 introduces automatic renewal of a validation.
• ACP-285 lowers the minimum consumption rate and with it the reward on a short lock-up.
• ACP-194 decouples the acceptance of a block from its execution.
• ACP-283 makes the minimum gas price on the C-Chain demand-dependent.

For the large majority of AVAX holders who keep their coins on an exchange and do nothing further there, nothing visible happens on September 22. The upgrade becomes relevant the moment you delegate yourself or enter into a new delegation.

From 336 hours to 48: the minimum lock-up for validators falls

Until now a validator on the main network had to commit for at least 336 hours, so for two full weeks. After Helicon, 48 hours are enough. The upper limit stays at one year.

What a validation period actually is

A validation period is the span for which an operator locks its stake into the protocol. Unlike Ethereum, Avalanche has no exit queue and no withdrawal on request: start and end are fixed when the position is opened, the stake is bound until the end, and the reward is paid out only afterwards. How widely such periods differ from network to network is something we measured across five chains in our overview of staking lock-up periods.

The minimum stakes stay unchanged. Anyone validating themselves needs 2,000 AVAX. Anyone delegating, meaning assigning their stake to somebody else's validator, needs 25 AVAX. A validator's total weight remains capped at the smaller of two values: three million AVAX, and five times its own stake.

The shorter lock-up sounds convenient at first, but it has a flip side that touches you directly as a delegator. That is the subject of the section after next.

The uptime bar rises from 80 to 90 percent: who that hits

Uptime describes the share of the validation period during which a node was reachable for the network. Until now a validator had to hold this threshold above 80 percent in order to receive rewards at the end. For all periods beginning on or after September 22 it sits at 90 percent.

Running periods keep the old threshold of 80 percent. So there is no cut-off date on which existing delegations become worthless in bulk. The change takes effect only at the next commitment, and that is precisely why it is easy to miss.

For you as a delegator this is the single most important point of the whole upgrade. You run no node, yet you carry its outcome: if the validator you delegated to misses the threshold, the reward for that cycle lapses. The staked amount itself is untouched and comes back when the period ends. What is missing is the yield.

Our P-Chain measurement: 37 of 593 validators sit below 90 percent

Whether the new bar is a theoretical problem or a practical one can be counted. On September 17, 2026 at 06:57 UTC we called the method platform.getCurrentValidators on the public node api.avax.network/ext/bc/P and evaluated the full response. This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 17, 2026.

The response covered 593 active validators on the main network. Of those, 37 sat below an uptime of 90 percent, which is 6.2 percent of the field. 24 of them are even below 80 percent and therefore already miss today's threshold. That leaves 13 operators in the new risk band between 80 and 90 percent. Those thirteen still earn rewards today and would no longer do so after September 22 if nothing changes about their availability.

The rest of the field stands solid. The median sits at 99.92 percent, the tenth percentile still at 95.96 percent. The worst value measured was 0.01 percent. 24 nodes were not connected at all at the time of the query.

How the stake is distributed

The 593 validators held 166.16 million AVAX of their own stake between them. On top came 38.70 million AVAX from 32,405 individual delegations. Their concentration is remarkable: only 250 of the 593 validators had even a single delegator. The remaining 343 run without outside money.

On period lengths the measurement confirms the old rule. The shortest validation period found ran exactly 14 days, the longest 365 days, with a median of 90 days. 74 cycles end before the upgrade, a further 236 in the thirty days after it. For those 310 operators the decision about the new rules is therefore imminent.

What this measurement does not show

The uptime value comes from the perspective of the node queried. The protocol assesses availability from the perspective of many nodes, which is why the value at a single endpoint can deviate. Equally impossible to check was which operator intends to move to the new software version in time, and how individual exchanges handle the date. Anyone wanting to reproduce the figures can issue the same call themselves; the endpoint is public and requires no key.

A delegation has to fit inside one validator cycle: the new trap

Delegating used to be a fairly carefree business, because the validator you assigned your coins to was running for at least two weeks anyway. After Helicon its period can end after 48 hours. Your delegation, however, has to sit entirely within a single validator cycle, because beyond the end of that cycle nothing is guaranteed.

In practice this means: before you delegate, you check when the current period of your chosen validator ends. If that is in three days, you cannot enter into a delegation running three months. Skip that look and you get an error message in the best case and a shorter lock-up than planned in the worse one.

On Avalanche you delegate out of your own wallet, and the coins never leave your control in the process. Which wallets support this and what you should watch out for in key management is set out in our software wallet comparison.

Check the delegation fee: 147 validators take the full reward

The delegation fee is the share of your reward that the validator keeps for its work. The protocol prescribes a minimum of two percent, and the range is open at the top. Our count from September 17 shows a very uneven field: 252 of the 593 validators stood at the minimum of two percent, 105 at twenty percent, 49 at five percent, and nine each at three and at ten percent.

What stands out are 147 validators with a delegation fee of 100 percent. With them, nothing would remain of your delegation reward. As a rule this is no booby trap but the customary way an operator signals that it does not want outside delegations. A display error in the wallet or one inattentive click is still enough to end up there. The fee is openly listed in the validator list, and it is the first value you read before every delegation.

Auto-renewal for validators, no extension for delegations

Auto-renewal means a validation rolls automatically into the next cycle instead of ending. ACP-236 introduces this procedure, and it answers the problem the short minimum duration would otherwise create: without automatic renewal an operator would have to re-stake by hand every two days.

The operator can determine what share of the reward from the expired cycle it carries into the next, and can change that setting for future cycles. If it misses the 90 percent in a cycle, the position expires instead of rolling on, and that cycle's reward is then lost.

For delegations this explicitly does not apply: a delegation never extends itself. If you want to continue your delegation, you enter into a new one once it has run out, and the rule from the previous section applies again.

Lower yield on a short lock-up: what ACP-285 turns on the consumption rate

On Avalanche, the consumption rate governs what share of the theoretically possible reward is actually paid out, depending on how long somebody commits. Whoever stays longer gets more. Until now the lower value sat at ten percent; after Helicon it falls to 7.5 percent and rises linearly from there over 90 days.

In effect that means the reward, annualised, comes out around 1.3 percentage points lower than today at the shortest possible lock-up. The maximum value on a one-year commitment stays unchanged. Short durations are therefore not forbidden, they are priced.

As a side effect the developers expect annual AVAX inflation to be roughly 0.5 to one percent lower, and the weighted average lock-up duration to rise by around two months. These are forecasts from the protocol side rather than measured values; whether they materialise will only show after the upgrade.

For your own calculation that simply means: if you optimise for yield, the long lock-up remains the better route. If you optimise for flexibility, that will cost you somewhat more from September 22 than it does today.

AvalancheGo v1.15.0: what node operators need to do before September 22

Anyone running their own node has a hard task with a hard deadline. Version AvalancheGo v1.15.0 has to be installed before activation, otherwise the node follows the old rules and drops out of consensus. A node that drops off the network at the wrong moment loses uptime, and uptime has become more expensive from September 22.

Anyone building on Avalanche should additionally go through three things in their code. Removed debug methods have to be replaced. Calls to eth_accounts, eth_coinbase and eth_etherbase are dropped. And because of ACP-194, the state returned by a query using latest can lag behind block acceptance, depending on how long the execution queue currently is.

Dynamic minimum gas price on the C-Chain: what changes when you send

ACP-283 makes the minimum gas price on the C-Chain demand-dependent instead of fixing it. The C-Chain is Avalanche's Ethereum-compatible chain, on which most ordinary transactions and applications run.

In everyday use you notice little of this as long as your wallet works out the fee itself. It becomes relevant for applications and scripts that have a fixed gas price hard-coded. After the upgrade, such calls can produce transactions that get stuck or are rejected. If a transfer of yours hangs on September 22, the fee setting is the first place you look.

Staking through an exchange: why the protocol date does not automatically apply there

A large part of AVAX holdings sits not in a personal wallet but with a provider that handles the staking in the background. In that case your contract applies to you before the protocol does. The provider decides whether it passes on the shorter minimum duration, which deadline it quotes you and what share of the reward it keeps.

Experience shows those shares are considerably higher than the two percent the protocol knows as its floor. It is worth holding your provider's terms up against the protocol values before you enter into a new commitment. A look into the terms and conditions under the heading of payout periods usually answers both questions at once.

Staking income in Germany: the 256 euro exemption limit

In Germany, staking rewards count as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. What matters is the market value at the moment of receipt, meaning when the reward reaches you. An exemption limit of 256 euros a year applies, and exemption limit means: if it is exceeded, the entire amount becomes taxable, and not merely the part above it.

Two points are often confused here. The holding period of your staked coins is not extended to ten years by staking; the Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed this in its circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of crypto assets. For the rewards themselves, a separate one-year period under section 23 of the Income Tax Act begins on receipt.

Because a delegation can be settled considerably more often after Helicon than before, correspondingly more individual receipt dates arise. Anyone who had four settlements a year until now quickly reaches a multiple of that. Note the date, quantity and price of every reward while the data is still within reach.

Avalanche staking after Helicon: what to take away

1. Check which validator you delegate to before September 22. Look at the uptime of the current period and hold it against the new threshold of 90 percent, and read the delegation fee before you confirm. 37 of the 593 active validators were below it in our measurement, and 147 took the full reward. If you would rather not delegate yourself, our comparison of staking providers puts the platforms' terms side by side.
2. Settle where your keys are before you enter into a new commitment. Delegating works out of your own wallet, and your stake stays under your control while it does. How to store the keys for that safely is shown in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. Record every reward with its date and price. The shorter cycles generate more receipt dates, and each one counts towards the 256 euro exemption limit. A portfolio tracker takes that off your hands; providers and prices are listed in our overview of crypto tax tools.

The details of the upgrade come from the Avalanche staking documentation and from the technical overview of the Helicon upgrade, the validator figures from our own P-Chain query of September 17, 2026.

(As of September 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The European Central Bank has opened its digital euro pilot project to applications, and two dates in October 2026 are now fixed. Merchants selling online can express their interest in taking part until October 27, 2026. Before that, on Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. CET, an online information session on the pilot takes place. The ECB has deliberately opened this session to anyone interested, consumers included.

Both dates appear on the English-language version of the ECB pilot page. The German version of the same page does not list them at the time of writing, and carries a note at the top directing readers to the English version for current information. Anyone informing themselves in German walks straight past both dates.

One point for context: the pilot is a test, and it is not a launch. The ECB is examining a beta version, and by its own account it will decide whether to issue a digital euro at all only once the digital euro regulation has been adopted.

What the ECB is testing in the digital euro pilot project

The digital euro is central bank digital money, known in English as a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. The definition in one sentence: electronic money issued by the central bank itself, as opposed to the balance in your current account, which is a claim on your commercial bank.

In the pilot, the ECB says it wants to examine a beta version of the digital euro under real conditions. The underlying infrastructure is to be tested in everyday situations, such as payments in shops or between private individuals. The central bank names its three test questions itself: is the system robust, is it user-friendly, is it scalable. The results are meant to feed into the further preparations.

The pilot is due to begin in the second half of 2027 and to run for twelve months. The application window in October 2026 therefore sits roughly a year ahead of the actual start. The gap is the usual lead time: payment service providers and merchants have to connect their systems before anyone pays with it.

One term that comes up often here is the digital euro rulebook. It sets out the technical and contractual rules under which banks, payment service providers and merchants would process the digital euro. In July 2026 the ECB published a new draft of this rulebook, version 0.91, which took up feedback from a large market consultation. A version number below 1.0 is an honest signal: the rulebook is a draft.

Digital euro, Bitcoin and stablecoins: why the pilot matters to crypto investors

For readers who hold crypto assets, the digital euro is no competing investment product. The ECB intends it as a means of payment; it is not designed as a store of value, and that is precisely why it touches the crypto side at all. It targets the same use case as euro stablecoins, namely digital payment in a stable unit of account.

Three things can be kept cleanly apart. Bitcoin is a scarce, volatile asset with no issuer that you can hold yourself. A euro stablecoin is a privately issued token pegged to the euro that falls under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation inside the EU. The digital euro would be central bank money, a claim on the Eurosystem. We have set out the differences between the digital euro and stablecoins in detail elsewhere.

In practice this means that if the digital euro arrives, you get a state-issued alternative for payments that today run over cards, payment service providers or stablecoins. The ECB is open about its reasoning, pointing to Europe's dependence on international card schemes and citing a concrete figure: 13 of the 20 euro area countries rely on international card schemes for card payments. Anyone buying crypto assets through an exchange and moving euros in and out notices little of that dependence day to day, but still pays for it through the payment rails. Which trading venues in Europe operate under supervision is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Two digital euro dates in October 2026: information session and application deadline

The two dates differ in what they ask of you.

October 6, 2026, 3:00 p.m. CET, online information session. The ECB calls it a focus session. According to its announcement, it covers the aims of the pilot, the timetable and the selection procedure for merchants. The decisive sentence on the page: the session is open to everyone who wants to learn more about the pilot, and the ECB explicitly lists merchants, payment service providers, technical service providers and consumers. Registration via the ECB page is required to attend.

October 27, 2026, close of the merchant call for expressions of interest. It is aimed at merchants in e-commerce and mobile commerce. Those merchants are to help design and test the digital euro payment flows for online and mobile platforms. This is a call for expressions of interest, not a binding sign-up for the pilot itself: the ECB makes the selection afterwards.

Who takes part in the digital euro pilot: 36 payment service providers, merchants and central bank staff

The participant side is already partly filled. Following the call for expressions of interest aimed at payment service providers in March 2026, more than 50 providers applied, according to the ECB. Of those, 36 payment service providers authorised in the euro area were selected. The central bank justifies its choice with broad coverage by business model, size and geographical spread.

Added to them are selected merchants, now being sought, along with staff of the ECB and of the 19 national central banks. This group is to try out the beta version in everyday use, in the ECB's own examples when paying in the staff canteen. The figure 19 is no typo and no contradiction of the 20 euro area countries: in this list the ECB counts itself separately from the national central banks.

What is missing from the list is the general public. Going by the ECB's description, there is no general sign-up for private individuals wanting to join the pilot.

Can you take part in the digital euro pilot as a consumer?

The honest answer has two parts. You can attend the information session on October 6, because the ECB names consumers explicitly as a target group. You cannot apply for the pilot itself as the announcement currently stands: the participant groups are payment service providers, selected merchants and central bank staff.

This distinction is easily lost in the coverage, because the whole process runs as a merchant story. For you it means that the October date is a chance to hear first hand how the central bank presents its timetable and its selection, and to put questions where they can be answered. It amounts to no more than that, and anyone expecting an early issuance of digital euro to private individuals will be disappointed.

Why the German version of the ECB page leaves out the two dates

A detail that matters more in practice than it sounds for German-speaking readers: the ECB maintains its pilot page in every official language, but keeps only the English version up to date. The German page carries a note at the top saying that current information is to be taken from the English language version.

The result is that the German version does carry the timeframe of the pilot and the description of the beta version, while its news section still shows the March 2026 call to payment service providers. The call to merchants and the focus session on October 6 are absent there. The description of the participants is also less precise: the German version speaks generally of selected payment service providers, while the English one names the figure 36.

So anyone wanting to check the state of the project reads the English page. That is more than a technicality: it explains why these two dates have barely surfaced in German-speaking countries so far.

The digital euro timetable to 2029: regulation, pilot and possible first issuance

The ECB names three milestones, and each one comes with a caveat.

• 2026: adoption of the digital euro regulation. The ECB frames its entire timetable as an assumption rather than a fact: the central bank assumes the regulation will be adopted in 2026.
• Second half of 2027: start of the twelve-month pilot project.
• 2029: possible first issuance of the digital euro. The central bank wants to be ready for it, but will decide whether it actually issues only once the regulation has been adopted.

The legislative process runs in parallel and lies with the European legislators rather than with the ECB. Where the procedure stands and which points remain contested, above all the question of a cap on your balance, we have set out in our piece on the digital euro holding limit. That cap is the point at which the project becomes concrete for your current account.

What the beta version of the digital euro is and what it is not

A beta version is a working pre-release tested under real conditions before any go-live. In the pilot that means real behaviour in real situations feeds in, while the scope stays limited to the group of participants.

From that follows what the pilot explicitly is not. It is no launch of the digital euro, no preliminary stage conferring a legal entitlement and no decision on issuance. The ECB states in its own account that the preparatory work remains flexible so that it can be aligned with the legislative process. As long as the regulation has not been adopted, the legal framework is not settled either, including any obligations for merchants.

For your financial planning that means, soberly: nothing changes for your account this year or next. What can change is the framework in which payment service providers and merchants build their systems, and that will later shape the routes over which you move money.

What merchants with an online shop should weigh up now

If you run an online business yourself, the expression of interest by October 27 is a genuine decision. Three points speak for it, all of them named by the ECB: you can help shape the payment flows, you see the technical requirements earlier than your competitors, and you test against an infrastructure that, if it succeeds, works the same way in every euro area country.

Against that stands the effort. A beta integration ties up development time in a project whose legal basis has yet to be agreed, and the pilot only starts in the second half of 2027. Anyone with scarce development resources is pushing back work on things that bring in revenue tomorrow.

A sober middle course: the information session on October 6 costs an hour and supplies the basis for the decision that falls due three weeks later. Anyone accepting crypto assets in their own shop knows the trade-off from practice anyway, because the same questions of settlement, chargebacks and costs have to be answered there.

Digital euro and self-custody: what changes for your wallet

The short answer: the digital euro changes nothing about your self-custody. Going by the ECB's description it will sit in an account with your bank or with a public intermediary, so with an intermediary in either case. A wallet whose keys only you hold therefore remains the only way to move digital assets without anyone else's consent.

Two points are still worth keeping an eye on. First the offline function: the ECB holds out the prospect of payments without a network connection, which comes closer to cash than any card payment does. Second the planned cap on your balance, which has no equivalent for self-custodied crypto assets and which marks the digital euro clearly as a means of payment rather than a form of saving.

Anyone holding crypto assets today takes a separate decision about how to secure the keys. The choice between custody with a provider and your own hardware is a topic in itself, and our hardware wallet comparison shows what matters in practice for self-custody.

How to tell whether the digital euro timetable holds

Timetables in this project have slipped before, so it is worth looking at the points where slippage shows up early. Three observation points are enough.

1. The regulation. The legal act is the condition the ECB places ahead of its entire timetable. If the legislative process runs beyond 2026, everything behind it moves back.
2. The rulebook. As long as the draft stays below version 1.0, the technical and contractual rules are not final. A jump to a first full version would be the signal that the pilot is getting concrete.
3. The selection of merchants. After October 27 the ECB has to choose from the expressions of interest. A participant field that drags on is an early hint of a later start.

None of these points works as a signal for crypto price moves. The digital euro is a payments project with a horizon out to 2029, and anyone deriving a price call for the coming weeks from it is overstretching the evidence.

Digital euro and the ECB pilot project: what to take away

1. Put October 6, 2026, 3:00 p.m. CET, in your diary if you want the state of play first hand. Registration runs via the ECB pilot page, and the session is open to consumers as well. If you also want to know how European supervision applies to trading venues, you will find that context in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Check the expression of interest by October 27, 2026 if you work in online retail. It is a non-binding expression, with the ECB making the selection afterwards. For the payments side of your shop it is also worth looking at settlement via crypto credit cards, which raise the same questions of cost and chargebacks.
3. Change nothing about your custody because of the pilot project. Until a possible issuance in 2029 the digital euro remains a plan under reservation. If you wanted to review how your keys are secured anyway, our hardware wallet comparison will help you choose.

The two primary sources to read up on: the English ECB page on the pilot project carrying both dates, and the German version of the same page, which describes the framework but leaves the dates out.

(As of September 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Robinhood Chain went live on 1 July 2026, and the mainnet launch came with a 90-day gas rebate for transactions sent from the Robinhood Wallet (Arbitrum documented the launch itself). That window closes at the end of September; crypto.news puts the date at 29 September. After it, every transaction on the chain pays a network fee in ETH again. For the memecoins that set the tone on this chain, it is the first real stress test.

How big the chain has become

The numbers have grown sharply. On 17 September, value locked stands at around $929 million, DEX volume at roughly $1.54 billion over 24 hours and $39.1 billion over 30 days, with about $67.4 billion cumulative since launch (DefiLlama, retrieved 17 September). On 13 September it was $1.88 billion in a single day, which Bloomingbit counts as more than half of Uniswap's entire volume.

In fees, the chain took in around $7.8 million over 24 hours and $303.6 million over 30 days (DefiLlama). On 2 September, $4.01 million of chain revenue stood against $81,714 at Solana the same day (crypto.news, 4 September). Anyone reading that as Robinhood Chain overtaking Solana is comparing a subsidised launch phase with a settled network. That is precisely what this deadline is about.

Why the gas is the thing that decides it

Most of the fee-generating activity does not run through the tokenised equities Robinhood built the chain for. It runs through the memecoin launchpad Pons and through trading bots (crypto.news). Pons collected around $35.0 million in fees over seven days, $128.8 million over 30 days and roughly $151.3 million all time (DefiLlama, retrieved 17 September). Around 25,000 new tokens were created through it on 2 September alone, against an average of roughly 10,000 a day (Bloomingbit, 14 September).

An operation at that scale depends on a very low cost per attempt. Launching twenty tokens to hit one works out differently once every launch and every swap costs gas again. On top of that, the trading barely comes from the Robinhood app itself: Bloomingbit estimates its share of chain trading at one to two percent. The subsidy has therefore mostly pulled in outside usage, and that usage has no reason to stay other than the numbers.

What happens afterwards is open. There is no reliable forecast for how much activity survives, and any figure someone quotes you for it is a guess.

What it means for investors

The point that matters in practice is not a price question but a liquidity question. Memecoins on a young chain depend on thin pools. If transaction counts fall, those pools get thinner, and the gap between the quoted price and the price you actually exit at widens. That barely touches small positions and hits larger ones immediately.

How fast it moves in both directions is visible in CASHCAT, the chain's best-known token: on 3 September it set a new all-time high at around $0.3143, and on 17 September it trades near $0.1912. That is a gain of some 82 percent over 30 days and a drawdown of roughly 39 percent from the high (CoinGecko, retrieved 17 September). Both numbers describe the same token two weeks apart.

This is also where the difference between watching and trading becomes obvious: Dexscreener and TradingView give you charts, not execution. One mobile alternative is the trading app FOMO Family, which lets you discover, swipe through and trade meme and low-cap tokens directly in the app, with a fast deposit flow. Download the app through the link and you get ten percent off trading fees. There is also community speculation about a possible airdrop for active users - that is unconfirmed, the provider has promised nothing, and it is not a reason to deposit money. None of this changes the risk: meme and low-cap trading stays highly volatile, and losing the entire position is possible at any time.

What to measure in the days after 29 September

1. Daily transactions. The interesting number is not the price but how many swaps are left once they cost something again.
2. New tokens on Pons. If the count falls well below ten thousand a day, the supply this segment feeds on disappears.
3. Pool liquidity rather than market capitalisation. Check how much actually sits in the pool and whether it is locked. At a valuation in the hundreds of millions with a few million in the pool, exiting at the quoted price is effectively impossible.
4. Value locked. It sits just short of a billion dollars. Whether it stays there after the deadline is the single most honest answer to the question of whether the chain carries without a subsidy.

The background to all of this - what Robinhood Chain technically is, how the memecoin wave came about and how investors get access - is set out in full in our Robinhood Chain guide. If you are interested in how individual meme tokens are valued over a longer horizon, see our prediction pages for Pump.fun, the launchpad token Pons will most likely be measured against, and for BONK from the Solana ecosystem.

And the distinction that still holds after 29 September: memecoins are a zero-sum game in which earlier buyers' gains come out of later buyers' losses. That is not a moral judgement but arithmetic. Decide in advance what amount you could write off entirely without it changing your plans.

Disclosure: some of the providers named in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no influence on our editorial assessment.

(As of 17 September 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Memecoins can lose their entire value; invest only amounts whose total loss you can absorb.)

The privacy coin rose double digits Thursday and 168% over the past month in the wake of the NU7 upgrade vote.

A substitute text adopted before the vote strips out the Federal Reserve funding routes and thins the transparency rules.

The bill would exempt qualifying crypto fees from gain-or-loss calculations and restrict tax-loss deductions on tokens sold and quickly repurchased.

Meta is reportedly developing a version of its smart glasses without a camera, potentially addressing one of the biggest privacy objections to AI wearables.

An independent researcher found the agents hijacked Hugging Face accounts and mapped the platform's defenses as early as May 13—activity OpenAI's own incident report never fully described.

Ripple 2026 event to Spotlight XRP ETFs, Tokenization, Stablecoins, AI agents, and what is ahead for the XRP Ledger.

XRP Ledger activity is surging, pushing the network’s built-in XRP burn rate above its recent average.

Ripple’s David Schwartz exposes how the US Senate killed the landmark CLARITY Act to protect traditional bank profits, not rural economic interests.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is pushing back against fears that increasingly capable AI will make cybersecurity unwinnable.

Synapse (SYN) has returned to the spotlight after a breakout pushed the token above $0.20 intraday.

Key Takeaways

• Fluence Energy slashed its fiscal 2026 revenue projection to $2.4 billion from $3.0 billion, marking a $600 million decrease
• Manufacturing breakdowns at the Houston facility are central to the crisis, with daily production collapsing to just one unit versus the planned eleven
• Baird issued an Underperform rating with a $3.00 price target; Canaccord reduced its target to $15.00 while maintaining a Buy stance
• The company’s adjusted EBITDA forecast now shows a $200 million loss versus the previous $10 million loss estimate
• FLNC shares currently trade at $9.05, reflecting a 54% decline year-to-date, with no analyst predicting profits for the current fiscal year

Shares of Fluence Energy have plunged to $9.05, marking a devastating 54% decline for the year, following the company’s announcement of dramatic reductions to its fiscal 2026 projections stemming from significant operational challenges at its Houston manufacturing hub.

Fluence Energy, Inc., FLNC

The energy storage provider has revised its fiscal 2026 revenue outlook downward to roughly $2.4 billion, representing a steep drop from the previously communicated $3.0 billion target. This staggering $600 million deficit traces back predominantly to a single source: the troubled Houston production site.

Manufacturing disruptions at the Houston location account for $450 million of the total revenue gap. During the critical late summer production ramp period, the plant was engineered to deliver eleven units daily but achieved only a single unit per day.

Chief Executive Julian Nebreda acknowledged the company had miscalculated the operational challenges inherent to the facility. Automated welding systems experienced complete breakdowns, necessitating an emergency pivot to manual production methods. Shortages of qualified workers in the final assembly stages compounded the difficulties until the company secured partnerships with three regional subcontractors.

While corrective actions eventually boosted production to three units daily, the financial consequences had already materialized.

The total financial blow reached $190 million. This figure encompasses $130 million stemming from contractual penalties and revenue deferrals now pushed to fiscal 2027, alongside $60 million in deployment expenses and quality assurance investments.

Financial Projections Deteriorate

The company’s adjusted EBITDA forecast has shifted to an anticipated loss of roughly $200 million for fiscal 2026, contrasting sharply with the previous midpoint projection of merely a $10 million loss. Approximately two-thirds of this expanded deficit stems from unmet project delivery targets.

Fluence’s gross profit margin currently registers at only 9.36%, underscoring the severity of operational strain. Three financial analysts have recently lowered their earnings estimates for the coming period, with consensus projections showing no pathway to profitability within the current fiscal year.

During an investor conference call, Fluence executives disclosed the company is strategically retreating from certain U.S. market opportunities temporarily, a move that Baird characterized as significantly concerning.

Analyst Community Responds

Baird moved FLNC to an Underperform rating from Neutral and drastically reduced its price objective to $3.00 from $10.00. The investment firm highlighted the guidance reduction and strategic U.S. withdrawal as primary concerns, noting the guidance implies nearly a 50% contraction for the fourth quarter specifically.

Canaccord adopted a more optimistic perspective. While reducing its price target to $15.00 from $24.00, the firm retained its Buy recommendation, contending the shares appear attractively valued at present price levels.

BMO Capital adjusted its target downward to $7.00 while maintaining a Market Perform designation. Morgan Stanley modestly trimmed its objective to $15.00 from $16.00, preserving an Equalweight stance while recalibrating financial models to reflect the updated company outlook.

UBS bucked the prevailing trend, elevating FLNC to Neutral from Sell. Analyst Jon Windham posited that the guidance revision could represent a trough for near-term earnings forecasts, with accelerated expansion potentially materializing in fiscal 2027.

GLJ Research moved to a Hold rating from Buy, expressing skepticism regarding the company’s capacity to translate its substantial $6.4 billion contracted project backlog into realized revenue streams.

Fluence maintains $1.0 billion in advance customer payments already secured. The stock experienced an additional 2.69% decline during the trading session, closing at $9.05.

The post Fluence Energy (FLNC) Stock Plummets 54% as Manufacturing Crisis Triggers Analyst Downgrades appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• JPMorgan shifted its stance on IREN to Overweight, increasing the price target from $46 to $65 based on the company’s NVIDIA collaboration and neocloud expansion
• Texas grid operator ERCOT revealed more than 5 gigawatts of conditional power allocation designated for artificial intelligence infrastructure
• The company’s Sweetwater Hub in Texas, featuring 2 gigawatts of capacity, received conditional Base Load designation in ERCOT’s initial batch
• Revenue from AI Cloud Services surged to $128.8 million in the 2026 fiscal year, a significant increase from the prior year’s $16.4 million
• The company recorded a net loss of $702.6 million for fiscal 2026, with $638.8 million attributed primarily to non-cash write-downs

IREN stock advanced approximately 4% to reach $43.22 during Wednesday’s trading session, propelled by an analyst rating change from JPMorgan and significant developments from ERCOT, the Texas electricity grid authority.

IREN Limited, IREN

Early in the week, JPMorgan’s Reginald Smith revised his rating on IREN from Underweight to Overweight while simultaneously elevating the price objective to $65 from the previous $46 mark. Smith highlighted the company’s transition into a neocloud infrastructure provider and its strategic alliance with NVIDIA as primary catalysts behind the upgraded outlook.

Adding to the positive sentiment, BTIG’s Gregory Lewis maintained his Buy recommendation on IREN earlier this week, setting an ambitious $80 price objective that provided additional momentum heading into Wednesday’s session.

Shares peaked at $43.92 intraday before settling, following Tuesday’s close at $41.58. Trading volume registered approximately 33 million shares, falling short of the typical daily average of about 42.7 million.

Texas Grid Announcement Energizes Industry

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas unveiled more than 5 gigawatts of conditional power allocation earmarked for artificial intelligence infrastructure projects. This announcement provided a boost across multiple firms operating in the digital infrastructure sector.

Shares of Cipher Mining (CIFR) and Core Scientific (CORZ) similarly advanced Wednesday as market participants recognized the strategic importance of securing substantial power resources for these data center operators.

Reliable access to substantial electrical capacity represents a fundamental requirement for businesses transitioning into AI-focused data center operations, given these facilities demand significantly more power than conventional computing infrastructure.

Texas Hub Development Advances

IREN’s Sweetwater Hub facility in Texas, encompassing 2 gigawatts of power capacity, secured conditional Base Load classification through ERCOT’s inaugural Batch Zero allocation process, which was revealed on September 8.

The facility comprises two components: Sweetwater 1 with 1.4 GW capacity and Sweetwater 2 featuring 600 MW. These installations represent portions of IREN’s comprehensive 5-GW international data center development pipeline.

The company has successfully activated the high-voltage electrical substation at the Sweetwater 1 location. Construction is underway for 300 MW of gross data center infrastructure at this site, with completion scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2027.

It’s important to note that ERCOT’s capacity designations remain provisional and require additional regulatory clearances.

On the financial front, revenue generated from AI Cloud Services expanded dramatically to $128.8 million during fiscal 2026 compared to merely $16.4 million in the previous fiscal period. The company also elevated its annual recurring revenue projection for 2026 to $4.0 billion, up from the earlier forecast of $3.4 billion.

This substantial revenue expansion has come with significant costs. The company reported a $702.6 million net loss throughout fiscal 2026, incorporating $638.8 million in asset impairments primarily associated with obsolete bitcoin mining hardware being phased out.

IREN demonstrates a beta coefficient of 4.28, positioning it among the higher-volatility securities within its sector. The company maintains a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.80 alongside a market capitalization approaching $16.79 billion.

From a chart perspective, IREN was positioned above both its 20-day and 50-day moving average lines but continued trading beneath its 100-day and 200-day moving averages. The Relative Strength Index registered 53.50, indicating neutral momentum. Technical resistance appears near the $49 level, while support is identified around $35.

Wall Street’s overall sentiment toward the stock registers as “Moderate Buy” with a consensus price objective of $82.93. Bernstein maintains the Street’s most optimistic target at $100.

Institutional investors control 41% of outstanding shares, with Bank of America expanding its stake by 58.4% and Situational Awareness LP boosting its position by 34.5% during the first quarter.

The post IREN (IREN) Stock Climbs 4% Following JPMorgan Upgrade to $65 Price Target appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Generac soared 33% following announcement of massive backup-power agreement with Amazon worth up to $8 billion for data center facilities
• Nebius climbed 8% on price increase announcement, boosting competitors Iren and CoreWeave
• Fluence Energy plummeted 16% following sharp reduction in annual revenue forecast from $3.1 billion to $2.4 billion
• Major gainers on Wednesday included GE Vernova, SpaceX, and AMD among mega-cap stocks
• Lennar declined more than 2% after reducing home delivery projections for the second time due to interest rate challenges

Generac Holdings emerged as Thursday’s top performer, with shares skyrocketing 33% following disclosure of a major long-term partnership with Amazon to supply backup-power generation systems for their data center infrastructure.

The arrangement encompasses $2.4 billion in initial generator shipments scheduled for 2027 and 2028. Combined payments to Generac and its international partners could total up to $8 billion, based on securities filings.

Under the terms of the partnership, Generac granted an Amazon subsidiary warrants to acquire up to 1.69 million shares with an exercise price of approximately $200.93 per share.

Neocloud Providers Rally

Nebius Group shares climbed 8% during premarket hours following the neocloud provider’s announcement of price increases. The decision provided a boost to competitor stocks including Iren and CoreWeave.

Vicor Corporation advanced 10% after revealing a licensing agreement with an undisclosed OEM for its Vertical Power Delivery technology designed for advanced AI processors. Specific financial details of the arrangement were not made public.

Among decliners, Fluence Energy tumbled 16% after dramatically reducing its annual revenue projection to $2.4 billion, down from previous expectations of $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion. The firm also revised its adjusted EBITDA outlook to an approximately $200 million loss for the fiscal year, versus prior estimates of roughly a $10 million loss.

Fluence attributed the shortfall to supply chain complications and setbacks in scaling up contract manufacturing facilities in Houston. Management emphasized that customer demand remains robust and that measures have been implemented to boost daily production capacity.

Viant Technology declined 10% following announcement of a public offering involving 8.5 million Class A shares from an existing stockholder. The company indicated it would not receive any funds from the standard offering.

Wednesday’s Top Performers and Decliners

Wednesday witnessed significant volatility across various market capitalizations. GE Vernova increased nearly 6%, while SpaceX advanced over 5% and AMD rose 4%.

Arista Networks posted a 3% gain, while Coherent and Credo Technology each recorded approximately 7% increases.

Conversely, Exxon Mobil declined 2.7% and Chevron retreated 2.2%. J.B. Hunt Transportation suffered a 13% drop, representing one of the most significant losses among major companies.

Within smaller-cap stocks, LuxExperience surged over 25% on stronger-than-expected revenue despite an earnings miss. Gloo Holdings rallied nearly 25%.

Lennar shares dropped more than 2% on Thursday following the homebuilder’s second reduction of its annual home delivery forecast, attributing the adjustment to interest rate pressures and deteriorating housing market dynamics.

Nike shares increased 1.5% on elevated trading volume, just one session after reaching their lowest closing price in over a decade. The athletic apparel giant is scheduled to announce quarterly results on October 1.

Broader markets moved slightly higher in premarket activity as participants digested a 25 basis point interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve alongside remarks from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh indicating a persistent hawkish stance on inflation control.

The post Thursday’s Stock Highlights: Generac (GNRC), Nebius, and Fluence Energy Make Major Moves appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Shares of Nebius (NBIS) climbed approximately 9% during pre-market hours on September 17 following the company’s announcement of increased pricing for AI compute services.
• The new pricing structure becomes effective October 1 and includes Nvidia H100, H200, B200, and B300 GPUs, with rate increases between 17% and 21%.
• CPU pricing for AMD EPYC Genoa will increase 25%, while associated memory costs will jump 41%.
• Competitor stocks CoreWeave (CRWV) and Iren (IREN) gained approximately 6% and 5% respectively following the announcement.
• The company reported Q2 2026 revenues of $582 million, representing a 454% year-over-year increase, with AI cloud revenues up 514%.

Shares of Nebius Group (NBIS) experienced a significant 9% surge during Thursday’s pre-market session after the neocloud provider announced widespread price increases across its AI compute infrastructure offerings. The pricing adjustments, which take effect on October 1, encompass both GPU and CPU resources, signaling robust demand in the AI infrastructure marketplace.

Nebius Group N.V., NBIS

News of the pricing changes initially emerged through social media platforms including X and Reddit before gaining wider attention through coverage by Stocktwits. The announcement created immediate ripples across the cloud infrastructure sector.

Heading into Thursday’s trading session, NBIS stock commanded a market capitalization of approximately $56.92 billion. The strong pre-market reaction underscores investor sensitivity to any indicators of pricing power within the competitive AI cloud infrastructure market.

Details of GPU Price Adjustments

For GPU offerings, Nebius will implement a 17% increase for Nvidia H100 chips, bringing the rate to $4.50 per GPU-hour. The H200 model will see a 20% increase to $5.40, while B200 pricing rises 19% to $8.50. The B300 faces the largest adjustment at 21%, reaching $9.50 per GPU-hour.

These substantial price adjustments across Nvidia’s most sought-after chip lineup signal that the company recognizes constrained supply meeting persistent demand in the market.

On the CPU front, pricing for AMD EPYC Genoa CPUs will climb 25% to $0.015 per vCPU-hour. Meanwhile, Genoa memory pricing experiences an even more dramatic increase of approximately 41%, rising to $0.0045 per GiB-hour.

The pricing announcement provided a boost to industry competitors as well. CoreWeave (CRWV) shares advanced roughly 6% while Iren (IREN) stock increased around 5% during pre-market trading.

Recent Financial Performance Demonstrates Rapid Growth

In its Q2 2026 financial report, Nebius delivered revenue of $582 million, marking a remarkable 454% year-over-year expansion. The AI cloud segment within these results grew even faster at 514%. Looking ahead, the company anticipates $9 billion in customer prepayments throughout 2026.

The company’s Q2 capital expenditures reached $5.7 billion, surpassing analyst projections of $4.7 billion. Nebius has also elevated its contracted power capacity goal for 2026 to 5 GW, up from the prior target exceeding 4 GW, with plans to add over 1 GW annually beginning in 2027.

However, the rapid growth comes with valuation concerns. The stock trades at a Price-to-Sales ratio of 45.35, dramatically higher than its historical median of 6.79. The company continues to operate at a loss, posting a trailing twelve-month EPS of -0.13 alongside negative free cash flow.

The company’s GF Score registers at 51 out of 100. While growth and momentum metrics rank favorably, the valuation component scores merely 2 out of 10.

Insider transaction data from the past year reveals zero stock purchases against $173 million in sales. Conversely, eight institutional investors maintain positions in NBIS, with seven having recently increased their stakes.

This pricing strategy follows a quarter that clearly demonstrated AI compute demand significantly exceeding available supply, a market dynamic Nebius is now positioning to capitalize on more assertively.

The post Nebius (NBIS) Stock Surges 9% Following AI Infrastructure Price Hike Announcement appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Shares of Generac soared 35% during premarket hours Thursday following the disclosure of a major generator supply contract with Amazon
• The agreement includes initial deliveries worth $2.4 billion scheduled for 2027 and 2028
• Amazon receives an equity warrant to purchase up to 1.69 million GNRC shares priced at approximately $201 per share
• Amazon has been identified as Generac’s second hyperscale data center client
• Following the news, Barclays maintained its Equalweight stance with a $278 price objective

Generac (GNRC) shares skyrocketed 35% in premarket activity Thursday after the power equipment manufacturer revealed a multi-year supply contract with Amazon to provide backup generators for its data center operations. Trading at approximately $235 before market open, the stock was positioned roughly 72% higher than its 2025 closing level of $136.37.

Generac Holdings Inc., GNRC

Under the terms of the agreement, Generac will supply generators worth $2.4 billion during the initial phase, with shipments scheduled throughout 2027 and 2028. This translates to approximately $1.2 billion annually, representing a substantial portion compared to Generac’s 2025 total revenue of $4.2 billion.

Details of the partnership emerged through a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission released Wednesday night. The document confirms Amazon Data Services as the counterparty, which Generac had previously mentioned as its “second hyperscale customer” during July discussions without revealing the name.

The arrangement includes an equity warrant provision granting Amazon the option to acquire up to 1.69 million shares of GNRC stock at an approximate price of $201 per share. This stake would account for roughly 2.6% of the company’s fully diluted share count.

Approximately 308,000 shares under the warrant became exercisable immediately upon agreement execution. The remaining shares vest progressively as Amazon and related entities reach cumulative purchase thresholds on Generac generators, extending to a maximum of $8 billion. Complete vesting is scheduled through 2033.

Expanding Data Center Footprint

Generac’s presence in the data center market has been expanding significantly. During the second quarter of 2026, the company reported a 29% increase in commercial and industrial segment sales, while its data center order backlog had already reached approximately $1.6 billion prior to this Amazon announcement.

The partnership with Amazon extends internationally, encompassing data center facilities across multiple geographic regions beyond U.S. borders.

Regarding financial performance, Generac exceeded profit projections in Q2, delivering adjusted earnings of $2.91 per share compared to analyst expectations of $2.00. Revenue totaled $1.17 billion, marginally under the anticipated $1.18 billion. A tariff-related refund provided a boost to the earnings figure.

Wall Street’s Response

Barclays maintained its Equalweight recommendation on GNRC following the contract disclosure, keeping its price objective unchanged at $278.

Cantor Fitzgerald adopted a more optimistic position, increasing its price target to $333 and citing robust data center segment momentum as justification.

Needham reaffirmed its Buy recommendation with a $282 price target. The firm noted that the tariff refund played a role in driving the impressive Q2 performance.

GNRC finished 2025 at $136.37 and had climbed approximately 28% through Wednesday’s regular trading session before the after-hours announcement. The shares had touched a 52-week peak of $296.44 on June 25 before declining roughly 41% leading up to Tuesday.

According to InvestingPro’s assessment, GNRC appears to be trading beneath its Fair Value calculation, with shares carrying a P/E ratio of 39.97 and a market capitalization of $10.33 billion.

Barclays’ $278 price target following the deal disclosure represents a more conservative outlook when compared to Cantor Fitzgerald’s $333 projection.

The post Generac (GNRC) Stock Soars 35% on Massive Amazon Data Center Generator Deal appeared first on Blockonomi.

The US Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on Tuesday after a procedural vote fell short, 49-50. The vote required 60 of 100 senators to pass the bill and allow it to move forward.

While the outcome was widely considered a major setback for the industry, seven Democratic senators said that it is “not the end.”

Crypto’s Post-CLARITY Reckoning

In an official statement, US Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said that Democrats have spent the last two years working to pass crypto legislation that would expand opportunity, protect consumers, punish bad actors, create regulatory certainty, and include strong, commonsense ethics provisions for elected officials. They added,

“This week was a setback, but not the end of that important work. We remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion to get this legislation passed.”

The comment came just a day after Senator Cynthia Lummis lashed out at Democrats and said that they were never truly serious about protecting consumers and preserving American leadership. She called the party “anti-consumer and pro-illicit finance, anti-ethics, anti-free enterprise, anti-worker, anti-livable-wage jobs, pro-socialism, and anti-American.”

Meanwhile, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse called for a post-mortem of the legislative defeat. Not all reactions to the Senate setback have been strongly negative. Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong said bipartisan discussions could continue, and the CLARITY Act may get another chance. However, he also added that the industry “cannot wait” for Congress anymore.

In a separate statement to CryptoPotato, John O’Loghlen, Managing Director, APAC, Coinbase said,

“We are encouraged by the broad, bipartisan support for a bill endorsed by law enforcement, and we believe that coalition will continue to play an important role in advancing clear and consistent rules for the industry. We also expect the SEC and CFTC to advance regulatory clarity through their respective rulemaking authorities, alongside ongoing engagement with policymakers and regulators.”

Institutions May Wait Longer

Trace Finance co-founder Bernardo Brites said that failure of the CLARITY Act is “not a fatal one” for the industry. Brites, however, argued that institutional volumes will continue to remain on the sidelines longer than they need to, and the bigger wave of incumbent participation the market is waiting for gets pushed further out. But he added that “none of this changes where digital assets are headed.”

“Banks will still move to adopt stablecoins, and blockchain rails will still become the foundation of modern finance, clarity or no clarity. But every delay like this one is a missed chance for the US to cement its role as a leader in innovative financial technology.”

The post Seven Democrats Refuse to Give Up on CLARITY Act After Senate Setback appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Paris, France, 17th September 2026]

Following June’s launch with Morpho and Steakhouse, Zama extends confidential access to 16 curated vaults across five curators and five asset classes, and opens the Zama Swap Protocol for confidential swaps between positions.

Zama, the fastest growing confidentiality protocol for onchain finance, today announced a major expansion of confidential access to onchain yield in partnership with Morpho, alongside five of the leading DeFi curators: Steakhouse Financial, Armitage by Wintermute, Flowdesk, RockawayX, and Bitwise. The launch adds 16 confidential vaults across 5 asset classes (USDC, USDT, WBTC, AUSD, and TGBP), and opens the public launch of the Zama Swap Protocol, allowing users to confidentially swap between confidential assets on Ethereum.

This launch builds on the confidential Steakhouse USDC Prime vault Zama launched with Morpho and Steakhouse in June 2026, which grew from zero to $40 million in TVL within seven weeks and established confidential DeFi as a proven institutional product category.

On public blockchains, positions, balances, and strategies are visible to competitors and front-runners, a structural blocker to institutional deployment at scale. By expanding the range of curated confidential vaults and adding four new asset classes as deposit assets, Zama enables institutional allocators, corporate treasuries, and active market participants to access diversified onchain yield without disclosing their holdings or strategies.

“When we launched the first confidential USDC vault with Morpho and Steakhouse in June, we proved that confidentiality and DeFi are not mutually exclusive,” said Dr. Rand Hindi, Co-founder and CEO of Zama. “Today’s expansion is proof of the model at scale. Sixteen vaults, five curators, five asset classes, all built on the same DeFi infrastructure that sophisticated capital already uses. Same vaults, same curators, same liquidity, now with confidential entry. This is how confidential DeFi becomes a category and not an experiment.”

The expansion offers depositors two types of confidential vaults, running in parallel:

• 12 Hybrid vaults: confidential entry to existing curated vaults, including the Prime USDT vault curated by Steakhouse. Same strategy, same liquidity, and same risk profile as the underlying vault, with confidential deposit and position.
• 4 Exclusive vaults: net-new confidential-only vaults with no public equivalent, including the Wintermute Confidential WBTC – armcWBTC. (—-)

All 16 vaults are deployed on Morpho and available today through the Zama App. Additional entry points, including Utila, Zerion Wallet, and Yield.xyz, will roll out in the weeks following launch.

The Zama Swap Protocol launches alongside the vault suite, allowing depositors to swap between confidential assets, including all vault share positions, and cUSDC, cUSDT, cWBTC, cAUSD, and cTGBP, without exposing intent or size. This closes the full deposit-earn-swap loop entirely inside a confidential envelope.

“Institutions have increasingly been exploring how onchain capital allocation can be made more confidential to fit their requirements. Adding these confidential vaults on Morpho was an important step for us. It’ll scale confidential DeFi efficiently and open new possibilities for allocators onchain, without changing the strategy, the liquidity, or the risk profile.” said Merlin Egalite, Co-founder of Morpho

“Confidentiality is the condition onchain capital markets have to satisfy before they can carry institutional-scale volume. Through our work with Zama, we’re opening up confidential access to our AUSD RWA Strategy Vault, giving institutional allocators a compliant path onchain.” said Guilhem Chaumont, Co-founder and CEO of Flowdesk.

“We were happy to work with Zama on its first confidential vault, and the market response makes it clear that depositors value confidentiality,” said Sébastien Derivaux, Co-founder of Steakhouse Financial. “The natural next step was to extend that access to a five-vault suite across USDC, USDT, and tGBP. Depositors now have more choice in how they use stablecoins across Morpho, while keeping their positions private.”

“BTC has mostly sat onchain as collateral because there has rarely been meaningful yield to earn on it. The Wintermute Confidential WBTC vault gives WBTC holders a way to actually put it to work, pairing Armitage’s active risk curation with a confidential-only design that has no public equivalent, so positions stay off the public record,” said Igor Igamberdiev, Armitage Lead.

“Zama’s confidential product suite is unlocking institutional adoption opportunities globally including in the UK where stablecoin adoption with large institutions is a greenfield opportunity,” said Benoit Marzouk, CEO of BCP Technologies the issuer of tGBP. “The combination of confidentiality with bluechip protocols like Morpho provide a clear entry point for any institutional player integrating stablecoins into their business.”

“Every position a self-custodial wallet user holds is public by default. That’s one of the reasons people are reluctant to keep large amounts onchain. Zama’s confidentiality layer plugs into vaults people already use rather than asking them to move to a new chain. A wallet can support this natively with minimum friction, and why these vaults are coming to Zerion in the weeks ahead.” — Evgeny Yurtaev, Co-founder & CEO at Zerion.

Institutions can be hesitant to lend onchain for two reasons. They can’t tell exactly what they’re exposed to, and anyone with a block explorer can see what they hold. RockawayX’s RWA vault handles predictable returns and collateral you can check onchain, underwritten the same way we’ve run CeFi and DeFi lending since 2022 with zero defaults. Zama handles the second with its confidentiality platform.” Nassim Alexandre, Head of Onchain Asset Management and Curation at RockawayX.

“Confidentiality should not require institutions to abandon the platforms they already use. Yield.xyz makes Zama’s confidential Morpho Vaults accessible through the same integration layer that wallets and financial platforms use to offer onchain yield. That gives platforms a practical path to support confidential positions while preserving the underlying strategy, liquidity, and risk profile,” said Serafin Lion Engel, Co-Founder and CEO at Yield.xyz.

“Institutions need to protect their investment strategies while maintaining clear control over how capital is deployed,” said Bentzi Rabi, Co-founder and CEO of Utila. “Through our work with Zama, we’re bringing confidential access to Morpho vaults into Utila’s MPC wallet infrastructure, so treasury and investment teams can access onchain yield with the policy controls and approval workflows they rely on across their digital asset operations.”

“Incentives were the one thing confidential assets could not have, because rewarding a balance meant reading it. It was a real pleasure working with the Zama team to change that, extending Merkl’s engine to ERC7984 so campaigns run on encrypted balances. Depositors see an APR and earn, while no position, reward, or leaderboard entry ever becomes public.” said Pablo Veyrat, CEO of Merkl.

This expansion establishes the operational blueprint for further additions to the confidential DeFi ecosystem in 2026 and 2027, including additional curators, asset classes, distribution surfaces, and native institutional custody integrations.

The 16 confidential vaults will officially open for deposits on September 15, 2026 on the Zama app.

For more information, technical documentation, or to review the integration architecture, please visit zama.org or follow @Zama on X.

About Zama – www.zama.org

Zama is the fastest growing confidentiality protocol for onchain finance. By leveraging Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), it enables digital assets to be issued, managed, and traded privately on existing public blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana. Founded by FHE pioneer Dr. Pascal Paillier and entrepreneur Dr. Rand Hindi, Zama brings together one of the world’s largest teams of FHE researchers and engineers and supports a global ecosystem of developers building confidential applications. zama.org.

The post Zama Opens Confidential Access to DeFi’s Existing Yield Venues appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP’s open interest across major derivatives platforms has dropped by about 23% in under a month, falling to roughly $871 million from $1.128 billion in late August.

The decline, which wiped out close to $257 million in outstanding positions, points to traders unwinding leverage built up during the summer rally rather than a fresh wave of bets against the token, and it lines up with a difficult week for XRP on the regulatory front.

XRP Traders Pull Back as Price Loses Ground

CryptoQuant contributor Arab Chain noted that Binance accounted for much of the decline, with open positions falling to $423 million from $558 million in August. Bybit fell to about $291 million from $379 million, while OKX dipped to $107 million from $125 million.

That decline points to positions from the earlier rally being closed or liquidated. Arab Chain also stressed that lower open interest does not by itself establish a continuing bearish trend. Instead, it reflects less exposure to derivatives and traders repositioning.

The change follows a difficult week for XRP as the token fell 8% in the 24 hours following the Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act on September 15. It dropped from around $1.46 toward $1.27 as selling intensified, with cumulative volume delta falling to negative 10.5 million.

The latest CoinGecko snapshot has XRP around $1.30, having barely moved over 24 hours. However, it is down nearly 7% over seven days and 5.5% in the last 14 days, although it is still up more than 30% across one month. Trading volume is about $3.6 billion, down 39% from the previous day.

The Market Is Testing a Weekly Support Level

Analyst ChartNerd wrote on X on September 17 that XRP was “hugging” its weekly 20 EMA at $1.29. A weekly close above that level, in his opinion, could set up a rebound, while a close below it would leave room for another retracement.

On September 10, he had also identified $1.29 as the first area to watch if XRP continued rejecting the 50-period moving average. That technical level matters because the latest selloff weakened an earlier bullish setup. XRP previously held expectations of a move toward $1.70-$1-78, but analyst Diana said the loss of $1.34 pushed the token toward $1.26.

The $1.24-$1.26 zone is now being watched, with $1.14 to $1.10 and then $1.00 entering the discussion if support fails.

The drop in derivatives exposure also comes after XRP’s earlier surge, with 85 new wallets holding at least 1 million XRP appearing two days before the August 17-21 rally that saw the token jump 70%.

The post XRP Open Interest Plunges 23% as Traders Unwind Leverage appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin and crypto markets turned volatile on Wednesday after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points. The Fed lifted its target range to 3.75%-4%. The move was widely expected, but BTC still briefly dropped below $75,000 before recovering to around $76,400.

Analysts remain divided on what could come next.

BTC Recovers After Fed Shock

Doctor Profit dismissed the bearish reaction. According to the analyst, Bitcoin’s bottom was already in at $57,000. He also said he is holding the BTC he bought between $60,000 and $64,000 and has no plans to sell. Earlier, the market commentator had pointed to $71,000 as the market’s “max pain” level while maintaining a bullish outlook toward $88,000.

Meanwhile, Ali Martinez also said he is prepared for another sell-off. While identifying Bitcoin’s Short-Term Holder Realized Price near $71,200 as a major level to watch, the analyst explained that he would consider that area a potential accumulation zone if BTC falls further.

Santiment, on the other hand, flagged a sharp rise in social discussions around the FOMC, interest rates, and the 25-basis-point move as the meeting approached. Bitcoin was already facing several pressures before the rate decision.

The crypto asset’s price pulled back after the previous day’s CLARITY Act setback. ETF outflows, higher Treasury yields, and liquidations had also added to the pressure. The bigger issue now is whether this rate hike remains an isolated move or becomes the start of another tightening cycle. The Fed’s latest projections point to at least one more hike in 2026. That keeps future policy decisions in focus for crypto traders.

One More Hike Remains in Focus

Santiment noted that traders had recently considered much more aggressive rate-hike scenarios. The latest projections provide a less aggressive baseline, with another 25-basis-point move effectively at the center of the current outlook.

For Bitcoin, the next phase will therefore be about expectations around future Fed policy. Softer inflation, lower energy prices, or weaker economic data could change those expectations. However, persistent inflation could push them in the opposite direction.

“The bullish case is that traders had already priced a much uglier path, the first hike is now behind us, and one additional move may prove manageable if inflation finally begins cooling. For crypto, the direction of expectations from here could matter far more than the 25 basis points that just arrived.”

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Reacts to Fed Rate Hike: Analysts Split on What Comes Next appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s expected price volatility ahead of and after the FOMC meeting indeed took place, with the asset posting a few major moves, but it has overall survived the first rate hike in three years, currently trading above $76,000.

The altcoins are also well in the green today, with SOL touching $100 and ZEC exploding by over 14%.

BTC Above $76K as the Dust Settles

The current business week was expected to be a big one for the cryptocurrency industry, and it was quite eventful, even though it’s far from over. At the end of the previous one, BTC plunged to $76,000 after the release of the CPI data, before it suddenly rocketed to almost $80,000, where it was rejected and driven south to $77,000. It spent the weekend there and dipped again on Monday to $76,500.

However, the bulls went on the offensive later that day and pushed the cryptocurrency to $79,500. Another rejection followed as the market braced for the upcoming cloture vote on the CLARITY Act. The Senate vote ultimately failed, and BTC went from $77,250 to a month low of $75,000 in minutes.

It recovered to $76,000 on Wednesday as all eyes turned to the Fed. For the first time in three years, the US central bank raised the rates unanimously with a 12-0 vote. At first, BTC dipped to $75,000 before it shot up by $1,500. It failed there again, slipping by a grand before it rebounded and now sits at $76,500.

Its market cap has recovered to $1.530 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts has retreated slightly to 58.7%.

ZEC Flies Again

Ethereum is up by just over 1.5% daily and sits close to $2,450. BNB has posted a similar increase, currently trading at $725. SOL has neared $100, while XRP, TRX, HYPE, DOGE, and LINK are also in the green. ZEC stands in a league of its own again. The privacy token has rocketed by over 14% and now trades above $1,350. In contrast, RAIN has plummeted by nearly 8%.

NEAR, CRO, PUMP, UNI, CC, DOT, ENA, and ONDO are well in the green among the larger-cap alts, with gains of up to 14.6% in the case of NEAR.

The total crypto market cap has increased by over 1% daily, and it’s up to $2.610 trillion on CMC.

The post Bitcoin Survives First Fed Rate Hike in 3 Years, Zcash Explodes Again: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.