Nokia's strategic pivot to AI and cloud markets highlights its adaptability, but reliance on major cloud clients poses potential risks.

The post Nokia beats profit estimates as AI data center demand surges appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The GENIUS Act rule could solidify US leadership in digital assets, boosting market confidence and potentially influencing Bitcoin's future value.

The post OCC finalizes GENIUS Act rule for stablecoins, effective January 2027 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The cautious approach of treasury firms amid Bitcoin's price surge highlights market volatility and strategic shifts in corporate crypto investments.

The post Bitcoin treasury companies return to profit as prices exceed $80K appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The delay in the XRP Ledger bug fix may heighten market uncertainty, affecting confidence and price momentum for XRP in the near term.

The post XRP Ledger bug fix delayed to November after validator support dip appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

DeepSeek's massive funding boost signals China's escalating commitment to AI dominance, potentially reshaping global tech dynamics.

The post DeepSeek lands $15 billion as China’s AI race intensifies: Report appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Three Companies Have Notified the SEC of Intention To Start Tokenized Stocks Trading

Three companies have notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of their plans to operate tokenized securities venues following a new rule, according to the top regulator. 

Tokenized Stock Venue, Perpetuals.com, and OKX have all submitted plans to operate by allowing trading of tokenized stocks, the SEC said in a Wednesday announcement. 

Along with the Intercontinental Exchange, crypto exchange OKX was the first to file with the regulator to debut tokenized securities trading on a new platform, OKXICE. 

The SEC in September said it was offering a five-year exemption to platforms that facilitate trading of tokenized stocks. Regulators like the SEC are pushing ahead with regulating the crypto space despite lawmakers blocking major digital asset legislation in September. 

Tokenized stocks are the latest example of firms wanting to utilize Bitcoin’s underlying technology to help upgrade traditional finance. By putting stocks on the blockchain, traders can operate 24/7, according to proponents. 

The SEC said Wednesday that just because the firms are on the list, doesn’t necessarily mean they meet all the requirements for the rule. 

Wall Street’s top regulator is now very pro-crypto under U.S. President Donald Trump. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the regulator wants to “update” how it watchdogs securities, and “modernize them in the age of blockchain and crypto assets.”

Atkins has said that the regulator wants the U.S. to be on track to be the “crypto capital of the world.” 

Under the previous Democratic Joe Biden administration, the SEC was hostile towards the crypto industry and hit major companies — including Coinbase and Kraken — with lawsuits. The regulator attracted criticism for so-called regulation by enforcement. 

But under Trump, that has changed: the Republican campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space and has signed a number of laws and executive orders aimed at helping the digital asset space. 

Traditional finance titans like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton for years have used blockchain rails to tokenize money funds.

In January, the S&P 500 gave crypto platform Trade[XYZ] the green light to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, giving traders the ability to trade the stock index 24-7. 

This post Three Companies Have Notified the SEC of Intention To Start Tokenized Stocks Trading first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Standard Chartered Signs Agreement To Acquire Crypto Custodian Zodia Custody

British multinational Standard Chartered will buy digital asset custodian Zodia Custody, months after signing an agreement. 

A statement from London-based Zodia Custody on Wednesday said that the deal will see the company’s service integrated into Standard Chartered’s existing digital asset custody activities. 

Standard Chartered is expanding its crypto-related offerings worldwide. Earlier this month, it said it had plans to offer crypto custody services for institutional clients in Singapore. It already offers the service in the UAE, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong. 

“As institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates, custody is increasingly becoming part of the global banking landscape,” Zodia Custody CEO Richard Clark said. 

He added: “Zodia Custody has built a strong business with the specialist expertise and capabilities to meet the needs of institutional clients. 

“Bringing that expertise together with Standard Chartered’s global reach and established banking platform will strengthen its digital asset custody offering and provide institutions with greater access to trusted, regulated custody services worldwide.”

Ying Ying Tan, global head of securities services and digital assets at Standard Chartered, added that the deal “further deepens our digital asset custody portfolio and reinforces our position as a leading provider of digital asset services globally.”

Zodia Custody shareholders in May approved Standard Chartered’s offer to buy the company. 

The company works to custody bitcoin and other digital assets for institutional and asset managers. 

Standard Chartered has delved deeper into the crypto space in recent years. In 2025, the bank set up a trading desk for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in London, making it one of the first global banks to enter spot cryptocurrency trading.

It has since debuted custody and trading services in countries around the world. 

Top banks worldwide are debuting or planning to debut crypto custody services, with State Street, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, and Citigroup all committing to direct crypto custody over the past 18 months.

Crypto custody is often a starting point for banks moving into the digital asset space. BNY Mellon in 2022 became the first major U.S. bank to offer digital asset custody services.   

This post Standard Chartered Signs Agreement To Acquire Crypto Custodian Zodia Custody first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Beyond HODLing: How Bitcoin-Backed Loans Can Unlock New Financial Opportunities

For long-term Bitcoin holders, accessing capital has traditionally presented a difficult choice: sell a portion of their holdings or leave that value untouched.

Bitcoin-backed lending offers another option, allowing holders to borrow against their Bitcoin while maintaining exposure to the asset.

In a recent video shared on X, SALT Lending highlighted how borrowers can use Bitcoin-backed loans for more than simply accessing cash, outlining several ways liquidity can support broader financial goals.

Turning Bitcoin Holdings Into Financial Opportunity

Rather than selling Bitcoin to fund a major purchase or investment, borrowers can pledge their holdings as collateral to access capital while preserving their long-term position.

One potential use case is real estate. Bitcoin holders looking to purchase property may be able to leverage their holdings for liquidity instead of liquidating Bitcoin to fund the transaction.

Business expansion presents another opportunity. Entrepreneurs and business owners can potentially use Bitcoin-backed loans to fund operations, hire employees, or pursue growth opportunities without selling their Bitcoin or giving up equity in their businesses.

SALT Lending also pointed to investment diversification as another possible application. Borrowers may use loan proceeds to access other markets or investment opportunities while retaining exposure to Bitcoin.

Another consideration is tax planning. Selling appreciated Bitcoin can trigger capital gains taxes, while receiving proceeds from a properly structured loan generally does not constitute a taxable sale. However, individual tax circumstances vary, and borrowing introduces additional financial risks.

A Strategic Approach to Bitcoin Liquidity

The broader takeaway from SALT Lending’s video is that Bitcoin-backed borrowing should be viewed as a financial planning decision rather than simply a way to access cash.

Real estate purchases, business investments, and other opportunities all require borrowers to weigh the potential benefits of liquidity against borrowing costs, repayment obligations, and the risks associated with Bitcoin’s price volatility.

Because Bitcoin-backed loans are secured by a volatile asset, significant price declines can increase loan-to-value ratios and potentially require additional collateral or trigger liquidation, depending on the loan terms.

For borrowers with a clear financial strategy, however, the ability to access capital without immediately selling Bitcoin creates another avenue for putting their holdings to use.

SALT Lending provides Bitcoin-backed lending solutions designed to help eligible borrowers access liquidity while maintaining their long-term Bitcoin exposure.

As Bitcoin continues to evolve beyond an asset primarily associated with buying and holding, lending may play an increasingly important role in how holders manage their finances and pursue opportunities without necessarily selling their Bitcoin.

SALT Lending is the Official Liquidity Sponsor of BMTV. Learn more about borrowing against your bitcoin and explore SALT’s BMTV offer at https://saltlending.com/bmtv/?utm_source=bmtv&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=52783658-BMTV%20article&utm_term=BMTV.

Disclaimer: SALT Lending is a paid sponsor of BMTV and serves as BMTV’s Official Liquidity Sponsor. This article is sponsored content and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Bitcoin Magazine. The information provided is for promotional purposes and should not be considered financial advice. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before making any investment decisions related to Bitcoin or other financial products mentioned herein.

This post Beyond HODLing: How Bitcoin-Backed Loans Can Unlock New Financial Opportunities first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Josh Plischke.

Bitcoin Magazine

Kalshi Pushes Deeper Into Crypto Derivatives With Bitcoin-Backed Margin Loans

Kalshi is doubling down on its bid to become the regulated U.S. home for crypto perpetual futures, pairing a new bitcoin-backed lending arrangement with digital-asset custodian BitGo alongside a distribution deal that will put its perpetual contracts in front of Webull’s more than 6 million customers.

Bloomberg first reported Wednesday that customers of Kalshi Prime, the company’s U.S.-registered futures commission merchant, will be able to borrow against digital assets held at BitGo and use the proceeds to fund margin positions on perpetual futures traded on Kalshi’s main exchange. 

Under the tri-party structure, loans will be issued by Kalshi Katalyst, a lending affiliate of Kalshi Prime, and secured against assets held at BitGo Bank & Trust, the firm’s federally chartered trust bank.

Eligible collateral will include bitcoin, ethereum and stablecoins deemed compliant with the GENIUS Act, with additional custodians expected to join Kalshi’s network over time. 

Prime CEO Jeff Bandman told the outlet the product was designed with crypto-native traders in mind, including those already active on unregulated offshore perpetuals venues and large holders who would rather not sell their bitcoin to fund futures positions. 

He also pointed to unexpected demand from businesses, such as Latin American firms that run their operations on U.S. dollar stablecoins.

The move targets a segment where the company has acknowledged a structural disadvantage against Polymarket, its offshore, blockchain-based rival, which has long catered to crypto whales and trading firms that prefer to keep their capital in digital assets. The two platforms have been racing to build out perpetuals since the spring.

Webull debuting crypto-linked perpetual futures via Kalshi rails

The BitGo arrangement landed a day after Webull announced Tuesday that eligible U.S. customers will be able to trade perpetual futures on its platform beginning in November, starting with bitcoin and a handful of other crypto assets. 

The contracts will trade on KalshiEX LLC, Kalshi’s CFTC-regulated designated contract market, and clear through Kalshi Klear LLC, its derivatives clearing organization. Access will initially be limited to customers already approved for futures trading through existing Webull Futures accounts, with broader availability expected before year-end.

Webull Group President and U.S. CEO Anthony Denier said in the company’s release that perpetual futures saw more than $90 trillion in global volume in 2025 and that American investors should be able to access them through a regulated platform. 

These two announcements extend a product buildout for the company, which secured CFTC clearance for the first U.S.-regulated bitcoin perpetual in late May and went live with the contract in early June, before adding gold and silver perpetuals in September and a US500 stock index perpetual earlier this month. 

The expansion comes amid mounting state-level legal pressure, with Utah becoming the latest state to sue Kalshi on Monday over what it alleges is illegal sports gambling, following New York’s similar action against Polymarket last month.

This post Kalshi Pushes Deeper Into Crypto Derivatives With Bitcoin-Backed Margin Loans first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Nears $85,000 as SpaceX Earnings Reignite Risk Appetite

Bitcoin’s price rose above $84,500 on Wednesday as investors flooded back into risk-on assets — particularly tech-related stocks. 

The leading cryptocurrency was recently priced at $84,461 after rising nearly as high as $84,588 earlier on Wednesday morning in New York. 

Over a 24-hour period, the coin is up 2%. Zooming out over a seven-day timeframe and it is up 3%. 

Bitcoin’s rise comes as SpaceX reported surging revenue growth in its third quarter, and its owner, Elon Musk, talked of a potential SpaceX-Tesla merger.

SpaceX — which debuted in June on the Nasdaq in the biggest initial public offering ever — reported third-quarter revenue on Tuesday of $14.6 billion, up 161% from the previous year and smashing estimates. 

Technology stocks rallied on the news. Bitcoin has in the past risen with risk assets and been correlated with the Nasdaq. 

But this year, the OG cryptocurrency has moved with gold as the so-called debasement trade becomes hot again. The trade is when investors buy certain assets to hedge against currency being devalued. 

The dollar slid in value in August after the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. Bitcoin had its best quarterly run in three years and third best August ever.   

U.S. investors this week have piled back into spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, too. On Monday and Tuesday, the funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and others received new investment of over $549 million, according to Coinglass data. 

Bitcoin’s price is still over 30% below its all-time high of $126,080 — reached in October 2025 — but analysts are saying the cryptocurrency is now back in a bull market after spending most of this year in a bear. 

This post Bitcoin Nears $85,000 as SpaceX Earnings Reignite Risk Appetite first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

SideSwap’s wallet funds the reopened swaps while partly manual refills can delay payments and direct Federation withdrawals remain restricted.

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Existing US issuers awaiting OCC approval need discretionary relief to keep issuing from Jan. 18, 2027; filing alone is insufficient.

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The net receipt reached an address Arkham labels a Coinbase Prime deposit, a destination also used in July and August.

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Xaman’s hypothetical return example puts fee recovery near 15 months for 100 XRP, while current vault terms differ.

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Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla and SpaceX are exploring a merger that could combine their existing Bitcoin holdings under one company. Speaking during SpaceX's Oct. 20 earnings call, Musk said both companies had established special committees of independent directors to evaluate a potential combination. Musk described the merger as a good idea but said he…

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The CLARITY Act, in full the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633), is a US bill that would split oversight of crypto-assets between the securities regulator SEC and the derivatives regulator CFTC and require crypto exchanges to register at federal level. The House of Representatives passed it on July 17, 2025 by 294 votes to 134. In the Senate, the motion to open debate failed on September 15, 2026 by 49 votes to 50; 60 would have been needed. The CLARITY Act is therefore not law, and as of October 22, 2026 no new vote is scheduled. What is documented on this page are the bill text, the votes and the regulators' steps; how we rate the chances of a second attempt appears further down and is marked as our assessment.

What the day of the vote set in motion is covered in our report on the CLARITY Act's failure and the CFTC taking over.

CLARITY Act: the key facts in brief

• Introduced on May 29, 2025: the bill from Republican French Hill splits crypto oversight between the CFTC and the SEC and requires exchanges, brokers and dealers to register with the CFTC.
• 294 to 134 in the House: on July 17, 2025 all 216 voting Republicans and 78 Democrats backed the CLARITY Act.
• 49 to 50 in the Senate: on September 15, 2026 it fell eleven votes short of the 60 required. No Democrat voted yes, and four Republicans voted no.
• Deadline of January 3, 2027: that is when the 119th Congress ends and bills not passed expire. Until then the Senate can repeat the vote; after that, a new attempt starts from scratch.
• Regulators are acting without a law: since March 2026 the SEC has listed Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Solana, among others, as digital commodities, and the CFTC is collecting comments on its own crypto rules until December 14, 2026.
• Stablecoins are already covered: the GENIUS Act has been law since July 18, 2025 and takes effect by January 18, 2027 at the latest. In the EU, the MiCA regulation has applied in full since December 30, 2024.

What is the CLARITY Act?

The CLARITY Act is the planned market-structure law for crypto-assets in the United States. It sets out which agency is responsible for which token and which rules apply to exchanges, brokers and projects that sell tokens. At its core sits the term "digital commodity": a token firmly tied to a blockchain whose value derives from the use of that blockchain, per the definition in the bill text passed by the House.

Until now it has mainly been courts in the United States deciding whether a token is a security, using the Howey test of 1946. The CLARITY Act would replace that with fixed categories. Besides oversight, it governs the segregated custody of client assets, anti-money-laundering duties for exchanges, and an exemption for token sales of up to $50 million in any twelve months. A separate part, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital central bank dollar.

SEC or CFTC: how the CLARITY Act divides oversight

The basic idea is a division of labour along the life of a token. At the first sale, when a project raises money, the SEC stays responsible. Once the token trades on a mature blockchain that nobody controls alone, trading moves to the CFTC. For that transition the House version introduces the term "mature blockchain system". The Senate version works instead with "ancillary assets": tokens whose value still depends on the work of a founding team and which carry their own disclosure duties with the SEC.

For exchanges that would be the biggest change: a single federal authorisation for spot trading instead of licences from individual states and the risk of an SEC lawsuit.

CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act: stablecoins are already covered

The CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act are often confused. The GENIUS Act covers only stablecoins, meaning tokens designed to hold a fixed value in dollars. It has been law since July 18, 2025 (Public Law 119-27), after the Senate adopted it on June 17, 2025 by 68 votes to 30 and the House on July 17, 2025 by 308 to 122. It takes effect by January 18, 2027 at the latest, eighteen months after signature, or as early as 120 days after the regulators' final implementing rules. Issuers will then need a licence, must back their tokens fully with reserves and may not pay holders interest.

The CLARITY Act covers the rest: Bitcoin, Ether, altcoins and the platforms they trade on. On stablecoins the Senate version goes further. Its section 404 also bars exchanges and other service providers from paying customers interest or interest-like rewards purely for holding stablecoins; rewards for genuine use remain permitted. It was precisely that line banks and crypto exchanges fought over for months.

The CLARITY Act's path: timeline from the House to the Senate

The main stages according to the official congressional action list for H.R. 3633:

Almost eight months passed between the bill's arrival in the Senate and the first committee vote, during which the text grew from 300 to more than 600 pages, in the words of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. How Coinbase stopped the deliberations in January is covered in our report on Brian Armstrong and the CLARITY Act, and the situation shortly before the vote in our preview of the Senate vote.

The CLARITY Act in the Senate: eleven votes short on September 15

The vote on September 15, 2026 was not on the law itself, but on whether the Senate would take up the debate at all. That requires 60 of 100 votes; otherwise the minority can hold up any measure by extended speech, the filibuster. According to the Congressional Record, 49 senators voted in favour and 50 against (vote number 234).

Even with all 53 Republicans, seven votes from the other side would still have been missing. Who said no is notable: Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks had still voted for the bill in the Banking Committee in May, as CNBC reported. Thom Tillis, co-author of the Senate version, voted no on procedural grounds: under the rules, only a senator on the winning side may move to reconsider the vote. He filed that motion the same day.

The final fight was over ethics rules. Elizabeth Warren, ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, justified her no vote on the floor by saying the ethics rules tabled shortly before the vote did not effectively limit the crypto businesses of the President and his family, and that enforcement would rest solely with the Attorney General (speech in full). Bernie Moreno countered in the same record that the Senate should argue about the ethics rules in exactly the debate the no vote prevented.

Our assessment: a failed procedural vote need not be the end. With the GENIUS Act the same step failed on May 8, 2025 by 48 votes to 49, and barely six weeks later the law cleared the Senate 68 to 30. Back then the dispute was over details, and more than a year remained. With the CLARITY Act not a single Democrat voted yes, the dispute turns on the President's crypto businesses and therefore on a political question, and around ten weeks remain until the end of the legislative term. We therefore consider passage in 2026 unlikely. The rules for the US crypto market are more likely to come from the SEC and the CFTC in the coming months.

CLARITY Act 2.0: what happens after the Senate vote

Formally the CLARITY Act lives on. H.R. 3633 sits on the Senate's legislative calendar, and the Tillis motion allows the failed vote to be rescheduled. "CLARITY Act 2.0" is not an official name but the label used in industry reports for this second attempt. Its basis would be the substitute text that Senator Cynthia Lummis published in revised form before the vote, merging the Banking and Agriculture committee parts. What changed in it is covered in our report on CLARITY Act 2.0 and the road ahead for crypto regulation.

The calendar is tight. On November 3, 2026 the United States elects the House and around a third of the Senate. After that the lame-duck session runs until the 119th Congress ends on January 3, 2027. The Senate would have to pass the law by then, and because its version differs, both chambers would have to agree on a common text. Otherwise the bill expires and the new Congress starts over. Lummis is not standing for re-election and announced on October 8, according to TokenPost, that she would campaign for the law until she leaves.

Without the CLARITY Act: what the SEC and CFTC already regulate

While the Senate is stuck, the regulators are moving with the tools they have. On March 17, 2026 the SEC, supplemented by CFTC guidance, issued an interpretation of securities law that sorts crypto-assets into five groups. Digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools and stablecoins are not securities under it. As examples of digital commodities the SEC names 16 coins, among them Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Dogecoin and Chainlink. What remains a security is anything that is a classic security in token form.

The gap shows up in the detail. The CFTC bases its consultation of October 5 on an existing provision for commodity transactions involving leverage or financing, section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. A plain purchase of Bitcoin without leverage it cannot bring under a registration requirement without a new law; there the state licences remain decisive. That federal competence for the spot market is exactly what the CLARITY Act would have delivered. There is also the question of durability: a future agency leadership can change an interpretation, whereas only Congress can change a law. CFTC chief Michael Selig calls the consultation a first step towards building a market structure with existing powers, on the instruction of President Trump.

Supporters and opponents of the CLARITY Act

• In favour: the Republican majority in both chambers, led in the Senate by Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and Cynthia Lummis, plus 78 Democrats in the House. The crypto industry backs the goal, not every detail. Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong withdrew his support on January 14, 2026, partly because planned changes would have prevented rewards on stablecoins.
• Against the current version: the Democrats in the Senate, among them Elizabeth Warren, chiefly over the ethics rules and anti-money-laundering supervision. The banking association ABA is calling for a stricter ban on interest-like rewards on stablecoins, according to a report in its Banking Journal.
• Against individual sections: an alliance of Catholic religious orders around the Alliance to End Human Trafficking wrote to the Senate floor leaders on June 23, 2026. It criticises the protection for software developers in section 604, arguing it could make it harder to trace money flows from human trafficking. More on that in our report on the letter from Catholic leaders.

Which coins the CLARITY Act affects most

The coins most exposed to the CLARITY Act are those whose classification was long disputed. Bitcoin is not among them; XRP is, because that was exactly the question in the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple. CoinMarketCap's daily prices around the Senate vote show the difference:

All times in UTC. XRP lost almost ten percent on the day of the vote, more than the three other large coins; how the chart developed afterwards is shown in our report on the XRP price slide after the Senate vote, and longer-term scenarios are set out in our XRP price prediction. Since March the SEC has expressly listed XRP as a digital commodity in its interpretation. That removes part of the uncertainty, but it remains an interpretation that a future SEC can change.

Among the exchanges, Coinbase is the best-known case. The Nasdaq-listed US exchange would have to register as a "digital commodity exchange" with the CFTC, and in return the uncertainty over SEC jurisdiction would fall away. For rewards on stablecoin balances, section 404 of the Senate version would be decisive. Fees and offerings of the large platforms are set out in our crypto exchange comparison.

The CLARITY Act and MiCA: what applies to investors in Europe

Legally the CLARITY Act changes nothing for investors in Germany. What applies here is the EU regulation MiCA, which already answers many of the questions in the US bill. The differences at a glance:

What is decided in Washington therefore moves prices above all. Your rights against an exchange hang on its MiCA authorisation, which every provider in the EU has needed since the last transition period ended on July 1, 2026. Whether a provider holds one is listed in ESMA's MiCA register; licensed platforms and their terms are compared in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges. On tax, too, the CLARITY Act changes nothing: gains on crypto-assets fall under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act in Germany and are tax-free under current law after a holding period of one year. Whether that one-year threshold falls for purchases from 2027 will be decided in Berlin; our article on the crypto holding period keeps the state of play current. What is due on a shorter holding period can be worked out with the CryptoTicker tax calculator.

How to follow the CLARITY Act

These official sources show the real state of play:

• Congress.gov: the action list for H.R. 3633 records every step with its date. A new entry reading "Cloture motion presented" shows that a Senate vote is being prepared.
• Congressional Record: the daily record of the Senate and the House appears on GovInfo, with the names of all senators in roll-call votes.
• Senate Banking and Agriculture committees: new drafts and hearing dates appear first on the pages of the committees and the senators involved.
• SEC and CFTC: new interpretations, exemptions and proposals are announced in the CFTC's press releases and the SEC's before they appear in the Federal Register. The next fixed deadline is December 14, 2026, when the CFTC consultation closes.

CLARITY Act: the window stays open until January 3, 2027

The CLARITY Act has come a long way: passed in the House, approved by two Senate committees. What has tripped it up so far is not the division between the SEC and the CFTC, but above all the ethics question. Until January 3, 2027 the Senate can repeat the vote; after that a new Congress would have to start over. Until then the SEC and the CFTC set the rules, and for investors in Europe MiCA remains the benchmark. We update this page with every new vote.

Here is what is documented: the US banking regulator Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, presented its final rule on payment stablecoins on October 21, 2026. The rule takes effect on January 18, 2027, the same day the underlying statute begins to bite. The ban on paying holders interest or a yield purely for holding a stablecoin remains in place. What the agency has struck out is a passage from the draft under which certain payments routed through third parties would have counted from the outset as circumventing that ban. Our own assessment follows further down: the case-by-case review that replaces that presumption moves the question of which reward model is permitted out of the rule text and into supervisory practice.

The short answer to what this changes in Germany is: nothing for now. Anyone holding USDC or USDT here has long lived under a stricter regime. Article 50 of the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, or MiCAR, prohibits issuers of e-money tokens from granting interest. The American rule is interesting all the same, because it answers whether the interest gap stays open anywhere in the world. That answer is more nuanced than the bare headline "ban on interest stays" suggests.

What the OCC decided on October 21, 2026

The agency published its bulletin numbered 2026-50, pulling together in it the final version of every provision the stablecoin statute obliges it to issue. In its own wording, the rule enters into force on January 18, 2027. The OCC has bundled the largest part of the new duties into a newly created section of its rulebook, carried as Title 12, Part 15 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Alongside that it amends existing provisions on capital adequacy, on early supervisory intervention, on fees and on procedural law.

A payment stablecoin is, in this scheme, a token redeemable for a fixed amount in state currency and expressly intended as a means of payment. That intended purpose explains why both legal orders take such a hard line on interest: a means of payment is meant to circulate, an investment is meant to sit still.

The agency followed up the same day with a second bulletin covering revised reporting forms for licensed issuers. When it will actually start accepting applications and exemption requests it has left open, saying it will announce that separately. No approved issuer therefore exists in the United States as of today.

The interest ban in the GENIUS Act: what issuers of payment stablecoins may not do

The statute itself bars issuers from paying their holders interest or a yield where that payment is made solely because someone holds, uses or retains the token. At the same time it obliges the OCC and the other banking supervisors to prevent circumvention of that ban. This is the point at which the agency's concrete design decides the practical effect.

The rationale for the ban is not crypto-specific. The thinking comes from banking law and is called deposit flight. If a stablecoin issuer pays interest on the balances it has issued, it competes with the current account and the overnight deposit without being fully subject to deposit insurance and banking supervision. The wider the interest gap, the more money migrates out of the banking system, and the less credit a bank can extend. The same consideration sits behind Article 50 of MiCAR.

The deleted presumption for reward arrangements with third parties

The spring draft went further than the version now adopted. It contained a presumption: certain arrangements between an issuer and a third party on paying a yield were to count as a breach of the interest ban without the supervisor having to prove it in the individual case. What was meant were structures in which the issuer does not pay itself, but an affiliated company, a trading platform or a distribution partner with which a contractual or economic relationship exists.

That presumption no longer appears in the final rule. Instead the OCC intends to review such arrangements one by one. The Bank Policy Institute, the association of the large American banks, criticised this on the day of publication and writes in its statement of October 21, 2026 that without a clear presumption and without a transparent procedure it is hard to tell which practices cross the line.

No blanket grandfathering: the OCC reviews reward models individually

From the deletion follows something that looks at first glance like relief and on closer inspection is an uncertainty. An existing reward programme is neither expressly prohibited nor expressly tolerated by the new rule. It gets no blanket grandfathering, but lands in the case-by-case review. Anyone running such a programme learns where they stand only through supervisory practice, and the agency has so far declined to publish the results of those reviews under any fixed procedure.

For holders in Germany this is an observation rather than an exposure. Users here receive no interest on e-money tokens on regulated European platforms in any case. For which tokens are licensed under MiCAR here at all and where they trade, the current overview is in the stablecoin comparison.

12 CFR 15: reserve assets, redemption, custody and supervision in one section

According to the agency, the new section governs an issuer's permitted activities, the reserve assets, redemption, risk management, examinations and ongoing supervision, custody, the licensing procedure, the review of foreign issuers, the withdrawal of a licence, and a capital and operating reserve as a backstop. The details of these duties sit in the regulatory text and not in the bulletin, which only names the subjects.

The order of the topics gives away what the legislator was after. Reserve and redemption come first, because a payment stablecoin is only a means of payment if it can be returned at face value at any time. Custody and licence withdrawal stand beside them, because the supervisor needs a lever when that ceases to hold. The details are in the OCC's bulletin 2026-50.

Foreign issuers: when the OCC also supervises issuers from abroad

One point of the new rule concerns Europe directly. The OCC records in its bulletin that it gains supervisory powers over foreign issuers of payment stablecoins. The scope covers, besides national banks, federal savings associations and their subsidiaries, also federally licensed branches, non-banks that are seeking or have obtained a licence as a federally approved issuer, and state-licensed issuers insofar as the OCC holds regulatory or enforcement powers over them.

A European issuer wanting to bring a euro stablecoin into the American market will therefore operate within two supervisory systems at once. Which duties the European side carries we have written up in our overview of the MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies.

Money laundering and sanctions are missing: what the Treasury still has to settle

The final rule deliberately leaves out a large area. Provisions on the Bank Secrecy Act, on anti-money-laundering and on the sanctions lists of the Office of Foreign Assets Control are not included. For those the OCC announces a separate rulemaking in coordination with the Treasury. It names no date.

This is more than a formality. With stablecoins in particular, anti-money-laundering supervision decides which addresses can be frozen and under what conditions an issuer blocks tokens. As long as that part is missing, the American framework is finished in its market rules but not in its control architecture. The background to this legislative process and the state of play before the final version we described in our article on the GENIUS Act rules through 2027.

Our own research: the final version is not yet in the Federal Register

The binding full text of an American regulation appears in the Federal Register, the official gazette of the United States. The final stablecoin rule had not been published there as of October 22, 2026. All 14 OCC entries under the keyword payment stablecoin were checked; the most recent relevant entry is the proposed rule of March 2, 2026. cryptoticker.io carried out this research itself on October 22, 2026.

In practical terms that means what is publicly available right now is the agency's bulletin and the accompanying notices. The statutory text that lawyers and issuers will work from comes later. Anyone who needs a statement on an individual reward model is better off waiting for that text.

Article 50 MiCAR: in the EU, interest on e-money tokens has long been prohibited

The European rule is older and shorter. Article 50 of MiCAR prohibits issuers of e-money tokens from granting interest, by way of derogation from Article 12 of the E-Money Directive, which had regulated the question more openly before. The ban does not stop at the issuer: it equally captures crypto-asset service providers working with such tokens, even where they do not issue the token themselves and merely custody or trade it.

The European concept of interest is broadly drawn. It captures any remuneration tied to the holding period, regardless of what it is called and who pays it. That is precisely why cashback and reward models on stablecoin balances have largely disappeared in the EU while they carried on elsewhere. The rules for stablecoins under MiCAR have applied since June 30, 2024.

USDC and USDT in Germany: holders face no action today

Concretely: nothing that forces a step today. The American rule addresses issuers and the supervisor, not holders. Neither a token's redeemability nor its treatment on a European platform changes because of it. Two things are worth a look all the same.

The first is the venue. A provider licensed in Germany is fully subject to MiCAR; a non-European provider is not. Anyone using a reward programme on a platform outside the EU is relying on a practice that, in the United States from January 2027, sits under case-by-case supervisory review. The second is tax. If a remuneration from such a programme accrues to you, that inflow has to be assessed for tax, and the classification turns on the individual case. A reliable statement on that comes from a tax adviser, not from an editorial desk.

Our assessment: case-by-case review creates room, but not clarity

From the editorial desk's point of view, the deletion of the presumption is the real event of the day, not the surviving interest ban. In favour of that reading: the ban already stood in the statutory text and the agency could not have loosened it at all, whereas the presumption was a supervisory decision that it has now revised. Against it: nobody can quantify the practical effect of that change today, because the statutory text is not yet published and the OCC has named no procedure for its individual decisions.

Paige Pidano Paridon, Executive Vice President and co-head of Regulatory Affairs at the Bank Policy Institute, put it this way in the statement linked above: "The decision to omit the interest presumption replaces clarity with ambiguity and exposes the banking system and its customers to the risk of deposit flight." That is the position of a banking association and therefore the position of an interested party. What is documented at this point is the fact of the deletion, not its consequence.

What can be inferred from it for the EU is limited. Article 50 of MiCAR knows no presumption that could be struck out, because it prohibits interest directly and includes service providers. A European loosening would be decided by the legislator, not by a supervisory authority. There are currently no signs of one.

Stablecoin interest: nothing changes in the EU before January 18, 2027

Three points count now:

1. Place your venue. Check whether your provider holds a MiCAR licence in the EU or operates outside it, because that determines which rulebook applies to your balance. Which houses are licensed is set out in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Name the source of the yield. Interest on e-money tokens is prohibited in the EU; earnings from other sources are not. If you are looking for a yield, look at what the return actually rests on, for instance with the staking rewards platforms.
3. Document the inflows. Record every remuneration from a reward programme with its date and equivalent value, as long as the tax classification turns on the individual case. The tax software and portfolio trackers help with that.

(As of October 22, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Here is what is documented: Bitcoin stands at $82,690 on Thursday morning, had run up to $84,808 overnight and fell back as far as $82,567. The total crypto market capitalisation sits at $2.785 trillion, 2.64 percent below the level of 24 hours ago, while Bitcoin itself is practically unchanged on the day at plus 0.03 percent. Our own assessment follows further down: as long as the price does not confirm $84,808 from above, the overnight range is the frame for the day.

The rest of the market tells a different story. Of the twenty largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, eleven are down, and the losses hit above all those assets that had risen most in the preceding weeks. Where to place Bitcoin in the longer frame is set out in our running price assessment; this morning report takes the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin price on Thursday morning: $82,690 after $84,808 overnight

The price moved in a range of $2,241 during the night into October 22. The overnight high was $84,808, the overnight low $82,567, and the distance between them equals 2.6 percent of the high. Daily volume traded came to $35.67 billion, and Bitcoin's market capitalisation stands at $1.662 trillion.

The futures market shows the same picture. The Bitcoin index of the options exchange Deribit stood at $82,703.84 in the morning, within a few dollars of the spot markets. A premium or discount between futures and spot, of the kind that appears in hectic phases, is currently absent.

More telling than the point reading is the shape of the move. A price that reaches a high and gives up the entire gain in the same session leaves behind a level at which sellers were demonstrably willing. That is exactly what happened at $84,808.

What has changed since the morning report of October 21

Yesterday morning we reported a Bitcoin price of $82,708 in this slot, together with inflows of $526.7 million into the US funds and the question of which levels had to hold going into the Fed meeting. That is on the record in the morning report of October 21.

Twenty-four hours later the price stands at $82,690. The difference is $18, or 0.02 percent. In between came a rise of more than $2,100 and its complete reversal. Compare only the two morning readings and you see a market standing still; look at the range and you see a market in which anything above $84,000 was sold immediately.

The levels from yesterday's report therefore fared differently. To the upside the price ran beyond $84,000 and failed to hold it. To the downside the low at $82,567 stayed above the previous day's level. The support held, in other words; the breakout did not.

Dominance at 59.53 percent: how the metric rises while the market falls

Bitcoin dominance measures Bitcoin's share of the market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies. On Thursday morning it stands at 59.53 percent, with Ethereum following at 10.67 percent. The metric rises along two paths, and confusing them leads to wrong conclusions.

The first path is a rising Bitcoin price with the rest standing still. The second is a falling rest with the Bitcoin price standing still. Last night the second path was at work: Bitcoin lost nothing on the day, while total market capitalisation lost 2.64 percent. Arithmetically Bitcoin's share then grows without a single dollar of new money having flowed into Bitcoin.

For judging the market that difference matters. Dominance that rises through inflows into Bitcoin shows new demand. Dominance that rises through outflows from altcoins shows a shrinking risk budget above all. In the second case Bitcoin has not become strong; the rest has become weak.

The levels of the day: $82,567 below, $84,808 above

Two levels this morning are grounded in the price action itself, not in a model. Below sits the overnight low of $82,567. It lies around $123 under the current price, so within immediate reach. Should the price break beneath it, it loses the level of the last two morning readings at the same time.

Above sits the overnight high of $84,808. The distance is a good $2,100, or 2.6 percent. The price failed at that level during the past night, which makes it documented rather than estimated. A second attempt that closes above $84,808 would devalue the night's failure; a second attempt that turns in front of it confirms the failure.

Between the two lies the zone in which trading has taken place since yesterday. For short-term investors that means the range is narrow and quantifiable in dollars, and anyone working with leverage has correspondingly little room before liquidation.

Monero and Zcash rise, Hyperliquid and Dogecoin fall

Market breadth splits into two groups this morning. On the winning side stand the assets focused on confidentiality: Monero adds 5.86 percent to $612.19, Zcash 2.2 percent to $1,287.54. Among the large names, XRP holds up at plus 0.94 percent at $1.34.

On the losing side are the assets that had run hardest of late. Hyperliquid loses 2.54 percent to $78.75, Dogecoin 1.75 percent to $0.079995, Cardano 1.34 percent to $0.2198. Ethereum and Solana sit near the flat line at minus 0.08 and minus 0.43 percent, at $2,440.30 and $105.28.

Eleven of the twenty largest assets are down, nine up. That is not a broad sell-off. It is a rotation in which risk capital flows out of the previous weeks' high performers without dragging Bitcoin or the two large smart-contract blockchains along.

Network fees at 1 satoshi per byte: what the empty mempool means

The mempool is the Bitcoin network's waiting room: every transfer sits there until a miner includes it in a block. How expensive a transfer is depends on how full that waiting room is. On Thursday morning the fastest confirmation costs 2 satoshis per byte, while 1 satoshi per byte is enough for confirmation within half an hour or an hour.

Those readings are at the lower edge of what is possible. In practice that means an ordinary transfer from an exchange to your own wallet currently costs cents rather than the double-digit euro sums that accrue in phases of heavy load. If you were planning to move holdings off an exchange into self-custody anyway, the fee situation is favourable right now.

The empty state also says something about activity. Low fees mean few competing transactions, and therefore little movement of holdings on the blockchain. That fits a market trading in a narrow range rather than running in one direction.

Hashrate at 1,027 exahash: 147 blocks in 24 hours

Computing power in the Bitcoin network stands at around 1,027 exahash per second. Over the past 24 hours, 147 blocks were found, an average of one every 9.18 minutes. The protocol's target is ten minutes.

Because miners are faster than the target, the protocol will raise the difficulty at the next adjustment. Currently 1,161 blocks remain until the checkpoint at block height 973,728, and the expected adjustment is plus 4.83 percent. For holders that changes nothing; for miners it raises the cost per block found.

Fear and Greed Index at 68: sentiment rises while the price stands still

The Fear and Greed Index condenses volatility, trading volume, search interest and survey readings into a single number between 0 and 100. On Thursday it stands at 68, in "greed" territory, after 63 the day before.

Sentiment has therefore brightened even though the price is flat on the day and the broader market has lost ground. A gap of this kind between price and sentiment often appears after a push higher: the excursion to $84,808 lingers longer in survey and search data than in the price table. As a buy signal the number is of no use; as an indication of expectations it is.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG: how to check your purchase date before year-end

For investors in Germany, October is the month in which, for tax purposes, the purchase date matters more than the price level. Private disposals of cryptocurrencies are tax-free under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act if more than one year lies between purchase and sale. Anyone selling within the year pays tax on the gain at their personal income tax rate as soon as the sum of all private disposal gains in the calendar year reaches 1,000 euros.

As a result, there is a concrete check you can run today at no cost. Pull up the purchase records for your Bitcoin positions and sort them by date. Every position bought before October 22, 2025 has reached the one-year threshold. Every position from the past twelve months has not, and for those the date from which a sale would be tax-free is fixed.

Two points are regularly overlooked here. First, every swap counts as a sale, including a swap from Bitcoin into another cryptocurrency or into a stablecoin. Second, the deadline applies per position and not per account, which is why the order of disposal determines the tax burden. Which tools map that allocation for German tax returns is set out in our overview of tax software and portfolio trackers. How the legislator is treating the deadline at present, we track in the status of the holding-period reform.

The route via ETN: what runs differently in a securities account than on an exchange

Anyone who does not want to custody Bitcoin directly usually reaches it in Germany through exchange-traded notes, or ETNs, held in a securities account. The difference from direct custody is not merely technical. With an ETN you hold a claim against the issuer rather than the coin itself, and the tax treatment follows different rules from Section 23.

Which products are tradable in Germany and how they differ in costs and collateralisation, we have compiled in the overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs in Germany. For this morning's levels the route makes no difference; for the question of whether a gain is tax-free after a year, it makes the decisive one.

Our assessment: what argues for a continuation and what against it

From the editorial desk's point of view, the night is evidence of stability and against momentum, both at once. In favour: Bitcoin came through a 2.64 percent decline in total market capitalisation without a loss of its own, and the overnight low at $82,567 stayed above the previous day's level. The willingness to sell hit the previous weeks' high performers, not Bitcoin.

Against it stands the $84,808 level. A price that gives up a $2,100 rise entirely within one session found no buyers there. The picture on the blockchain fits: fees of 1 satoshi per byte show little movement of holdings, and therefore little capital going into positions right now. Sentiment at 68 points does not replace that capital.

What is documented, then, is a narrow range with a confirmed downside and a confirmed upside. What follows from it will be decided at those two numbers and not by the direction of the past night. The editorial desk derives neither a buy nor a sell recommendation from this. Crypto investments can fall to a total loss.

Bitcoin at $82,690: without a break above $84,808 the range stays tight

1. Note down the two levels. Write down $82,567 and $84,808. Both come from the past night and are therefore documented. Only a daily close outside that range is new information; everything in between is a continuation of what is known. Where you trade and at what fees is shown in the exchange overview.
2. Check the purchase date, not the price level. Sort your positions by purchase date and mark which ones fall before October 22, 2025. Those positions are tax-free on sale, the others are not. The per-position allocation is handled by the tax tools.
3. Use the favourable fee situation if a move is due. At 1 satoshi per byte, the transfer from an exchange into your own custody costs as little as it rarely does. Which devices are available in Germany is set out in the hardware wallet overview.

The figures in this report come from CoinGecko and, for the network readings, from mempool.space.

(As of October 22, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If your exchange routes you into a DeFi protocol and your money is lost there, the exchange should share the liability. That is what four French authorities demand in their joint submission on the revision of the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets.

Here is what is documented so far: the Direction Générale du Trésor, the markets regulator AMF, the Banque de France and the banking supervisor ACPR have published a joint response to the European Commission's MiCA consultation, and it contains the sentence that service providers should answer for certain incidents where they actively facilitated access. Our own assessment follows further down: the proposal mainly shifts the burden of vetting, and it shifts it to where that burden is already cheapest to carry.

What the four French authorities submitted on the MiCA revision

The European Commission has put MiCA up for review and ran a public consultation on it. According to the French Treasury's publication, the procedure ran from May 20 to September 30, 2026. Among the submissions is a joint response from the four bodies named above, which the Treasury dates to October 20, 2026, while the AMF dates its own press release to October 21, 2026. The full paper sits on the Treasury's website as an English-language PDF of around 1.8 megabytes.

That four bodies sign jointly is the real news here. In France, crypto supervision and monetary policy are organised separately: the AMF oversees markets and service providers, the ACPR banks and insurers, the Banque de France the payment systems, and the Treasury is responsible for legislation. A submission carried by all four is not one regulator's opinion but a coordinated negotiating position of a large member state for the coming rounds in Brussels.

Liability for DeFi access: when a provider would have to answer under the proposal

The core for retail investors sits in the DeFi section. The authorities do not want to ban decentralised finance applications in Europe, but to fence them in. The AMF names as building blocks, in its own words, "clearly assigned responsibilities for intermediaries, appropriate due diligence obligations and protocol certification". The Treasury puts the same thought in French as "des responsabilités clairement attribuées aux intermédiaires".

In concrete terms, according to Cointelegraph's reporting on the paper, a licensed service provider should be liable for certain incidents affecting its clients where it actively facilitated access to a protocol. The wording quoted is that providers "should be liable for certain incidents affecting clients where they actively facilitated access". Which incidents exactly fall under that, the paper leaves open according to this report.

Two duties hang on this. First, the platform should vet a protocol before it lets clients anywhere near it. Second, it should keep monitoring that protocol afterwards, for vulnerabilities and for unusual activity. A provider that ignores a known security flaw and keeps access open should no longer be able to argue, under the proposal, that the protocol is somebody else's code.

Why MiCA currently exempts fully decentralised services

The proposal targets a gap that MiCA left deliberately. The regulation covers service providers that custody, exchange or transfer crypto-assets for others. Services provided in a fully decentralised way, without an intermediary, are carved out. A protocol that consists only of smart contracts on a blockchain and is operated by nobody therefore has no addressee that a supervisor could pursue.

In practice that borderline case has stayed rare. Most investors do not reach a protocol through their own software but through an app that builds in the access for them. That is exactly where the French proposal strikes: not at the protocol, but at the door. To see how far a given provider's licence reaches, the houses available in Germany are set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Certification of protocols and smart contracts as a new vetting step

Instead of a ban, the authorities bet on a certificate. Protocols and smart contracts should be able to be audited and confirmed, and a platform that connects only certified protocols would have a solid basis for its due diligence. Who issues the certificate, and against which criteria, is not yet settled according to the reporting available.

What matters in practice is the back door the paper leaves open. A platform may also let its clients reach a protocol that is not certified, provided it carries out the vetting itself and flags the risks more prominently. That turns the certificate into something other than a market-access filter: it becomes a liability anchor, shifting the burden of proof over who had to know what when a loss occurs.

Self-custody wallets stay exempt from a certification duty

For holding your own keys, the proposal brings relief. The authorities come out against a blanket certification duty for developers of self-custody wallets, meaning software where the user alone holds the keys. They favour voluntary certification only where a wallet goes further and integrates advanced DeFi services.

Self-custody means the private keys to your crypto-assets sit on your device, not with a provider. That distinction has become the pivot of the European debate in recent months, because any duty on wallet developers would catch open-source software that nobody releases commercially. How separate custody can be handled with dedicated devices is shown in the hardware wallet comparison.

Tiered duties: large service providers carry the full load

The authorities do not want the new duties spread evenly. They should apply in full to significant service providers, called "significant CASPs" in the paper, meaning the large trading venues with many clients. For smaller providers the requirements should be tiered. What that tiering looks like, the report does not say.

The mechanism behind it is familiar from banking regulation: the bigger you are, the more intensively you vet and the more you document. For the market that means two things. The largest houses will either insure their DeFi offerings at greater cost or narrow them, while smaller providers might keep access open and attach more explicit warnings. For customers, that changes where the most convenient route into a protocol lies.

Stablecoins: a ban on services involving non-MiCA-compliant tokens

A second block of the paper concerns stablecoins, tokens pegged to a currency. The authorities explicitly call for service providers licensed in the Union to be barred from offering services on stablecoins that do not meet the MiCA requirements. Today that line is softer in daily practice than the regulation suggests.

There is also a push on so-called multi-issuance, the case where the same stablecoin is issued both in the EU and in a third country. The authorities want that construction regulated, through equivalence assessments of third-country supervision, through cooperation between supervisors, and through additional guarantees on reserves and on the right of redemption. Euro stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits, by contrast, they want to see move faster, especially in cross-border payments.

ESMA supervision and crypto conglomerates: competences would move upwards

Institutionally, the paper aims at a shift. The role of the European securities regulator ESMA should be strengthened, in supervising significant service providers and the crypto business of conglomerates, meaning corporate groups that run exchange, custody, issuance and lending under one roof.

Today each national supervisor grants its own licence, in Germany BaFin, and a licensed house may then operate across the entire EU. A stronger ESMA would place those licences for the largest providers under one shared supervisor. Which obligations a MiCA licence triggers today is set out in our overview of the MiCA duties for crypto companies.

Staking, lending and borrowing: the rules the authorities want clarified

A further point concerns services that have long been routine for investors. The authorities propose clarifying the rules for staking and for the lending and borrowing of crypto-assets. Staking means you lock up tokens to help secure a network and receive a reward for it. With lending you make tokens available as credit and receive interest.

Both fall only partly under MiCA today, depending on how a provider structures its product. That vagueness has produced very different offerings across the single market in recent months, as the interview with BTCS adviser Wojciech Kaszycki on crypto lending under MiCA on cryptoticker.io also shows. Until the rules are clarified, which counterparty you face when you lend out your tokens sits in each provider's fine print.

What the proposal changes for investors in Europe

Nothing changes today. A submission to a consultation is not a law, and MiCA continues to apply unchanged. The paper is nevertheless not without consequence, because providers plan their products with lead time. A liability rule that is seriously on the table shapes product design long before it takes effect.

In practice that means three things. First, check whether your provider offers DeFi access at all and what it calls it, because labels such as Earn, Vault or Swap often obscure whose code ends up holding your money. Second, look at who your counterparty is if something fails: the licensed service provider, or a protocol with no operator. Third, expect convenient in-app routes to disappear or to acquire additional warning screens if the liability question prevails in Brussels. Custody you can make independent of all this, by moving holdings you intend to keep for longer onto your own device.

From the September 30 consultation deadline to the Commission report

The timetable is the calm part of this story. The consultation closed on September 30, 2026, and the French response was published three weeks later. The submissions feed into a report from the Commission to the EU legislators, which according to Cointelegraph is due by June 30, 2027 and may contain proposals to amend MiCA. Only after that does the actual legislative procedure with Parliament and Council begin.

cryptoticker.io has already reported on the start of that procedure, back when the deadline for submissions to the MiCA consultation was still running. What was an open deadline then is a position on the table now. Between those two steps lie no changes to the law, but arguments.

Our assessment: the proposal shifts the vetting burden, not the risk

From the editorial desk's point of view this is the most honest part of the paper and at the same time its weak spot. In its favour: the authorities do not invent an addressee where there is none. The protocol remains untouched, and the party put under obligation is the licensed provider, which already has a licence, an address and a supervisor. The approach is documented by the AMF's quoted formula, which assigns responsibilities to intermediaries, and by the carve-out for self-custody developers, which shows the authorities know the difference between an operator and a tool.

Against it stands the fact that a smart contract does not become safer through certification. The risk stays in the code; it merely migrates into an audit report and an insurance premium. In our assessment that premium ends up with the customer, and anyone suffering a loss must still prove the platform breached its duty to vet. Which incidents are covered at all, the paper so far leaves open, and that is precisely where it will be decided whether the liability becomes a claim or a formula. None of this is investment advice, and with crypto-assets a total loss remains possible.

DeFi liability under MiCA: Brussels decides by June 30, 2027

1. Check in your account which products your provider uses to offer DeFi access, and compare its licence with the other houses in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Separate holdings you intend to keep for longer from your trading accounts and move them to a dedicated device from the hardware wallet comparison.
3. With interest and staking offers, read carefully who your contractual counterparty is, and line the terms up side by side in the lending comparison.

(As of October 22, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: AMF press release on the MiCA revision and publication by the Direction Générale du Trésor.

What is documented: around 87.16 trillion Shiba Inu sat on the venues tracked by CryptoQuant on Wednesday morning, 0.08 percent more than 24 hours earlier. Our own assessment follows further down: a balance held at an exchange is a readiness to sell, not a sale.

The price stood at $0.00000521 on Wednesday evening, 1.9 percent above the previous day, with a session high of $0.00000526 and a low of $0.00000509 (CoinGecko, as of October 21, 20:43 UTC). Market value is $3.07 billion, rank 36. What is interesting this Wednesday is not the price, though, but where the tokens sit.

87.16 trillion SHIB in exchange accounts: Wednesday's reading

The figure comes from CryptoQuant's exchange data, reported by U.Today on October 21 at 10:30 UTC. Three further values from the day belong with the 87.16 trillion SHIB balance: an inflow of 344.17 billion tokens, an outflow of 268.47 billion and a reported net inflow of 72.56 billion. The value of the entire exchange balance is given as $449.76 million, 4.12 percent more than the previous day.

Measured against the circulating supply of 589.24 trillion tokens, that is 14.79 percent. Put differently: not even one SHIB in seven sits at a trading venue, with the remaining roughly 502 trillion held in wallets, in contracts on Shibarium or in balances that have not moved for years.

Exchange reserve and netflow: what the two metrics measure

The exchange reserve is the sum of all tokens in the wallets a data provider can attribute to an exchange. This value measures supply that could be sold within seconds, because it already sits where selling happens. The netflow is the difference between inflow and outflow over a period: positive when more tokens move onto exchanges, negative when more are withdrawn.

Both numbers are approximations. A provider only knows the addresses it has attributed to an exchange, and exchanges shuffle internally between hot and cold wallets. That is why the values from different services diverge, and why the series over weeks is worth more than a single day.

From the four-month high on October 3 to today

That series is available for October. On October 3 around 88.08 trillion SHIB sat on the tracked exchanges, the highest reading since early June, with a net inflow of more than 288 billion tokens in a single day. By October 17 the balance had fallen to about 87.06 trillion, with a negative netflow of roughly 33.94 billion tokens at the time. A second service put the same day at 87.09 trillion and minus 32.76 billion.

Between October 3 and October 21, then, a good 0.92 trillion SHIB disappeared from exchanges, a decline of 1.0 percent. The move of recent days points the other way: since October 17, around 0.10 trillion more tokens have returned to the venues. The drawdown of the first half of October has not reversed, but it is on pause.

Doing the maths: why inflow minus outflow does not produce the netflow

Here is a calculation anyone can follow: 344.17 billion of inflow less 268.47 billion of outflow comes to 75.70 billion tokens. The reported figure, however, is 72.56 billion. The gap is 3.14 billion SHIB, about $16,200 at Wednesday's price.

That is not an arithmetic error but a pointer to how this data is built. Inflow, outflow and netflow are often formed over slightly offset time windows or over different exchange lists, and one service rounds at the level of billions of tokens. Anyone working with exchange balances should allow for deviations of this size rather than reading a single decimal place.

How a growing exchange balance works on the price

The mechanism is simpler than the numbers suggest. Selling requires moving your tokens onto an exchange first. If the balance there rises over weeks, so does the supply that can reach the market with no further preparation. When that supply meets a thin order book, even a mid-sized sell order moves the price noticeably.

The reverse holds just as well. If the balance falls because holders move into self-custody, the short-term available supply shrinks. For a token with 589 trillion units in circulation, a trillion more or less on exchanges does not shift the position overnight, but it does change the direction in which a market tips on the same news.

The levels below: $0.0000050, $0.0000048 and $0.0000045

Three levels below are well founded for the coming days. The round mark at $0.00000500 is the first stop and sits just 4.0 percent below Wednesday's price. Beneath it comes the October low at about $0.00000480, which the price has already tested this month. Should that low break too, $0.00000450 is the next level, where buyers stepped in repeatedly over the summer.

For context on the setup: the 50-day and 100-day moving averages currently lie between $0.00000525 and $0.00000535, the 200-day average at around $0.00000560. The price therefore sits just below its middle lines. The relative strength index stands at about 45, in neutral territory, neither overbought nor oversold.

On the upside, a daily close above $0.0000054 counts

On the upside, the first hurdle is therefore not an intraday level but a daily close above $0.00000535. Only that would put the price back above the middle averages rather than below them. The second hurdle is the 200-day average at around $0.00000560. In September SHIB still traded at about $0.00000620, a level 19 percent away.

1.10 million burned, 87.16 trillion on exchanges: the ratio

Here is a comparison that puts the proportions straight and is rarely drawn in the running burn debate. On October 19 the burn rate rose 2,349 percent within 24 hours according to the count at Shibburn; in absolute terms, 1.10 million SHIB were destroyed. That amounted to a value of around $5.

The exchange balance is roughly 79 million times the size of that daily burn. Put another way: at 1.10 million tokens burned per day it would take more than 217,000 years, on paper, to destroy the amount sitting on exchanges today. Percentage jumps in the burn rate are therefore not a supply argument as long as the absolute number stays in the millions and the balance in the trillions.

What has shifted since Tuesday's PEPE comparison

On Tuesday we measured the gap between Shiba Inu and PEPE in this slot: $1.06 billion of market value separated the two, and the turnover ratio stood at 1.60 percent for SHIB. On Wednesday the gap is $1.11 billion, because SHIB comes to $3.07 billion and PEPE to $1.96 billion. SHIB's turnover ratio has fallen to 1.42 percent, while PEPE's stands at 17.79 percent on daily turnover of $349.10 million.

For the question in this article that means SHIB's order book has not deepened since Tuesday. A balance of 87.16 trillion tokens therefore faces a market that turned over $43.47 million in 24 hours on Wednesday. Even a fraction of the exchange balance could not be placed in a single day without moving the price.

Moving into your own wallet: the one-year clock under Section 23 EStG keeps running

The practical point for investors in Germany sits in the other direction of the statistic. Moving your SHIB from the exchange into your own wallet reduces the exchange balance by exactly that amount and takes your counterparty risk off the table. For tax, that move is not a disposal: a transfer between wallets of the same person is neither a sale nor a swap, it triggers no tax and does not restart the one-year holding period under Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act. The day of acquisition remains decisive.

Two things still need documenting. First, the transaction ID together with the date, so that it can later be shown this was your own transfer and not a sale. Second, the acquisition data of the tokens you moved, because the exchange no longer reports that history for you after the withdrawal. How far lawmakers are touching the one-year rule we track continuously in the status of the crypto holding period.

Your own share of the exchange balance: a calculation in three numbers

The statistic only becomes concrete at your own portfolio. Three numbers are enough. First, the amount of SHIB sitting in exchange accounts, added up across every venue you use. Second, its share of your total SHIB holding: above 14.79 percent and you hold more on exchanges than the market average. Third, the purpose of each individual account. Tokens there for a planned sale or for an order at a particular level belong there. Tokens that have merely been stored for months have no business in someone else's account.

For the second part the route leads to a hardware wallet, for the first to an exchange whose fees and order-book depth match your own trading volume. Under the European MiCA regulation, authorised custodians must hold client assets separately from their own; a platform's authorisation can be looked up in the BaFin and ESMA registers before larger amounts are left there.

The editorial view: the balance documents readiness, not intent

In this newsroom's view, Wednesday's increase of 0.08 percent is overrated when read as a sell signal. The arithmetic supports that: 0.08 percent of 87.16 trillion is around 70 billion tokens, a good $360,000, against daily turnover of $43.47 million. That is less than one percent of the day's business and sits within the noise. Against it stands the longer line, and that weighs more: the balance is still 0.1 trillion above the October 17 reading, and the direction of the drawdown from the first half of October has not continued.

What is demonstrable, then, is a readiness to trade, not an intent to sell. A robust signal would only emerge if the balance fell below 86 trillion, which several analysts name as the next threshold, or if it exceeded the October high of 88.08 trillion. Everything the data supports currently lies between those two values.

SHIB exchange balance: the pressure only turns below 86 trillion

1. Work out your own exchange share and compare it with the market's 14.79 percent. If it is higher and no sale is planned, the excess belongs in self-custody, for instance on a hardware wallet from the wallet comparison.
2. Consolidate the trading portion at one venue whose order book carries your volume. Fees and depth are in the exchange comparison, and for a token at $0.0000052 both decide the outcome more than the entry price does.
3. Record the acquisition date and transaction ID of every move, so that the one-year period can be evidenced later. A tool from the comparison of tax software keeps that log automatically.

(As of October 21, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Crypto investments can lead to total loss.)

Citadel's founder says investors are almost certainly in an AI bubble, warns a chip glut could crash prices like empty airline seats, yet expects the survivors to lead for decades.

Nvidia's OpenShell Reference Architecture pairs a software sandbox on Vera CPUs with Sentry monitoring on BlueField-4 chips, aiming to let companies run autonomous agents while enforcing limits agents cannot reach.

OpenAI says its models found PHP2Shell and led a two-month coalition to fix it. It's the same AI that broke into Hugging Face and an Australian government portal this year.

Both boards are now studying a tie-up that would put Grok, X, Starlink, orbital data centers, a chip megafactory and Optimus robots under one roof—and under one man's control.

Bitcoin is back near $84,500 as XRP and Zcash lead a broad crypto rebound from October's slide, putting "Uptober" back on the table.

Analyst Jesse Eckel argues that Bitcoin has a major scarcity advantage over gold as scientists make progress toward artificially producing the precious metal.

Albuquerque, the New Mexico city made famous by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, has officially banned Bitcoin ATMs in a sweeping crackdown on cryptocurrency fraud.

NEAR, ZEC, DOGE and ETH are all rebounding on green daily candles, but each still needs to clear key resistance to confirm the next move higher.

Legendary trader John Bollinger has discovered a hidden Bitcoin-themed arcade game on CoinMarketCap that challenges players to navigate BTC's historical price movements while staying within his famous Bollinger Bands.

Cardano has achieved a major real-world adoption milestone, with 100,000 Indian farms now registered on its blockchain.

TLDR

• APLD shares surge 8.54% as Applied Digital takes control of a Texas AI project.
• Applied Digital gains a 51% stake in Soluna’s planned 50 MW Texas data center.
• Soluna brings land and power assets, while Applied Digital funds development.
• ChronoScale eyes a lease for the Texas AI facility, pending final agreements.
• Texas AI data center deal targets wind and grid power as APLD stock rallies.

Applied Digital Corporation (APLD) stock surged 8.54% to $20.98 as the company announced a major Texas AI data center partnership. The shares gained $1.65 during regular trading, reflecting strong market interest in the company’s expanding infrastructure business. However, APLD stock slipped 0.49% to $20.88 in after-hours trading following the sharp daily advance.

Applied Digital Corp., APLD

Applied Digital Secures 51% Stake in Texas AI Data Center Project

Applied Digital has signed a definitive agreement with Soluna Holdings to develop a 50-megawatt AI data center in Texas. The companies will establish a joint venture to oversee development at Soluna’s Project Dorothy 3 site near Silverton. Under the agreement, Applied Digital will control 51% of the venture, while Soluna will retain 49%.

Soluna will contribute land and power-related assets from its existing development site to support the planned facility. Applied Digital will provide capital to advance construction and establish the infrastructure required for intensive computing operations. The partnership combines Soluna’s energy resources with Applied Digital’s experience in developing and operating high-performance data centers.

The companies expect to complete the transaction before the end of 2026 after meeting several closing requirements. These include local tax abatement approval, corporate authorizations, property documentation, and final agreements covering power and leasing. Additionally, both companies must finalize the joint venture’s operating agreement before completing the transaction.

Project Dorothy 3 Targets Growing AI Computing Demand

Project Dorothy 3 will operate near Soluna’s existing Dorothy 1 and Dorothy 2 developments in Briscoe County. The proposed facility will sit alongside Briscoe Wind, a wind farm with 150 megawatts of generation capacity. Furthermore, the first development phase will support 50 megawatts of critical information technology equipment.

The facility plans to use electricity from both the nearby wind farm and the regional power grid. This arrangement will connect renewable generation with the substantial electricity requirements of AI and high-performance computing systems. The project will expand Applied Digital’s infrastructure portfolio through a new Texas development site.

Energy availability remains a central consideration for companies developing large computing facilities across the United States. AI data centers require substantial electrical capacity to operate advanced processors, cooling systems, and supporting equipment. Consequently, access to established power resources plays an important role in selecting sites for new developments.

ChronoScale Plans Lease as Applied Digital Expands AI Infrastructure

ChronoScale Holdings has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to lease the proposed Dorothy 3 data center. Applied Digital holds a majority ownership position in ChronoScale, which provides computing infrastructure for demanding AI workloads. However, the companies must negotiate and execute a definitive lease before establishing binding rental commitments.

The proposed lease would connect the Texas facility with ChronoScale’s accelerated computing operations and future infrastructure requirements. Additionally, the arrangement would create a potential customer relationship within Applied Digital’s broader group of affiliated businesses. The current letter outlines the proposed leasing arrangement but does not guarantee a completed contract.

Applied Digital’s latest agreement adds another development initiative to its growing AI and high-performance computing infrastructure business. The planned joint venture brings together project financing, available land, renewable power access, and potential computing demand. Meanwhile

The post Applied Digital (APLD) Stock: Soars on 51% Stake in Soluna’s 50 MW Texas AI Data Center Project appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• SAP stock gains after quarterly revenue crosses €10 billion for the first time.
• Cloud revenue jumps 26% as SAP’s cloud backlog climbs 28% to €24.1 billion.
• SAP’s operating profit rises 18%, with non-IFRS earnings reaching €3.03 billion.
• Cloud ERP Suite revenue surges 29%, reflecting strong enterprise cloud demand.
• SAP targets the high end of its 2026 cloud revenue range after a strong Q3.

SAP SE (SAP) reported strong third-quarter 2026 earnings as cloud revenue growth and higher operating profit supported its financial performance. The German software company exceeded €10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, marking a major financial milestone. Meanwhile, SAP stock gained during regular trading and extended its advance after hours following the earnings announcement.

SAP shares climbed 1.64% to $232.73 during regular trading, adding $3.75 to their previous closing price. After the closing bell, the stock advanced another 1.01% to $235.09. The gains followed continued growth across SAP’s cloud business and stronger quarterly profitability.

SAP SE, SAP

SAP Cloud Revenue Jumps 26% as Backlog Reaches €24.1 Billion

SAP reported a 26% increase in cloud revenue during the third quarter, reflecting continued demand for its enterprise software services. At constant currencies, cloud revenue grew 25%, demonstrating growth across its subscription-based business. Meanwhile, Cloud ERP Suite revenue increased 29%, supported by companies moving business operations onto cloud platforms.

The company’s current cloud backlog reached €24.1 billion, representing a 28% increase from the previous year. At constant currencies, backlog growth reached 26%, reflecting demand for contracted cloud services. This backlog provides SAP with visibility into future revenue from existing customer commitments.

SAP continues to expand its cloud portfolio as businesses modernize their financial, operational, and data management systems. Its cloud ERP products support companies seeking integrated platforms for managing daily operations. SAP’s Business AI services form part of its broader strategy to automate enterprise processes.

SAP Q3 Revenue Exceeds €10 Billion as Operating Profit Rises 18%

SAP generated €10.27 billion in total third-quarter revenue, an increase of 13% from the previous year. At constant currencies, total revenue increased 12%, supported by continued cloud expansion. The result marked the first time SAP exceeded €10 billion in quarterly revenue.

IFRS operating profit increased 18% to €2.93 billion during the quarter, reflecting stronger business performance. Meanwhile, non-IFRS operating profit also rose 18%, reaching €3.03 billion for the first time. SAP attributed its profitability gains to revenue growth, operating scale, and disciplined cost management.

Chief Executive Christian Klein highlighted customer adoption of SAP’s Autonomous Enterprise strategy during the quarterly earnings announcement. The strategy combines cloud infrastructure, business data, and artificial intelligence to support enterprise operations. Meanwhile, Chief Financial Officer Dominik Asam emphasized the company’s ability to expand revenue and operating profit simultaneously.

SAP Updates 2026 Cloud Outlook Following Strong Q3 Results

SAP updated its full-year 2026 cloud revenue outlook following the third-quarter performance. The company now expects cloud revenue near the upper end of its €25.8 billion to €26.2 billion range. This forecast represents expected constant-currency growth of 23% to 25% compared with 2025.

SAP also expects cloud and software revenue near the upper end of its €36.3 billion to €36.8 billion range. The company maintained its broader focus on cloud migration, business applications, and AI-supported enterprise services. These areas remain central to SAP’s strategy for expanding recurring revenue and supporting customer transformation.

The quarterly results showed continued growth in cloud subscriptions alongside higher operating earnings. SAP’s expanding backlog also highlighted the role of long-term customer contracts in its business model. Together, these developments strengthened the company’s third-quarter performance and supported its updated full-year revenue expectations.

The post SAP SE (SAP) Stock: Climbs as Q3 Revenue Tops €10 Billion and Cloud Growth Hits 26% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• IBM shares surged 3.94% to $251.46 after strong third-quarter earnings data.
• IBM’s revenue reached $17.1 billion as software sales jumped 8% year over year.
• IBM’s net income rose 26% to $2.2 billion, while operating EPS climbed 11%.
• Free cash flow hit $3.0 billion, up $700 million from the year-ago quarter.
• IBM raised its full-year cash flow target while keeping revenue guidance intact.

IBM shares surged 3.94% to $251.46 on Wednesday as the company reported higher third-quarter revenue and profit. Revenue reached $17.1 billion, rising 5%, while net income jumped 26% to $2.2 billion. Shares gained 1.41% to $255.00 after hours, despite retreating from a post-earnings spike near $270.

International Business Machines Corporation, IBM

Software Growth Lifts IBM’s Quarterly Revenue

IBM reported 6% revenue growth at constant currency, supported by gains in software and infrastructure. Software generated $7.8 billion, an 8% increase from the same quarter last year. Red Hat revenue rose 11%, and data revenue grew 19%.

Transaction processing sales increased 9%, while automation revenue fell 3% during the quarter. Consulting generated $5.3 billion, matching last year’s revenue, although constant currency sales increased 2%. Strategy and technology consulting grew 2%, while intelligent operations revenue declined 2%.

Infrastructure revenue climbed 4% to $3.7 billion, helped by 31% growth in distributed infrastructure. However, IBM Z revenue dropped 20%, and infrastructure support sales declined 3%. Financing contributed about $200 million in revenue, down 4% from last year.

Earnings Rise as IBM Expands Cash Flow

IBM reported GAAP diluted earnings of $2.31 per share, a 26% increase. Operating earnings reached $2.95 per share, up 11%, while operating net income grew 12% to $2.8 billion. However, the GAAP gross profit margin slipped 50 basis points to 56.8%.

Operating gross margin declined 20 basis points to 58.5%, despite stronger earnings. In contrast, operating pretax margin improved 70 basis points to 19.3%. Operating pretax income rose 9% to $3.3 billion as IBM continued productivity efforts.

Operating cash flow totaled $4.0 billion, increasing $900 million from a year earlier. Free cash flow reached $3.0 billion, improving by $700 million from last year. Through September, IBM generated $11.8 billion in operating cash and $7.8 billion in free cash flow.

IBM Maintains Revenue Outlook and Raises Cash Target

IBM maintained its 2026 forecast for constant currency revenue growth between 4% and 5%. However, management raised its free cash flow outlook to growth exceeding $1 billion from 2025. The company expects exchange rates to have a neutral effect on annual revenue growth.

IBM held $11.1 billion in cash, restricted cash and marketable securities at quarter-end. Meanwhile, total debt reached $63.8 billion after IBM invested $11.4 billion in acquisitions during 2026. Cash holdings declined $3.4 billion from the end of 2025.

The board declared a quarterly dividend of $1.69 per common share. Shareholders of record on November 10 will receive the payment on December 10, 2026. IBM paid $1.6 billion in third-quarter dividends while funding acquisitions and business needs.

The post IBM (IBM) Stock: Surges 3.94% as Q3 Revenue Hits $17.1 Billion and Profits Jump 26% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Meta stock jumps 3.57% after hours as earnings and Muse AI launches draw attention.
• Meta’s revenue hits $64.6B as ad prices rise 14% and impressions jump 10% yearly.
• Zuckerberg rolls out Muse AI models as Meta targets personal superintelligence.
• A $9.89B legal charge cuts Meta’s operating margin to 20% from 40% in Q3 2026.
• Meta spends $34.91B on capital projects as free cash flow turns negative in Q3.

Meta Platforms (META) shares surged after hours as third-quarter revenue reached $64.60 billion and management highlighted new AI models. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also highlighted the launch of new artificial intelligence models. However, a major legal charge reduced operating profit despite strong advertising growth.

Meta Stock Rallies as Zuckerberg Highlights New AI Models

Meta stock rose 0.47% to $697.52 during Wednesday’s regular session, before the company released its third-quarter earnings. Following the earnings release, shares advanced 3.57% to $722.42 in after-hours trading. The stronger late move followed the company’s latest update on earnings and technology.

Meta Platforms, Inc., META

Zuckerberg outlined the recent launches of Muse and Muse Wonder as Meta expanded its ambitions in frontier AI development. He linked the new technology to the company’s goal of delivering personal superintelligence. Meta presented these developments alongside progress across its core business and technology operations.

Meta’s family of applications averaged 3.64 billion daily active people in September, up 3% from September 2025. Meanwhile, advertising impressions increased 10%, and average prices per advertisement climbed 14%. Together, those gains reflected growth in advertising activity and prices across Meta’s platforms.

Meta Revenue Climbs 26% as Operating Costs Surge

Quarterly revenue increased 26% from $51.24 billion in the comparable period last year. Meta reported the same growth rate on both reported and constant currency bases. Advertising trends helped explain the sales performance as the company expanded its technology efforts.

Total costs and expenses jumped 68% to $51.61 billion from $30.71 billion, including the litigation-related charge. Consequently, operating income dropped 37% to $12.99 billion from $20.54 billion. Meta’s operating margin fell to 20% from 40% in the year-earlier period.

Net income rose 264% to $9.86 billion from $2.71 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, diluted earnings per share grew 265% to $3.83 from $1.05. Meta reported a 24% effective tax rate, compared with 87% last year.

Meta Faces $18.59 Billion Legal Settlement as Capital Spending Grows

In August, Meta reached an agreement with 52 attorneys general over teen mental health and social media litigation. The agreement calls for payments of up to approximately $18.59 billion. Meta included a $9.89 billion related charge in its third-quarter costs and expenses.

Excluding that charge, operating income would have totaled $22.88 billion, Meta calculated. Diluted earnings per share would have reached $7.40 instead of the reported $3.83. The company’s adjusted calculation also lowered its effective tax rate to 17%.

Meta spent $34.91 billion on capital expenditures, including finance lease principal payments. Operating cash flow reached $32.79 billion, while free cash flow totaled negative $2.12 billion. Meta held $82.45 billion in cash and marketable securities, paid $1.36 billion in dividends, and reduced headcount 15% to 66,775.

The post Meta Platforms (META) Stock: Jumps as Zuckerberg Unveils AI Breakthroughs and Revenue Hits $64.6B appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• QuantumScape shares surge 13.57% after unveiling its new 100 MWh battery plan.
• Muehlbauer joins QuantumScape to develop automated battery assembly equipment.
• QuantumScape targets 2028 to begin cell production at its planned 100 MWh line.
• The Eagle Line pilot facility provides a foundation for larger battery output.
• AI data centers, aerospace and defense drive QuantumScape’s expansion plans.

QuantumScape Corporation (QS) announced plans for a 100 megawatt-hour solid-state battery production line, targeting operations in 2028. The announcement sent QuantumScape stock surging 13.57% to $4.52, gaining $0.54 during after-hours trading. The company also partnered with Germany’s Muehlbauer Group to develop manufacturing equipment for large-scale battery production.

QuantumScape Corporation, QS

QuantumScape Expands Solid-State Battery Manufacturing Plans

QuantumScape’s latest announcement marks another step in its efforts to establish large-scale solid-state battery manufacturing. The planned facility will produce lithium-metal battery cells for several industrial markets beyond conventional electric vehicles. These markets include artificial intelligence data centers, aerospace operations, and defense applications requiring advanced energy storage systems.

The expansion builds on QuantumScape’s existing technology development and manufacturing activities in San Jose, California. The company has focused on developing solid-state batteries that offer advantages over conventional lithium-ion technology. Its approach uses solid electrolytes instead of traditional liquid materials to support improved energy storage performance.

QuantumScape aims to establish manufacturing processes that can support commercial production across multiple industries. The project will combine automated production systems with engineering improvements from its existing pilot operations. This approach supports the company’s broader effort to move solid-state battery technology toward high-volume manufacturing.

QuantumScape Partners With Muehlbauer Group for 100 MWh Battery Production Line

QuantumScape selected Germany-based Muehlbauer Group to provide specialized equipment and manufacturing expertise for its planned production line. The partnership will focus on developing automated cell assembly systems that support higher production volumes. Additionally, both companies will build on manufacturing processes already demonstrated at QuantumScape’s San Jose facility.

The company’s Eagle Line pilot facility currently demonstrates automated production processes for its solid-state battery cells. Muehlbauer examined these processes and identified engineering improvements that could support larger manufacturing operations. As a result, both companies have started developing equipment and processes capable of handling greater production volumes.

Muehlbauer brings extensive experience in industrial automation, equipment engineering, and manufacturing system integration. Its involvement will help QuantumScape develop production systems for the planned 100 MWh manufacturing capacity. Meanwhile, the companies will continue engineering work before the targeted production launch in 2028.

QuantumScape Targets 2028 Production as Solid-State Battery Applications Expand

QuantumScape expects its planned production line to serve markets beyond the electric vehicle industry. AI data centers represent one potential market because operators need dependable energy storage for demanding computing infrastructure. Similarly, aerospace and defense applications create opportunities for advanced batteries with demanding performance requirements.

The 100 MWh project represents another step toward QuantumScape’s broader goal of gigawatt-hour-scale battery manufacturing. Its existing Eagle Line provides the technical foundation for developing more efficient automated production systems. The Muehlbauer partnership adds manufacturing expertise as QuantumScape works to increase production capacity.

QuantumScape has not announced a specific commissioning date beyond its 2028 production target. The company also has not disclosed the project’s total investment cost or expected commercial revenue. The manufacturing plan establishes a defined capacity target and expands its industrial partnership network ahead of production.

The post QuantumScape (QS) Stock: Surges 13.57% on 100 MWh Solid-State Battery Production Plan for 2028 appeared first on Blockonomi.

One of the most popular international cryptocurrency exchanges, Toobit, has announced the return of its Halloween Horror Hunt event. It offers rewards of up to 500,000 USDT, including cryptocurrencies, tech gadgets, trading bonuses, gold, and exclusive merchandise.

Get Ready for This Year’s Halloween

The campaign returns on October 21st and will last until November 11th, 2026. It features an interactive, dice-based treasure hunt, which allows traders to complete tasks to advance across a Halloween-themed map and unlock pumpkin chests filled with surprise rewards.

Participants can earn dice rolls when they complete activities such as spot and futures trading, copy trading, deposits, and referrals.

As they move across an interactive map, they will be able to collect pumpkin fragments, with every five fragments unlocking a treasure chest. The prizes can range from USDT bonuses and cryptocurrencies such as TRX, DOGE, and ADA to an iPhone Duo, a 14-inch MacBook Pro, a DJI Osmo Pocket 4, and even a 10g gold bar.

Going Beyond the Pumpkin Hunt

Going beyond the above, the exchange is also introducing three social media challenges all inspired by Halloween, with an additional 10,000 USDT in rewards.

These are:

• Trick or Treat: rewards participants for taking part in social media and registration tasks.
• Six-Word Crypto Horror: invites traders to share their worst crypto experience in six words.
• Spot the Ghost: challenges participants to identify hidden ghosts across three rounds for a chance to win rewards.

Toobit’s Halloween Horror Hunt runs from October 21, 2026, at 10:00 UTC to November 11, 2026, at 10:00 UTC. Traders can register on the campaign page to participate, with full activity details, eligibility requirements, and terms and conditions available on the official announcement page.

The post Toobit’s Halloween Horror Hunt Event Comes Back With 500,000 USDT in Rewards appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is telling internet users to be extra careful on any website for the next few days, after two PHP vulnerabilities were patched on October 21 when their details leaked early.

Because attackers need no login to exploit them, a site someone simply visits could become a route to stolen credentials or a compromised device, CZ warned.

Exploitation Confirmed in the Wild

In an October 21 post on X referring to vulnerabilities CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, Zhao wrote:

“Call me paranoid, but be extra careful visiting ANY web site in the next few days, as some web admins are not always up-to-date with security patches.”

NSA Cyber advised organizations running PHP to prepare for an update and to take the affected system offline if patching could not happen immediately. The FBI’s cyber division repeated the offline option and asked operators to watch for PHP processes that unexpectedly launch command shells. Cloudflare stated that it had switched on default firewall protections before the flaws became public.

According to a PHP Foundation blog post, the two CVE numbers began circulating online on October 20 with a wrong release time and a severity score of 10.0 instead of the real 9.2, though no technical details were out.

Calif, one of the firms that reported the bugs, then mistakenly published a proof-of-concept video, and Chainguard released patch images more than six hours ahead of the agreed time. Curiously, the foundation noted that no functional exploits had been found when the release went out, while CZ’s post describes attacks confirmed afterward.

“Exploitation was confirmed in the wild soon after disclosure, prompting quick WAF protections and patching by IT teams, as unauthenticated attacks could turn visited sites into vectors for credential theft or device exploits,” stated the Binance founder.

BNB Chain and PancakeSwap Say Their Systems Are Unaffected

The warning does not mean every cryptocurrency platform is vulnerable. BNB Chain executive Nina Rong confirmed that the network does not use PHP in its technology stack, while decentralized exchange PancakeSwap posted that it does not use PHP anywhere in its infrastructure and that user funds were safe.

Zhao subsequently reposted PancakeSwap’s statement, commenting that “Most projects should at least post a confirmation like this.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI stated that its models helped researchers find the bugs through its Patch the Planet initiative and called the bug “one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory.” To its knowledge, the company added, frontier AI got to the problem ahead of attackers.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pushed the idea that AI hacking makes cybersecurity hopeless, reasoning that AI able to provide hard math theorems could also prove a program secure.

The post CZ Warns Crypto Users as Critical PHP Vulnerabilities Put Websites at Risk appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP closed last week’s candle beneath its 20-week moving average, and analyst ChartNerd says in a video on X that a pullback toward $1 is now a live possibility.

A retest there could build a double bottom, an outcome the analyst compares to 2022, though a reclaim of $1.33 would weaken the case.

XRP Needs $1.33 Back to Avoid a Deeper Retrace

XRP, worth $1.33 on CoinGecko at the time of writing, rose by 2% within the last 24 hours but lost nearly 3% within the last week. At the same time, it lost 6% within the last 30 days and is down 45% from a year ago, pushing it 63% lower than its all-time high of $3.65.

The weekly chart tells the rest. In the week of September 14, XRP wicked below the 20-week exponential moving average (EMA), a trend line built from recent weekly closes, but closed above it and climbed to the 50-week EMA near $1.50. That line has rejected price for nine to ten weeks, following a roughly 70% bounce from a 98-cent low to $1.70, and the pullback since has been about 25%.

Of the $1.30 area, the analyst noted that “the bulls have a lifeline here.” Reclaiming and holding $1.33 would reopen a move toward $1.50, where a liquidity cluster, a zone crowded with leveraged trades, sits near $1.55, and clearing that range could point to $1.80 to $2.

If weekly closes keep landing under the 20-week line, the analyst warned, it “opens the door for a deeper retrace towards $1,” where the largest cluster of leveraged positions since the bottom sits.

Gaussian Channel and 2022 Precedent Frame the $1 Case

The monthly Gaussian Channel, an indicator that draws bands around long-term price trends, supplied the historical argument. After earlier cycle peaks, XRP lost the upper band and returned to the middle band, which now sits at 98 cents. This cycle, the upper band at $1.54 has capped price for three months, and XRP has not yet visited the middle line.

In 2022, ChartNerd pointed out, XRP bottomed, ran 90% into the 50-week EMA and fell back to its lows within a week or two of losing the 20-week line. The analyst sees a similar setup now, though earlier targets of 90 to 70 cents never played out, and the caveat is blunt: “I do not know what’s going to happen.”

On the XRP/BTC three-month chart, past outperformance against Bitcoin has started from a lower demand zone, while the pair has met the same horizontal resistance for six years. The analyst expects Bitcoin to take more of the spotlight in 2027.

Meanwhile, exchange figures are pointing to a change in investor behavior, even if not a definitive direction for price. As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Binance withdrawals under 10,000 XRP rose from 3% to 19.7% of outflow value between September 30 and October 20, the highest share since October 2024, according to CryptoQuant. Reserves across three major exchanges gained 120 million XRP, and spot XRP ETFs logged zero net flows on Monday.

The post Why XRP May Retest $1 Before Its Next Major Rally: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Kazakhstan is moving to restrict access to six unlicensed crypto platforms after a court-backed action by the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA).

On September 15, the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC) Court granted AFSA’s claims against the operators of BingX, Bitcoin.com, Huobi Global (HTX), BitMart, Coinbase and WEEX.

Crypto Licensing Crackdown

The order bars these platforms from providing, offering, or advertising digital asset services within the AIFC without the required license. It also covers the distribution of mobile apps used to offer these services. LBank was initially included in the ruling, but the court removed it on September 18 after its operator independently blocked access to its services in Kazakhstan.

The decision also involves Google and Apple, which operate the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Both companies are subject to the court’s order regarding geographic restrictions on access to the named platforms.

AFSA said the legal action comes after months of efforts to tackle crypto services operating without authorization. The regulator began issuing written warnings to more than 20 platforms in 2025, and explained the rules under the AIFC regulatory framework. In early 2026, it took the matter to court against platforms that continued operating without a license.

According to AFSA, nine crypto platforms voluntarily restricted access to their apps in the country through the two app stores. The regulator then withdrew its claims against those operators. Another seven platforms said they intended to apply for an AFSA license to operate digital asset trading facilities. The remaining six are now subject to the court-ordered restrictions.

Kazakhstan Crypto Market

Kazakhstan introduced a digital asset framework in May, which covered stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and digital versions of traditional financial instruments. The rules also set requirements for exchanges and other service providers. Two months later, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree to develop the industry further. The plans include regulated stablecoins for some cross-border payments, tokenized securities as well as incentives to bring digital assets onto local regulated platforms.

More recently, Tether began exploring a stablecoin tied to the Kazakh tenge under an agreement with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and Alatau City authorities. As reported by CryptoPotato earlier this month, the parties will study issuance models and prepare a pilot proposal. No issuer, blockchain, or launch date has been announced.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s government has approved a 65-measure plan that includes up to $60 million in tokenized Alatau projects by the end of 2026.

The post Coinbase and HTX Among Six Crypto Platforms Facing Restrictions in Kazakhstan appeared first on CryptoPotato.

President Donald Trump will use a White House event on Wednesday to spotlight his administration’s efforts against foreign criminal networks that lure Americans into fraudulent crypto investments, a White House official told Reuters.

His own family, meanwhile, is heavily involved in soliciting crypto investments.

Cabinet Officials Set to Attend Scam Event

Cybercrime prevention more broadly is the theme of the session, and the president and members of his cabinet are expected to point to the government’s seizure of fraudulent crypto investment websites, the official explained. Efforts to stop online impersonation scams are also on the agenda.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Todd Blanche are expected to attend, the official added.

According to an FBI report, Americans filed more than a million complaints about internet scams last year, a 17% increase from 2024. The same report noted that Americans who filed complaints reported the highest losses.

Trump’s family has gotten heavily tied to crypto, with the president’s annual financial disclosure showing that most of the $2.2 billion he made last year came from digital currencies. This includes about $600 million from World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and $636 million more from the sale of Trump-branded meme coins.

The president defended the earnings, saying there was nothing illegal or wrong about them, even as critics like political commentator John Oliver accused him of giving investors access to the White House in exchange for them putting money into his crypto businesses. The White House has said neither the president nor his family have engaged or will engage in conflicts of interest.

Investor Losses Tied to Family Crypto Venture

As CryptoPotato reported earlier, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen estimated that investors in crypto ventures tied to the president and his family are at least $4.7 billion underwater since 2022. Most of those losses remain unrealized, meaning investors still hold the assets and have not sold at a loss.

The TRUMP meme coin accounted for an estimated $3.2 billion of that figure, and the token has lost more than 97% of its value since hitting an all-time high of $73 in January 2025, although at the time of writing it had jumped more than 7% in 24 hours to take its price to around $1.82. WLFI investors are at least $1 billion underwater by the same estimate.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal asked SEC Chair Paul Atkins in August to investigate the meme coin. They suggested that it may have allowed fraud or unfairly enriched people at the expense of everyday investors.

Per Public Citizen’s report, the president continues to own and control his businesses. His stakes, including the meme coin and World Liberty Financial’s two tokens, sit in a revocable trust in which he is the sole donor and beneficiary, and his eldest son is the sole trustee.

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