Delaying the crypto tax for regulatory clarity may boost market confidence, fostering innovation and potentially influencing global crypto policies.

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OpenAI's move signals a shift towards independence, potentially reshaping developer tool dynamics and challenging existing partnerships.

The post OpenAI reportedly builds its own alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Unverified acquisition claims highlight the need for transparency in tech deals, impacting investor trust and market dynamics.

The post OpenAI to buy Pierre Computer as competition for AI coding infrastructure grows appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Circle's strategic shift to blockchain infrastructure could enhance USDC demand, impacting stablecoin circulation and financial ecosystems.

The post Circle beats Q3 estimates as Arc mainnet goes live with 100+ partners appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Anthropic's financial risks and strategic partnerships could reshape tech industry dynamics, influencing future data-driven innovation landscapes.

The post Dario Amodei envisions ‘a country of geniuses in a data center,’ Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals financial risks appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Tether Holds 150,000 Bitcoin CEO Says, 50,000 More Than Its Reserve Report Shows

Tether holds about 150,000 bitcoin, worth some $11.5 billion at current prices, CEO Paolo Ardoino said, a figure that exceeds the holdings implied by the company’s latest reserve attestation by roughly 50,000 coins.

“We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” Ardoino said during his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland, the city where Tether has run a bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program since 2022.

At that size the stack would rank Tether among the largest corporate holders of bitcoin, behind Strategy’s 848,517 BTC (as of Q3) and ahead of most public miners and treasury companies. 

Ardoino did not say where the additional coins sit, when they were bought or whether they belong to the stablecoin issuer or to Tether Investments, the arm that holds the group’s venture and equity positions. The remark does not indicate a new 50,000 BTC purchase.

Tether International’s third-quarter reserve report, published Oct. 30 with an attestation from BDO, lists $8.37 billion in bitcoin valued at $83,621.23 per coin as of Sept. 30. That implies about 100,060 BTC, up around 1,130 from the roughly 98,930 held at the end of June. Most of the quarter’s $2.57 billion rise in the bitcoin line came from price, not purchases.

The gap between the report and Ardoino’s figure has a plausible home. Tether has said the investments it makes from profits are kept apart from the reserves backing USDT, so coins held by Tether Investments would not appear in the attestation. 

Tether’s bitcoin exposure extends past its own wallets. It took full control of Twenty One Capital in May after buying out SoftBank, backs Adecoagro’s mining in Brazil, and runs mining and energy ventures in Latin America. Whether any of those positions sit inside the 150,000 figure is unclear.

Tether’s buffer built on bitcoin and gold

The disclosure lands as Tether’s balance sheet grows more dependent on the two assets. The Q3 report shows $191.45 billion in reserve assets against $183.50 billion in liabilities, an excess of $7.95 billion, up from $4.11 billion in June when the cushion had halved. 

Bitcoin at $8.37 billion and gold at about $19.1 billion together exceed that buffer several times over, so a sharp drop in either would eat into it. Treasury bills remain the bulk of reserves at about $132.4 billion.

Tether earned about $1.5 billion in the quarter and $4.5 billion in the first nine months. In August it completed its first independent audit with KPMG, ending years of reliance on attestations alone. Ardoino said at the forum that USDT has more than 730 million users and is adding about 30 million wallets a quarter.

Bitcoin traded near $77,600 Tuesday, which puts Tether’s stated holdings at $11.6 billion and its attested holdings at about $7.8 billion, below the Sept. 30 mark. The company has not said whether it plans to publish a breakdown of the coins held outside the reserve.

This post Tether Holds 150,000 Bitcoin CEO Says, 50,000 More Than Its Reserve Report Shows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

TD Cowen: Democratic Congress Would Sink CLARITY Act for Two Years

A Democratic sweep of Congress would end the CLARITY Act’s chances for the next two years and sour the political climate for crypto, TD Cowen’s Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote to Bitcoin Magazine and clients in an election-day note.

Seiberg wrote that TD Cowen agrees with polls and prediction markets that Democrats are likely to take both chambers, with the caveat that polls taken a month out, which were more mixed, tend to beat those taken on the eve of a vote. 

His conclusion for crypto is blunt: “Democrats will likely investigate Trump including his crypto entanglements. We see this as souring the political environment for crypto, which is why we do not expect the Clarity Act to pass over the next two years.”

The market structure bill passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and failed a Senate cloture vote 49-50 on Sept. 15. If it does not pass before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, it dies and must be reintroduced. 

Seiberg added that crypto’s influence may shrink further in Congress if Sherrod Brown wins his Ohio Senate race, a contest the industry spent to lose.

In Congress, the Senate is the lever

The note treats Senate control as the bigger prize. A Democratic majority could block Trump’s nominees and use that power to force him to fill Democratic seats on the FDIC, SEC and CFTC, the three agencies at the center of crypto policy. 

It could pressure the White House to drop its effort to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve board. Trump could answer with acting chiefs, Seiberg wrote, but that risks handing authority to career staff, an outcome “Team Trump” does not want.

Senate control would elevate Sen. Elizabeth Warren to chair the Banking Committee. Seiberg sees room for populist bills such as interest rate caps, limits on bank buybacks and a government credit score, and he thinks Warren and Trump could find common ground on some of them.

Rep. Maxine Waters would take House Financial Services, with a focus on housing and tighter scrutiny of the FHFA.

“That means a focus on housing though we are dubious that she will find GOP support for down payment help and public housing renovations. FHFA scrutiny will increase,” the note read.

For banks, the note says the election changes little: regulators will keep easing capital, liquidity and tiering rules whichever party wins. Divided government does raise the odds of a shutdown or a debt-ceiling standoff, since Trump is expected to reject spending conditions Democrats attach.

Bitcoin on election day

Bitcoin traded near $77,500 Tuesday afternoon eastern time, up from a dip to $76,300 in the morning and about $2,000 below where it opened the month. The price has absorbed a record $6.34 billion Binance hack, two days of spot ETF outflows and a Fed that is leaning toward a December hike. 

Prediction markets on Kalshi give Democrats a 94% chance at the House and 74% at the Senate, so much of Seiberg’s scenario is in the price.

What is not priced is the lame-duck session. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a CLARITY negotiator, has said the bill could pass before January even if a Democratic Congress would not make it a priority after. That said, if it fails during that window, she doubts a Democratic-controlled Congress will make it a priority in the future.

According to various reports, crypto groups have spent more than $200 million on the cycle to avoid the outcome Seiberg now expects. The CFTC, for its part, moved without Congress on Tuesday, clearing equity perpetual futures for U.S. exchanges. If the Senate and Congress flips, that agency-by-agency approach, and who sits on those agencies, becomes the whole game.

This post TD Cowen: Democratic Congress Would Sink CLARITY Act for Two Years first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Binance Says $6.34 Billion Hack Began With Fake Job Interview 

The $6.34 billion theft from Binance began with a fake job interview and ran for five months before a single coin moved, the exchange said Tuesday in its first public account of the Oct. 29 attack.

Another initial incident report from Binance, released alongside a media briefing by co-CEO Richard Teng and chief security officer Jimmy Su, describes a campaign that combined a poisoned software download, a staged recruitment process, malware that evaded endpoint detection and an internal AI tool the attackers turned against the company’s own wallet engineers. 

Binance said it has frozen or intercepted about $2.85 billion of the stolen assets and replenished 98% of affected tokens from its own funds, with the balance being bought on the open market.

“This wasn’t one mistake or one breach — it was a months-long campaign,” Teng wrote on X. “We’re publishing the full report because the lessons go far beyond Binance.”

The FBI has attributed the attack to North Korea. Binance’s report cites that finding but stops short of its own attribution. Pyongyang rejected the claim Monday, with Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, calling it a “grave political provocation” through state media.

The Binance hack had five months of preparation

According to Binance, the first foothold for this hack came in June. A wallet DevOps engineer searched for a popular AI coding tool and downloaded a tampered Homebrew installer. 

Binance’s security team caught the anomaly, replaced the device and rotated credentials, but the episode exposed the engineer’s role and the names of colleagues on the wallet infrastructure team.

In September, a second engineer was approached on a legitimate job platform by someone posing as a project director. A video interview with a purported HR representative followed, with the interviewer sharing a personal social media account to build trust. A second interview with a supposed CEO ended with an “assignment”: a code repository the engineer was told to install on his work machine. 

The repository replaced a legitimate pyenv component with a malicious version and opened a channel to an attacker-controlled server. Binance said the zero-day malware was not flagged by its endpoint tools at the time.

On Oct. 20, the attackers used that machine and an internal AI tool to reach two more wallet engineers, one of whom held a container deployment token. On Oct. 29, between 17:15 and 19:56 UTC, they logged into a third engineer’s computer, deployed a container with the stolen credentials and launched the drain. Binance said it blocked 57 other suspected North Korea-linked attempts this year using similar lures.

Four hours to contain

The money left fast. Between 20:05 and 20:09 UTC, five hot wallets sent 233.46 million XRP to an attacker address. Wallets on Solana and Optimism followed with about 970,500 SOL and 44.2 million OP. A Binance hot wallet then sent 18,270 BTC. 

The attacker used the compromised signing service to invoke Ethereum’s EIP-7702, which lets an account delegate execution rights to a smart contract without exposing its key, and gave an attacker-controlled contract partial control of a Binance hot wallet.

Suspending withdrawals did not stop that last channel. The attackers had submitted 50 signing transactions to establish on-chain delegations that operated outside Binance’s withdrawal infrastructure. Because the wallet used multi-party computation, no single key existed to revoke them, and the team had to build a procedure on the spot. The final unauthorized transfer, 2,961.9 ETH, settled at 23:56 UTC. 

Binance cleared the delegation at 00:10 UTC on Oct. 30.

The report acknowledges the gap. “These challenges extended the time required to fully contain the unauthorized asset movements,” it says, adding that the company is reviewing its signing policy coverage and hot wallet controls.

Customers withdrew $10.97 billion in the 46 hours after withdrawals reopened Sunday, with net outflows of $5.28 billion, according todata Teng shared Tuesday. By 03:00 UTC hourly deposits exceeded withdrawals, a shift Teng called a sign of stabilization. Binance reopened withdrawals for dozens more assets across nine networks on Tuesday.

The breach has become a talking point in Washington. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said the hack “proves our exact point” about the need for a federal registration path for offshore exchanges, and on Tuesday the agency cleared equity perpetual futures for U.S.-regulated venues, extending the onshoring push it began with Kalshi’s bitcoin perp in May.

Binance said it has rebuilt the wallet system and the internal AI tool in new environments, replaced affected devices, revoked the engineers’ credentials and expanded behavioral anomaly detection. 

It is commissioning an independent review, raising spending on endpoint and developer-environment security and planning a research fund on AI security with outside firms. Some technical details, the report says, will stay private. 

This post Binance Says $6.34 Billion Hack Began With Fake Job Interview  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Andrew Hohns: Why Bitcoin Can Fix America’s Debt Spiral

U.S. federal debt has grown 40x in 45 years, from $1 trillion in 1981 to over $40 trillion. Andrew Hohns, founder and CEO of Battery Finance, explains why he doesn’t expect tax hikes or spending cuts to fix it, and how a strategic Bitcoin reserve could help defease the national debt. He also makes the case for the Treasury to pilot BitBonds.

Chapters:
00:00 Andrew Hohns on Bitcoin and the Midterms
00:47 Bond Market Volatility and America’s Fiscal Outlook
01:22 40x Federal Debt Growth in 45 Years
02:55 A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to Defease the Debt
03:20 Why BitBonds Haven’t Come to Market Yet
05:12 Higher Borrowing Costs and the Digital Credit Boom
06:15 Battery Finance’s Bitcoin-Backed Real Estate Loans
07:03 The $2 Trillion Real Estate Refinancing Wall
08:52 How Battery’s Loans Avoid Margin Calls
11:03 Which Property Types Are Under Pressure
13:34 The Future of Bitcoin and Real Estate Financing
16:25 Digital Credit and Institutional Bitcoin Adoption

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

This post Andrew Hohns: Why Bitcoin Can Fix America’s Debt Spiral first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Opens U.S. Stock Market to Equity Perpetual Futures

Perpetual futures on individual stocks can begin trading on U.S.-regulated exchanges for the first time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Tuesday, extending a product that was confined to offshore crypto venues a year ago into the equity market.

In a statement, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said the contracts, which he called “Equity Perps,” were deemed approved under Commission Regulation 40.3 as security futures products. 

They may list on exchanges that hold a CFTC designated contract market registration and a notice registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a national securities exchange for security futures.

“This expansion marks a significant step towards allowing U.S. market participants, consistent with applicable law, to avail themselves of the advantages of perpetual futures,” Selig said. He said bringing the products inside the agency’s framework means Americans no longer need to “turn to offshore, and often unregulated, venues.”

The contracts fall under the Commodity Exchange Act, federal securities law and the rulebooks of both agencies. The statement names no exchange, lists no contracts and sets no launch date. 

Those details are expected to come from the designated contract markets themselves.

CFTC: From bitcoin perps to stock perps in five months

Perpetual futures have no expiration date. Instead of settling on a fixed day, longs and shorts exchange periodic funding payments that keep the contract price tied to spot. The structure has dominated crypto derivatives for years, with most volume on platforms outside U.S. jurisdiction.

The CFTC approved the first U.S.-listed bitcoin perpetual, Kalshi’s BTCPERP, on May 29, and Kalshi went live with the product soon after. The same day, staff granted no-action relief that lets Coinbase Financial Markets route U.S. clients into offshore perp and options liquidity. Kalshi added gold and silver perpetuals in September. 

In his statement Tuesday, Selig described the equity contracts as an extension of that May decision “beyond digital commodities and into traditional securities.”

The legal basis is older. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 created a joint CFTC-SEC regime for security futures products, and the two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding on March 11 to coordinate rulemaking and enforcement. 

Selig cited both, and repeated SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins’s description of security futures as stranded in a regulatory “no man’s land” for lack of harmonization. The agencies had set out a joint crypto asset taxonomy earlier in the year.

Not everyone accepts the CFTC’s reading. CME Grou  sued the agency in June over the Kalshi approval, arguing that a contract built on exchanged funding payments is a swap under Dodd-Frank, not a future. 

That case is pending. An equity version adds the SEC’s jurisdiction to the mix and may draw a new set of objections from securities-side participants.

The onshoring argument after Binance

The approval lands five days after the largest theft in crypto’s history. On Oct. 29, attackers that TRM Labs and Chainalysis link to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group drained about $6.3 billion from Binance’s hot wallets in roughly 20 minutes. 

Binance reopened withdrawals on Sunday and says it has replenished about 95% of affected assets.

Selig used the breach to press the case he made in Tuesday’s statement. 

“The real issue here is that these are unregulated offshore exchanges, and they don’t have the same sorts of safeguards that we have in our financial markets here in the United States,” he told CNBC on Oct. 30. 

He said the hack “proves our exact point” about the agency’s October proposal, an advance notice of rulemaking that would create a voluntary federal registration path for crypto exchanges with cybersecurity, proof-of-reserves and custody requirements. Selig has said the CFTC cannot make that registration mandatory without Congress.

The equity perp approval works from the same premise. Perpetuals built the offshore derivatives business; moving them onto dual-registered U.S. exchanges puts the margin, clearing and surveillance rules of two federal agencies around them. 

Selig framed it as a choice between regulated access and “being forced to turn to offshore, and often unregulated, venues.”

This post CFTC Opens U.S. Stock Market to Equity Perpetual Futures first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Binance reported about $11 billion in withdrawals between 06:00 UTC on Nov. 1 and 04:00 UTC on Nov. 3, after reopening services following its record $6 billion hack on Oct. 29. Deposits of about $6 billion offset just over half the withdrawals, leaving roughly $5 billion in net outflows over the same period, according to…

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The no-action position covers three types of network participant under counsel’s described model and gives no binding legal conclusion.

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The FSC also requested stronger transfer monitoring, response staffing and reserves, while exchange implementation and any new custody threshold remain unspecified.

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SideSwap reports full L-BTC backing, while customer payouts still depend on its own Bitcoin wallet and manual refills.

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Justin Sun accused the President Donald Trump-backed crypto firm World Liberty Financial of concealing UAE citizenship to escape his federal lawsuit. The Tron founder said on Nov. 3 that his lawyers had requested sanctions against World Liberty Financial and its attorneys after the company disclosed foreign ownership connections months into litigation over his $45 million…

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Bitstack is a French app that lets you buy bitcoin automatically from €1, and the French regulator AMF has listed the provider as an authorised crypto-asset service provider under MiCA since June 30, 2025. A savings plan of €100 a month costs €1.50 per purchase on the Standard plan, according to Bitstack's subscription page (as of November 4, 2026). Without the euro account, currently reserved for customers in France, there is a surcharge of €0.70. Over a year that comes to €26.40 in Germany and €18 in France. The Bitstack Plus subscription pays off from around €500 a month. For this guide we analysed the pricing page, the supervisory register and user reviews. Our Bitcoin savings plan comparison shows other ways to save in bitcoin.

Bitstack in brief: the key figures

• The AMF lists Bitstack Digital Assets SAS under number A2025-003, authorised on June 30, 2025.
• The minimum purchase is €1; savings plans run daily, weekly or monthly (as of November 2026).
• Buying and selling cost 1.50 to 1 percent on the Standard plan and a flat 0.75 percent with the Plus subscription (as of November 4, 2026).
• According to Bitstack, the price can also include a mark-up of 0 to 1 percent (as of November 4, 2026).
• Withdrawing bitcoin to your own wallet at normal speed, up to 24 hours, is free above a small minimum amount (as of November 4, 2026).
• In the French App Store, Bitstack has 4.8 out of 5 stars from 11,181 ratings (as of November 4, 2026).

What is Bitstack? Saving in bitcoin via an app from France

Bitstack focuses on a single cryptocurrency: bitcoin. Behind the app is Bitstack Digital Assets SAS from Meyreuil in southern France. On its website the company cites more than 400,000 users and over €400 million in saved volume (as of November 4, 2026).

There are three ways to get bitcoin. You set up a fixed purchase that runs daily, weekly or monthly. You have payments rounded up to the next euro and the difference invested in bitcoin. Or you buy individually whenever you like. Every plan can be changed or paused, and you can sell at any time.

The app can be used in Germany: Bitstack includes the country in its list of available countries. The euro account with a French IBAN and the Visa card are currently reserved for customers resident in France. According to Bitstack, those who get access are notified by email.

Bitstack fees: the main items according to the pricing page

The current price list has applied since August 31, 2026, and to existing customers since mid-September. It has two plans, set out on the subscription page, in the regulatory documents and in the help centre (as of November 4, 2026). On the Standard plan, your buying and selling volume over the past 30 days determines the rate.

The 0.70 percent surcharge only falls away when buying from the euro account, which can be topped up free of charge by SEPA transfer. In Germany, purchases therefore go through a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay; Bitstack does not accept prepaid, corporate and crypto cards, American Express or PayPal. One bitcoin is 100 million satoshi; the help page gives the threshold for free withdrawals differently in two places. Bitstack justifies the price mark-up by saying it sources bitcoin from a liquidity provider and holds the price during the order. The app shows the exact price before you confirm.

Bitstack costs in practice: €100 a month worked through

The calculation assumes twelve purchases of €100 each, €1,200 a year in total. Volume thus stays below €250 in 30 days, so the 1.50 percent rate applies. The last column adds the highest price mark-up Bitstack mentions, 1 percent (rates as of November 4, 2026).

With small instalments, the Standard plan remains the cheaper route. At €100 a month the subscription saves €9 in fees a year but itself costs €29.99. At €200 a month it is at most €36 on Standard against €47.99 with Plus. Standard and the annual subscription break even at around €500 a month: €6,000 of annual purchases cost €75 on Standard at 1.25 percent, and with Plus €45 in fees plus €29.99 for the subscription, €74.99 in total. Below that, Plus is only worth it if extras such as limit orders justify the extra cost to you; the higher Stackback is only available with the card in France.

For customers in France there is also the Bitstack card. Round-ups with it run without a conversion fee, according to Bitstack, and card payments earn up to 1 percent Stackback in bitcoin, up to 1.5 percent with the subscription, subject to the provider's conditions and caps (as of November 4, 2026).

Is Bitstack regulated? The authorisation with the AMF and ESMA

Yes. On the AMF list, Bitstack Digital Assets SAS appears as an authorised crypto-asset service provider with number A2025-003, dated June 30, 2025. The authorisation covers five services: custody and administration, exchange for funds, exchange for other crypto assets, execution of orders and transfers. ESMA's MiCA register lists Germany among the states in which the authorisation applies (as of November 4, 2026).

The euro account runs through a partner: according to its mandatory disclosure, Bitstack is registered with the French banking supervisor ACPR as an agent of the e-money institution Xpollens, number 747088. Bitstack says it keeps the bitcoin in an audited multi-signature vault solution. You can transfer it to your own wallet at any time.

The authorisation regulates the provider, not the price. Bitstack itself points out that you can lose part or all of the capital invested.

Bitstack reviews from other users: ratings and criticism in the app stores

The ratings vary by source (as of November 4, 2026):

The most recent comments read more critically. We analysed the 100 newest reviews with text in the French App Store, dating from April 11 to October 30, 2026. Their average is 2.7 stars: 32 users give five stars, 44 only one. 17 comments praise the ease of use and average 4.7 stars. 13 mention fees or prices, averaging 2.4 stars. The 22 reviews since September 1, around the new price list, average 2.3 stars, and 5 of them mention fees.

The two fit together: the overall rating also includes older reviews and star-only ratings, while the comments show the mood of recent months. Ease of use gets the most praise. The criticism most often concerns crashes and login problems (34 comments, average 2.0 stars), then customer service (15, average 1.3 stars) and fees.

Who Bitstack suits: small instalments and bitcoin only

Bitstack is aimed at savers who want to invest small amounts in bitcoin regularly without an exchange interface or order book. The €1 minimum purchase and round-ups make it easy to start, and free withdrawals allow a later move to your own wallet. Customers in France also get the cheaper purchase route and Stackback with the euro account and card.

If you want to save in Ether, Solana or other coins as well as bitcoin, you will find that at more broadly based providers. Our crypto savings plan comparison gives an overview of fees, minimum instalments and intervals.

Bitstack alternatives: SwissBorg, Deblock and other bitcoin savings plans

The same calculation over twelve instalments of €100 gives different figures for the two French-authorised competitors. The table shows the stated fees according to SwissBorg's price list (as of October 8, 2026) and Deblock's pricing page (as of November 4, 2026), each on the free plan, without price mark-ups.

Relai also specialises in bitcoin. If you are looking for a classic exchange with a savings plan, take a look at Kraken or Coinbase. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows further exchanges with EU authorisation.

For tax in Germany, the purchase date and holding period of each individual instalment count. A tax calculator works out what follows from this when you sell. This section is not tax advice.

Bitstack verdict: Standard stays cheaper up to €500 a month

Bitstack offers a lean route to a bitcoin savings plan with MiCA authorisation, purchases from €1 and free withdrawals to your own wallet. The cost depends mainly on two questions: do you have the euro account, and how much do you save each month? At €100 it is €18 a year with the account and €26.40 without, plus a possible price mark-up of up to 1 percent. The Plus subscription only breaks even at around €500 a month.

Bitcoin is highly volatile, and a total loss of the amount invested is possible. This guide is not investment advice and not a buy recommendation.

(As of November 4, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

There is no crypto exchange without KYC that is licensed in Germany. Every provider that runs an account for crypto assets for you in the EU has to identify you first, which means checking your ID and address. Without ID you can only trade outside this framework: on decentralised exchanges (DEX) directly from your wallet, on perp DEXs for derivatives, in trading between private individuals (P2P) or via the swap function of a software wallet. Each of these routes has limits, and almost all of them start with a step where you do have to identify yourself: buying with euros.

This guide explains why the requirement has applied without exception since MiCA, which routes without ID exist, what they cost and where the risks lie. It is expressly not a guide to circumventing obligations. If you stay with a regulated provider, the overview of MiCA licensing and obligations sets out the rules licensed exchanges have to follow.

KYC at crypto exchanges: identity checks as part of anti-money laundering

KYC stands for “Know Your Customer”. It means the identity check a financial service provider carries out before entering into a business relationship with you. At crypto exchanges it usually happens digitally: you photograph your ID card or passport, take a selfie or a short video and confirm your address.

KYC is part of anti-money laundering, AML for short. AML is the umbrella term for all obligations against money laundering and terrorist financing. Besides identification, these include ongoing transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reports and record keeping.

In Germany, the basic obligation is set out in the Money Laundering Act (GwG). Under Section 10 GwG, the general due diligence obligations start with “the identification of the contracting party”. Crypto-asset service providers are among the obliged entities. An exchange that lets you trade without ID therefore breaks the law in force, provided it falls under German or European supervision at all.

What data an exchange requests for KYC

Typically name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, home address and the details of your ID document. Many providers also ask about your occupation and source of funds. For larger amounts the exchange can request evidence, such as a payslip, a bank statement or records of earlier crypto gains. This extended check is called source of funds.

MiCA and the Money Laundering Act: why licensed exchanges may not onboard you without ID

MiCA is the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114). For crypto-asset service providers, CASPs for short, it has applied since December 30, 2024. The transition periods, during which existing providers could keep operating without a new licence, ended earlier depending on the member state, but no later than July 1, 2026. Since then, every exchange serving customers in the EU needs a MiCA licence from a member state.

MiCA itself governs authorisation, custody, capital and consumer protection. The identification requirement comes from anti-money laundering law, which applies alongside MiCA. A MiCA licence and an account without KYC are therefore mutually exclusive. Anyone promising you both either has no licence or is not telling you the whole truth.

You can check the licence yourself. German providers are listed in BaFin's company database, providers from other EU states in the register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. According to our analysis of October 28, 2026, BaFin listed 98 crypto-asset service providers at that time. Our guide to checking MiCA authorisation shows how to read an entry and how to spot fake licence numbers. You can find the register itself on ESMA's MiCA page.

What MiCA prescribes for anonymising coins

MiCA already stipulates in Article 76(3) that trading platforms may not admit crypto assets with a built-in anonymisation function to trading unless their holders and transaction history can be identified. That is why several regulated exchanges have delisted so-called privacy coins.

Transfer of Funds Regulation: the travel rule from the first euro and the €1,000 threshold

The second pillar is the Transfer of Funds Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113), TFR for short. It implements the so-called travel rule: the obligation to send information on the originator and beneficiary with every transfer of crypto assets, much as with a bank transfer.

Since December 30, 2024 this has applied between two providers with no lower limit, so from the first euro. More relevant for you is the case of a self-hosted wallet: if you send more than €1,000 to your own address or receive such an amount from it, the exchange must check whether the address belongs to you or is controlled by you. Common methods are a signed message from the wallet, a screenshot or a small test transfer. We describe the process in detail in our guide on withdrawing crypto to your own wallet.

For the no-KYC route this means: the link between your regulated account and your private wallet is documented. If you buy bitcoin on a licensed exchange and then move it to your own wallet, you leave a traceable trail, even if you only trade on decentralised venues afterwards.

What the exchange does with this information

The exchange stores the information, checks it against sanctions lists and reports anything unusual to the Financial Intelligence Unit. If information is missing, it may hold back or reject a transfer. That is not the exchange being arbitrary; the law requires it.

Offshore exchanges without ID: the risks of providers without a MiCA licence

If you search for a crypto exchange without KYC, you will mainly find platforms based outside the EU. Many advertise that you only sign up with an email address and can withdraw up to a certain amount per day. For users in Germany this model has several catches.

First, there is no supervision. A provider that actively targets customers in the EU without a MiCA licence has not been allowed to do so since the transition periods ended. The only exception, in Article 61 MiCA, covers the case where you approach a provider on your own initiative without it having solicited you. This so-called reverse solicitation is narrowly defined. The rule only determines when the provider does not need a licence; it contains no protection for you.

Second, such platforms regularly reserve the right in their terms of use to demand identification at any time. That often happens precisely when you want to withdraw. Until you submit the documents, your balance stays frozen.

Third, there is no legal recourse. In the event of a hack, an account freeze or insolvency, the law of the country of incorporation applies. There is no deposit guarantee for crypto assets anyway, and a German consumer protection body can hardly help you with a platform that has no European licence.

Decentralised exchanges (DEX): swapping without an account, straight from your wallet

A decentralised exchange, or DEX, is a program on a blockchain that settles token swaps without a central operator. Instead of an order book with an account, most DEXs use so-called liquidity pools: users deposit token pairs, and a smart contract calculates the price from the ratio of the holdings. You connect your wallet, confirm the swap, and the tokens land straight back with you.

Because there is no account, there is no KYC either. Recital 22 of MiCA excludes services provided in a fully decentralised manner without an intermediary. Where the line lies in individual cases is not yet conclusively settled in law, for example with websites through which a company offers access to a DEX.

Where the DEX reaches its limits

The most important limit is the on-ramp. A DEX swaps tokens for tokens. It does not accept euros. To get crypto assets into your wallet in the first place, you almost always go through a regulated exchange, a broker or a payment service, and there you are identified. In practice, the no-KYC route therefore usually begins with a purchase with KYC.

Then there are technical risks. Network fees can rise sharply when the network is busy, the price can shift between order and execution (slippage), and faulty or fake smart contracts have already cost many users money. Particularly dangerous are approvals with which you allow a contract to move tokens out of your wallet. Fake websites exploit exactly these approvals for theft.

Perp DEX: derivatives trading without an account, and with leverage risk

A perp DEX is a decentralised platform for perpetual futures, futures contracts with no expiry date. You post collateral, usually stablecoins, and use leverage to bet on rising or falling prices. You do not need an account with ID for this; the wallet is enough.

This is where the biggest risk in this guide lies. Regulated providers may offer retail clients leverage of no more than 2 to 1 on contracts for difference on crypto assets. Much higher leverage is possible on a perp DEX. If the price moves against you, the position is liquidated automatically and the collateral is lost. Our perp DEX comparison explains how funding rates, liquidation and fees work and which platforms exist.

Nor is trading any simpler for tax purposes. In Germany, gains from futures transactions are treated differently from gains on selling coins, and a perp DEX does not issue a tax certificate. Recording every position remains your job.

P2P bitcoin trading: private individuals, Bisq and the limits of anonymity

P2P stands for peer-to-peer: direct trading between two private individuals with no exchange in between. You sell or buy Bitcoin and pay by bank transfer, cash or another agreed method. Decentralised programs such as Bisq broker such deals and secure them with a deposit that both sides put up.

Anyone who occasionally sells their own coins to another private individual is not a crypto-asset service provider within the meaning of MiCA. That changes when someone buys and sells commercially and regularly. A licensing requirement can then arise, and anyone trading without a licence risks criminal proceedings.

Why P2P is rarely truly anonymous

If you pay by SEPA transfer, your trading partner sees your name and bank details, and your bank sees the recipient. With cash meetings the trail disappears, but the personal risk rises. There are also well-known fraud patterns in which a transfer comes from a third-party source and is later reversed. The seller has then lost the coins and may have to explain to the bank where the money came from.

Swaps in the wallet: swap function, fees and third-party providers

Many software wallets have a built-in swap function. You choose two tokens, the wallet fetches a quote and executes the swap. Technically, behind it sits either a DEX, an aggregator that compares several DEXs, or a centralised instant swap service.

It is convenient, but rarely cheap. On top of the network fee there is often a wallet service fee, which can be hidden in the quoted rate. So compare the amount that actually arrives, not just the stated fee. If a centralised swap service is behind it, its terms of use apply. Many of these services reserve the right to halt unusual swaps and request evidence. A swap without ID thus remains an offer with strings attached.

Privacy coins and AMLR: what changes from July 2027

The EU is tightening anti-money laundering law further. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, AMLR for short, applies from July 10, 2027. Its Article 79 prohibits banks, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers from keeping anonymous accounts or accounts that allow transactions to be anonymised. This expressly includes anonymous crypto accounts.

Holding privacy coins in your own wallet remains permitted according to the prevailing reading. The ban is aimed at providers. For you this means: regulated exchanges will no longer trade such coins, and swapping will shift even more towards decentralised routes. Our article on privacy coins and EU anti-money laundering law assesses the consequences for individual coins.

Crypto tax without KYC: holding period, exemption limit and proof for the tax office

Going without ID does not change your tax obligations. In Germany, gains from selling or swapping crypto assets are private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act (EStG). They remain tax-free if more than one year passes between purchase and sale. Within the holding period, gains are tax-free if total gains from private disposal transactions in the calendar year are below €1,000. That is an exemption limit: if the gain is higher, it is taxable in full.

A swap on a DEX is, for tax purposes, a sale and a new purchase. If you swap a lot, you start a new holding period for the token received each time. The burden of proof for purchase date and price lies with you. Without an exchange account there is no tax certificate, so you have to document transaction IDs, prices and fees yourself.

DAC8: what licensed exchanges have reported since 2026

Since January 1, 2026, crypto-asset service providers in the EU have been collecting data on their customers and their transactions for the tax authorities. The basis is the EU directive DAC8, implemented in Germany through the Crypto-Asset Tax Transparency Act. The first report for 2026 goes to the Federal Central Tax Office by July 31, 2027. If you enter through a regulated exchange, the tax office already knows about you. Later activity on a DEX makes this data patchy at most, and if in doubt, you are the one who explains the gaps.

Data protection in KYC: what data exchanges store and for how long

A common reason for looking for an exchange without KYC is not tax avoidance but data protection. The concern is justified: ID images, selfies and address data are valuable, and there have been several data leaks at exchanges and their service providers.

The Money Laundering Act prescribes how long the documents are kept. Under Section 8(4) GwG, they must be retained for five years and destroyed after ten years at the latest. The period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the business relationship ends. If you no longer use an account, you should therefore actively close it rather than leave it dormant.

You can limit how much of your data is out there: verify yourself only with a few providers holding a European licence, use a separate email address for the exchange and enable two-factor login with an app rather than SMS. Under the General Data Protection Regulation you can request information at any time about what data is stored about you.

What an ID leak means for you

If your ID data falls into the wrong hands, the main threat is targeted fraud attempts: fake support calls, phishing emails containing real data and identity misuse. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, an exchange based in the EU must inform you of such a leak. With a platform without a European licence, you may never find out.

Crypto exchanges without KYC: above €1,000 the exchange checks your wallet

The situation is clear. Licensed exchanges require your ID, offshore platforms without a licence shift the risk onto you, and the decentralised routes only work once you already own crypto assets. If you want to protect your data and still trade safely, you combine both deliberately:

1. Enter through an exchange with a MiCA licence: Buy with euros where supervision and legal recourse apply, and check the entry in the register. You will find a selection in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Self-custody and prepare the proof of ownership: If you transfer more than €1,000 to your wallet, the exchange will ask for proof. A hardware wallet protects the keys offline; models and prices are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document every transaction: Swaps on a DEX also count towards the holding period and the exemption limit. A tax tool reads wallet addresses and produces the report for the tax office; our overview of crypto tax tools compares providers.

If you are specifically interested in Bitcoin, our earlier guide buying Bitcoin without KYC from June 2026 covers the practical routes and their costs. The legal situation has tightened further since then with the end of the transition periods.

(As of November 4, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

What is documented: the DVOL volatility index of options exchange Deribit fell after the US election night from 40.89 points on Tuesday to 37.03 points on Wednesday morning, back where it stood before the Fed week at the end of October. On Wednesday morning, November 4, Bitcoin trades at $78,442 or €69,723, 2.0 percent above the previous day and 2.3 percent above the 100-day line at $76,663. Our assessment follows further down: the options market has unwound the election premium but still expects a range through Friday in which the 100-day line stays within reach.

The short answer: yes, based on options market prices, the 100-day line is more likely to hold than to break before Friday's expiry. The priced-in volatility implies a probability of around 19 percent that Bitcoin will be below it on Friday morning. That is not a call on direction but a translation of what traders pay for protection. Our Bitcoin price prediction covers where the price could head over a horizon of months. This piece sticks to the coming days and to what the options market reveals after the election.

DVOL after election night: the election premium is gone

The DVOL measures the volatility the Bitcoin options market prices in for the next 30 days, annualised. A reading of 37 means traders pay for options as if they expected annual volatility of 37 percent. The figure is therefore not a price forecast but the price of uncertainty.

On Tuesday, US election day, the index climbed as high as 40.89 points during the day. During election night it fell in steps: 38.98 at 00:00 UTC, 38.47 at 07:00, 37.03 at 10:00. The data come from Deribit's public DVOL series. A drop of almost 4 points in less than a day is the typical pattern after an event the market had priced in beforehand: once it is over, the premium that buyers of protection paid for it decays.

Compared with the Fed week: on October 28 the DVOL closed at 37.26 points, and on October 30 it hit an intraday high of 44.25 points. Today's reading is therefore slightly below the level before the rate decision. The market has thus fully priced out the two big events of the past two weeks.

What volatility of 37 means for the Bitcoin price through Friday

The annual figure can be scaled down to shorter periods by multiplying it by the square root of the fraction of the year. From Wednesday morning to the expiry of the weekly options on Friday at 9 a.m. CET there are around 45 hours. That yields a priced-in standard deviation of about 2.65 percent, or roughly $2,080.

In price terms: a range of roughly $76,360 to $80,520 covers, by this calculation, about two thirds of the outcomes the options market considers possible for Friday morning. Over a full week the standard deviation grows to 5.1 percent, a little over $4,000. The calculation assumes normally distributed returns, which Bitcoin does not have; large swings occur more often than it allows. It still works as an order of magnitude, because it shows how much movement is already in option prices.

Applied to the 100-day line at $76,663: the gap of 2.3 percent equals roughly 0.86 standard deviations. On paper, that gives Bitcoin a probability of about 19 percent of being below the line on Friday morning. For a jump above $82,000, Friday's most important call strike, the figure is around 5 percent.

The November 6 options expiry: $2.46 billion

On Friday, Bitcoin options covering 31,377 contracts expire on Deribit, each representing one bitcoin. At the current price that is $2.46 billion in notional value. The split is lopsided: 23,315 contracts are calls, rights to buy, and only 8,062 are puts, rights to sell. The put-call ratio stands at 0.35.

Most open calls cluster at $82,000 with 6,174 contracts and at $85,000 with 5,152. On the put side, the largest blocks sit at $74,000 with 1,267 and at $75,000 with 995 contracts. The so-called max pain point, at which buyers of all options together would suffer the largest loss, is $79,000. That is only 0.7 percent above the current price.

Important for context: the many calls at $82,000 and $85,000 are not a bet that the price will rise there by Friday. The two strikes are 4.5 and 8.4 percent above the current price. Without a strong rally in the next two days, these calls expire worthless. They therefore play a smaller role in price discovery through Friday than positions close to the market.

Put wall on November 13: protection moves back a week

The expiry a week later paints a different picture. For November 13 there are 10,164 puts against 4,793 calls, a put-call ratio of 2.12. At $74,000 alone, 4,098 puts are open, followed by $68,000 with 1,474 and $72,000 with 1,348 contracts. Anyone wanting to hedge against a setback has therefore done so not for Friday but for the week after.

The $74,000 level thus appears in two places: as the largest put position for Friday and as by far the largest position for November 13. It lies 5.7 percent below the current price and just above the 200-day line at $73,163. If the price approaches this zone, traders who sold those puts have to adjust their hedges. That can accelerate a move lower there, because the other side then sells bitcoin or futures.

The large monthly expiry on November 27, with $4.58 billion in notional value, is led by calls again, with a max pain point at $80,000. Thinking in weeks, you see a cautious middle of the month and more optimistic positioning towards month-end.

Since Monday's mining analysis: low at $75,695, recovery above $78,000

On Monday, in our Bitcoin price prediction on mining difficulty, we had the price at $77,657 and named $77,204 as the level below which things get serious. That level has since been broken and reclaimed. During election night Bitcoin fell as low as $75,695, the daily low according to CoinGecko. Our colleagues described the move in the morning in the Bitcoin price after election night.

Bitcoin now trades at $78,442, $785 higher than on Monday, a gain of 1.0 percent. The 50-day line, at $81,932 then, is at $81,911 today and remains the ceiling. The 200-day line has barely moved and stands at $73,163. What is new is the view from the options market: on Monday the DVOL was still at 39.3 points, today it is 37.0. The uncertainty the market pays for has fallen, even though the price was lower in between.

Sentiment and the Fear and Greed Index: fear, but less than on election day

The Fear and Greed Index from alternative.me stands at 34 points on Wednesday, in the fear zone. On Tuesday it was 26, on Monday 37 points. The index combines volatility, trading volume, dominance and search queries into a value between 0 and 100. A jump of 8 points in one day fits the picture in the options market: after the election, nervousness has eased without confidence returning.

On a monthly view Bitcoin is down 9.2 percent, on a weekly view 3.8 percent. The price is 37.8 percent below the all-time high of $126,080 from October 2025. The recovery of the past 24 hours does not change that picture yet; it only prevents last week's decline from turning into a break of the 100-day line.

Bitcoin levels to expiry: $74,000, $76,663, $79,000 and $82,000

The options market and the moving averages together produce a set of levels for the coming days that reinforce each other:

• $82,000: the largest call position for Friday and also just above the 50-day line at $81,911. A close above it would be the first sign that the downtrend since early October is turning.
• $79,000: the max pain point of Friday's expiry. It serves as a reference in the options market; whether it actually pulls the price towards it is statistically disputed.
• $76,663: the 100-day line. It gave way only briefly during election night and had already been reclaimed by Wednesday morning.
• $74,000: the put wall for November 6 and November 13, with the 200-day line just below at $73,163.

If you bet on these levels with a leveraged product, keep the liquidation threshold in view. At ten times leverage, a counter-move of around 10 percent is enough to close the position; today that would mean a fall to about $70,600 or a rise to about $86,300. Our comparison of crypto brokers shows which providers offer leverage under European supervision.

Our assessment: calm in the options market is not yet a bottom

In the editorial team's view, the drop in the DVOL suggests the election is done as a burden. The evidence: the index fell within a day from 40.89 to 37.03 points, the Fear and Greed Index rose from 26 to 34, and Bitcoin reclaimed the 100-day line at $76,663 after the low of $75,695. Against that stands the positioning for November 13, with a put-call ratio of 2.12 and 4,098 puts at $74,000. Professionals are still hedging against a setback next week. On top of that come outflows of more than $1 billion from US spot ETFs, which cryptoticker.io reported on Wednesday morning in its piece on Bitcoin ETF outflows after the midterms.

Our conclusion: through Friday, sideways trading between $76,000 and $80,000 is more likely than a breakout. The direction after that will be decided more at the 50-day line and the put zone around $74,000 than at the expiry itself. This is not a buy or sell recommendation. Cryptocurrencies can swing all the way to a total loss.

Bitcoin options and tax: how Germany treats them differently from spot purchases

If you hold bitcoin directly in Germany, you benefit from the holding period: gains from private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act are tax-free after one year. Within the year, an exemption limit of €1,000 per year applies to all private disposal gains together. We track where the debate about abolishing the holding period stands on our page on the state of the holding period reform.

This does not apply to options and futures on bitcoin. Under the prevailing view, gains from such derivatives are treated as capital income and are subject to the 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax plus solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. There is no holding period. So if you use options to bet on a quiet Friday, clarify the tax treatment with a tax adviser beforehand and document every trade carefully. With many individual trades, tools that record buy and sell times automatically help; our comparison of crypto tax tools gives an overview.

How to read the DVOL yourself

Deribit publishes the index free of charge. The exchange's statistics view shows its history over days and weeks. Three readings help with context: a DVOL below 35 stands for a quiet phase, as seen in September when the index fell to 33.09 points at times. Values between 35 and 45 are normal for Bitcoin. Above 45 the market prices in larger swings, as most recently in August with readings around 45 points.

To convert to a single day, divide the DVOL by about 19, the square root of 365. A reading of 37 thus gives an expected daily move of about 1.9 percent, just under $1,500 at the current price. If Bitcoin moves much more than that, the options market has underestimated the situation, and the DVOL usually rises in response. If you do not trade derivatives but want to buy bitcoin directly, you will find regulated providers in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

Bitcoin volatility at 37: below $76,663 the picture flips

1. Choose how to buy: If you want to get into Bitcoin after the election, use an exchange licensed under the EU's MiCA regulation. The exchange comparison lists the providers.
2. Limit leverage: A bet on Friday's expiry needs a stop below $76,663 or above $82,000. Our perp DEX comparison presents platforms for perpetual futures.
3. Document the holding period: Record the date and price of every Bitcoin purchase so the one-year holding period can be proven. The crypto tax tools help with this.

(As of November 4, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Uniswap (UNI) is trading above $7 again, and so above the very level that analytics firm Santiment called decisive after the latest surge in new addresses. On Wednesday morning one UNI cost $7.37 according to Coinpaprika (as of 7:50 a.m. CET), up 4.4 percent on the previous day. The question behind the price: are the many new addresses of the past week new investors, or just tokens moving back and forth between wallets and exchanges?

Santiment counted 13,137 new UNI addresses on a single day at the end of October, the highest figure since September 2020. As BeInCrypto reported on October 29, the number of daily active addresses rose at the same time to 14,591, the highest in a year. This article puts the figure in context, sets it against the protocol's trading data and shows which price levels now matter.

Uniswap price at $7.37: the week in numbers

Over the week UNI is up 2.8 percent according to Coinpaprika, but down 17.6 percent over 30 days. In euro terms the token cost €6.57 on the Kraken exchange on Wednesday morning. Market capitalisation stands at around $4.47 billion.

The week had one single, violent swing. On the afternoon of October 29 UNI hit its weekly high of $7.51 on Kraken; a few hours later the low was $6.25. That is a fall of 16.8 percent within one trading day. The trigger was the sale of altcoins from the Binance attack: according to data from analytics service Lookonchain, the attacker dumped 7.02 million UNI, as cryptoticker.io reported on October 30. By the following day UNI had already closed at $7.13 again, and since then the price has moved between $7.07 and $7.21 on a daily closing basis.

Uniswap is a long way from its all-time high. The token reached its record of $45.01 on May 3, 2021, according to Coinpaprika; today's price is 83.6 percent below that.

Santiment data: 13,137 new UNI addresses in one day

With its network growth metric, Santiment measures how many addresses interact with a token for the first time. An address is the public identifier of a wallet on the blockchain, comparable to an account number but with no name attached. The spike at the end of October was the strongest since autumn 2020, when Uniswap distributed the token by airdrop to earlier users of the exchange.

A second metric supports the finding. Daily active addresses count every wallet that sends or receives UNI on a given day, whether new or not. At 14,591, this figure was as high as it had been in a year, according to BeInCrypto. Santiment linked the rise to the protocol's latest features, including the Aggregator Hooks that Uniswap launched on October 22. With this extension Uniswap can also route orders through third-party liquidity pools.

The move had shown up a week earlier. On October 23, the news site Blockonomi reported, citing Santiment, that the number of newly created UNI wallets had reached its highest level since November 2022. Two data points within seven days show that this is not a single outlier.

Network growth versus price: why new addresses are not the same as new buyers

The metric has a limit that Santiment itself points out. It counts every wallet that sends or receives the UNI token. That includes transfers by exchanges spreading their holdings across new omnibus addresses, and investors moving their tokens to a second wallet. A single person can thus create several new addresses without buying a single additional token.

In the last week of October there was a special factor. The attacker behind the Binance incident spread the loot across numerous addresses and sold it on decentralised exchanges. Buyers of those tokens and intermediate stops in the laundering chain also appear in the statistics as new addresses. How large that share of the 13,137 addresses is cannot be read from the published data.

Santiment therefore attached a condition to the figure. If activity stays high and UNI holds $7 at the same time, a price of $8 comes within reach, the analytics firm said according to BeInCrypto. If UNI instead drops below $7 while activity fades, that would point to a short-lived flash in the pan. Santiment named a price of $7.50 as early evidence of more momentum. On the day of the report UNI traded at $6.98, just below the threshold. Today the price is above it.

Uniswap trading volume according to DefiLlama: $5.97 billion in one day

A second look goes to the protocol itself, because the UNI token and the Uniswap exchange are two different things. UNI is the governance token holders use to vote on the protocol's rules. The exchange is a set of smart contracts, self-executing programs on the blockchain, through which anyone can swap one token for another. Data portal DefiLlama shows daily how much is traded there.

In the seven days from October 22 to 28, Uniswap handled an average of $1.74 billion a day. On October 29, the day after the Binance attack, volume jumped to $5.97 billion, 3.4 times the average. On October 30 it was still $3.84 billion, after which it fell back to between $1.17 billion and $1.95 billion a day. In the seven days up to and including November 3 the total came to $18.4 billion, and $64.1 billion over the past 30 days.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on November 4, 2026. It is based on DefiLlama's daily figures for trading volume, fees and token holder revenue, evaluated for the 13 days from October 22 to November 3, 2026.

The peak on October 29 coincides with the address surge. Traffic then returned to pre-attack levels, yet UNI still held the $7 mark.

Fees and burn: what reaches UNI holders

Since Uniswap flipped the fee switch, part of the trading fees no longer goes only to liquidity providers but into buying back and destroying UNI. This is called a burn: tokens are sent to an address from which nobody can move them again, and supply shrinks permanently.

According to DefiLlama, Uniswap generated fees of $24.2 million in the seven days to November 3. Of that, the portal attributes $2.8 million to token holders. On October 29 alone, fees were $9.6 million and $1.19 million went to holders, compared with $1.74 million and $0.19 million on an ordinary day such as November 2. Measured against a market capitalisation of $4.47 billion, the weekly return flow is small. But it grows with every day of heavy trading.

UNI price levels: $6.25 below, $7.50 and $8 above

The levels follow from the week's price action and from the thresholds that Santiment and a chart analyst have named publicly. All five are observation points, not price targets.

• $8.00: Within reach according to Santiment if UNI holds $7 and activity stays high.
• $7.50 to $7.51: Santiment's early evidence of more momentum, and also the weekly high of October 29 on Kraken.
• $7.00: The threshold Santiment calls decisive. The price is around 5 percent above it.
• $6.25: The weekly low on the evening of October 29, when selling from the Binance attack pushed the price down.
• $5.00: The line drawn by analyst DonWedge. In his post of October 26, according to BeInCrypto, he sees a long-term support zone between $5 and $6.60 and considers a target of $18 achievable as long as UNI does not close a week below $5.

Both views stand side by side. In favour of the optimistic one: UNI recovered from the wave of selling after the Binance attack within a day. Against it: the distance to the high. Over 30 days UNI has lost 17.6 percent, and the $18 target is the view of a single analyst.

Buying UNI in Germany: MiCA exchange or decentralised swap

There are two ways to buy. The first runs through a crypto exchange or broker licensed under the European MiCA regulation. MiCA stands for Markets in Crypto-Assets and has governed since the end of 2024 who may sell and hold crypto assets for euros in the EU. In Germany, BaFin grants this licence. The advantage: deposits by bank transfer, a contact person when problems arise and supervised custody.

The second way is Uniswap itself. If you already hold Ether or stablecoins in your own wallet, you can swap them for UNI directly there. A decentralised exchange carries no BaFin licence and has no customer service. On top come network fees and slippage, the gap between the displayed price and the price actually achieved on larger orders.

For custody, the holding period decides. If you only trade UNI briefly, you will often leave the tokens on the exchange. If you hold them for longer or want a say in votes on the protocol, you transfer them to your own wallet. A hardware wallet stores the private key offline on a small device. The recovery phrase of 12 or 24 words belongs on paper or metal, never in a photo or a cloud.

Holding period and tax: the rules for UNI gains in Germany

For tax purposes, crypto assets such as UNI count as private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you sell UNI at a profit within one year of buying, the gain is taxed at your personal rate. After one year it is tax-free. If all private disposal gains in a year together stay below €1,000, no tax is due either; this is an exemption limit, not an allowance.

Important for Uniswap users: swapping one token for another also counts as a disposal. If you swap Ether for UNI on Uniswap, you are selling your Ether for tax purposes, and the one-year period starts again for the new UNI. Since January 2026, crypto exchanges in the EU have been recording their customers' transactions under the DAC8 directive, with reporting to the tax authorities from 2027. A clean record of all purchases, sales and swaps saves a lot of time when filling in your tax return.

UNI with leverage: what the October 29 swing would have cost

Many exchanges also offer UNI as a perpetual future, a futures contract with no expiry date that lets you bet on rising or falling prices. Leverage multiplies both gains and losses. If the price moves too far against the position, the exchange closes it by force; this is called liquidation, and most of the posted collateral is then lost.

October 29 shows how quickly that happens. From the weekly high of $7.51 to the low of $6.25, UNI fell 16.8 percent. At five times leverage this drop would have wiped out 84 percent of a long position's margin on paper; at ten times leverage the position would have been liquidated after a fall of around 10 percent. If you want to trade UNI derivatives, the comparison of perp DEX platforms sets out fees, leverage limits and the differences from centralised exchanges.

Uniswap price: Santiment sees the first proof from $7.50

The address surge is documented; its substance is not yet. Whether 13,137 new addresses turn into lasting demand will be shown by daily active addresses in the coming days and a price above $7.50. Three steps help you assess the situation yourself:

1. Choose how to buy: Check whether your exchange holds a MiCA licence and lists UNI. You will find an overview in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Sort out custody: If you hold UNI for more than a few weeks, a wallet of your own is worth it. The hardware wallet comparison shows which devices support UNI.
3. Document for tax: Note the date and price of every UNI purchase and every swap on Uniswap so you keep track of the one-year period. The crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers can help.

(As of November 4, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

A product that was born on offshore crypto exchanges and perfected by $Hyperliquid is now legal on Wall Street. On 3 November the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) confirmed that perpetual futures on individual stocks can begin trading on registered US exchanges for the first time. HYPE jumped on the news. Here is what changed, what a stock perp actually is, and whether this helps or hurts Hyperliquid.

What did the CFTC approve exactly?

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said that perpetual futures on single equities passed the agency's 45-day review under Regulation 40.3 without objection. The contracts are classified as "security futures", a category created by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which puts them under joint CFTC and SEC oversight and means no new law was needed.

Only exchanges registered with both regulators can list them. Kalshi has already announced plans for 58 perpetual contracts on 55 stocks, including Apple and Tesla. Coinbase, Bitnomial and OG.com are also lining up.

What is a stock perpetual future?

A perpetual future, or "perp", is a futures contract that never expires. Instead of rolling positions every quarter, traders pay or receive a funding rate, usually every few hours, that keeps the contract price close to the spot price of the underlying stock. You get leveraged long or short exposure, 24/7 trading and no delivery date.

Crypto traders have used perps for years. In the past month alone, perpetual futures recorded more than $630 billion in trading volume according to DeFiLlama. Until now, US residents could only trade stock perps on offshore or unregulated venues.

Why is Hyperliquid at the center of this?

Because Hyperliquid is where most onchain stock perps already trade. Through its HIP-3 framework, outside builders can launch their own markets on the chain, and the biggest of them, trade.xyz, runs the stock and index perps. Before the CFTC decision, Hyperliquid's stock and commodity markets held about $4.1 billion in open interest.

The Wall Street link is real: Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, invested in trade.xyz this year and has said it wants to offer 24/7 US futures trading on Hyperliquid. President Trump said in August that the CFTC is working on bringing Hyperliquid under federal rules. The Hyperliquid Policy Center had lobbied for exactly the "security futures" classification the CFTC chose.

Does the CFTC decision hurt Hyperliquid?

It cuts both ways. On one side, regulated US exchanges can now offer the same product with investor protections, which reduces the appeal of an offshore DEX for American traders. Hyperliquid still geoblocks US residents. On the other side, the decision validates the entire perp model, and if ICE builds its US offering on Hyperliquid infrastructure, the chain earns fees from regulated volume it could never touch before.

HYPE traded around $81 to $82 after the announcement, up about 2 percent, with $78.4 as the first support to watch. You can follow the live price on our crypto prices page.

What could still go wrong?

Two lawsuits. CME Group sued the CFTC in June over the first Bitcoin perp approval, arguing that contracts with no expiry and recurring funding payments are swaps, not futures. And on 3 November the Capital Markets Alliance, backed by Cboe, Citadel Securities and the Healthy Markets Association, filed a suit in New York to overturn the stock perp approval. If a court sides with them, the whole framework could be sent back to square one.

Meanwhile the tokenized-stock front is heating up too: SpaceX and Tesla have joined Amazon in opposing OKXICE's plan to list tokenized versions of their shares. Wall Street is happy to adopt crypto's trading model. It is less happy to let crypto trade Wall Street.

The onchain investigator says the theft is being "covered up," and that a lack of disclosure let more than $30 million be laundered.

A Nova Scotia judge found prosecutors failed to link William Sandeson's Bitcoin to the 2015 murder of fellow student Taylor Samson.

The ChatGPT maker says future facilities could ease pressure on power grids by cutting demand during emergencies.

Paolo Ardoino told the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano the company owns “give or take 150,000 Bitcoin,” but its Q3 reserve report implies just 100,060.

Claude's prices are falling, but Anthropic's computing expenses grew faster than sales in the latest quarter—a tricky equation ahead of its IPO.

Dogecoin holders withdrawing from Binance urged to pay close attention.

Bitcoin mining in orbit sounds futuristic, but the economics do not work today.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has identified phishing and social engineering as the biggest threats to crypto, warning that hackers pose a greater danger than AI or quantum computers.

As XRP faces a 16% correction, 18 new millionaire addresses emerge in 72 hours.

Crypto liquidations hit about $435 million in 24 hours as Bitcoin and Ethereum traders took the biggest losses.

TLDR

• SpaceX has objected to tokenized versions of its shares being listed on OKXICE, according to a Nov. 2 notice.
• SpaceX is now one of 56 companies objecting to the listings, along with Tesla and Amazon.
• The SEC’s Innovation Exemption gives companies 30 days to object to third-party tokenized trading of their shares.
• Offshore SpaceX tokens from Backpack and Kraken recorded about $1.93 billion in onchain volume in June.
• OKXICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo said on Oct. 30 that more companies will participate over time.

SpaceX has objected to the listing of tokenized versions of its shares on OKXICE, a new trading venue aimed at US investors. The company used a 30-day objection window that the Securities and Exchange Commission gave issuers under its new rules.

The objection was disclosed in a public notice from OKXICE dated Nov. 2. OKXICE is a joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

SpaceX is now one of 56 companies that have objected to the proposed listings on the venue. Tesla and Amazon are also on that list.

How the Objection Process Works

The SEC introduced a five-year Innovation Exemption in September. It lets platforms such as OKXICE offer trading in tokenized versions of US stocks without registering as national securities exchanges.

The framework also gives listed companies a voice in the process. Companies have 30 days to object when a third party plans to offer tokenized trading of their shares.

An objection effectively keeps those tokens off the venue. This means a company can stop its stock from trading in tokenized form on OKXICE.

Tokenized stocks are blockchain-based versions of company shares. They let investors gain exposure to traditional stocks onchain, often around the clock.

Some tokens are backed by actual shares, depending on how they are built. However, the rights given to tokenholders can differ from those held by regular shareholders.

SpaceX Tokens Already Trade Offshore

The objection comes after tokenized SpaceX shares had already started trading on platforms outside the US. Those tokens have drawn heavy trading since the company’s public offering in June.

Before the listing, Backpack Securities and crypto exchange Kraken both prepared tokenized versions of SpaceX stock. Backpack is a stock brokerage and tokenization platform, and each product was designed to be backed by actual shares.

Backpack’s SPCX token recorded $1.08 billion in onchain trading volume in June. Kraken’s SPCXx token, offered through its xStocks product, recorded $852 million that same month.

Together, the two tokens handled about $1.93 billion in onchain volume in June. That activity made SpaceX one of the biggest drivers of onchain stock trading in recent months.

OKXICE differs from Backpack and Kraken because it would open tokenized stock trading to US investors. It would operate under the SEC’s new framework, giving it potential access to the world’s largest equity market by capitalization.

Nasdaq warned companies in September that they “must be cautious about their participation” in the venture. The exchange argued that tokenized stock trading could fragment liquidity and undermine long-term shareholder value.

OKXICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo, a former New York governor, told Cointelegraph on Oct. 20 that the venture expected more objections. He said companies were avoiding being the first to test the model.

Cuomo addressed the issue again at an Oct. 30 press conference. He said that as people see the benefits of tokenization, “you’ll see more and more companies participate.”

The post SpaceX Uses SEC’s 30-Day Objection Rule to Keep Its Tokenized Shares Off OKXICE appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company holds about 150,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $11.5 billion.
• Tether’s Q3 reserve attestation implies only about 100,060 BTC.
• The gap of roughly 50,000 coins is worth close to $3.8 billion.
• Ardoino did not say where the extra coins are held or when they were bought.
• Tether’s Q3 excess reserve cushion rose to $7.95 billion, nearly double June’s level.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company holds about 150,000 Bitcoin. That stake is worth roughly $11.5 billion at current prices. The number is about 50,000 coins higher than what Tether’s latest reserve report shows.

Ardoino made the comment during a keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland. “We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” he said.

Tether has run a Bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program in Lugano since 2022. The company used this year’s event to share several figures about its size and holdings.

Two Numbers, One Gap

Tether’s third-quarter reserve attestation covers the assets that back its USDT stablecoin. It lists $8.37 billion in Bitcoin, valued at $83,621 per coin. That works out to about 100,060 BTC.

The difference between that figure and Ardoino’s claim is close to 50,000 coins. Those coins are worth about $3.8 billion. Tether’s public filings do not yet account for them.

Ardoino did not say where the extra Bitcoin is held. He also did not say when the coins were acquired. His remark does not point to a new purchase of that size.

Tether has long said its corporate Bitcoin investments are kept apart from the reserves that support USDT. The Q3 attestation covers only the assets backing the stablecoin. Ardoino did not give a breakdown of the two pools during his talk.

Bitcoin recently traded near $78,576, down about 3.6% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The price drop since the end of September means the coins in Tether’s report are now worth less than the $8.37 billion listed.

Tether has been building its Bitcoin stack for years. In May 2023, the company said it would put up to 15% of its net realized operating profits into Bitcoin. It also said it would hold the coins itself instead of using outside custodians.

Large profits have funded those purchases. Tether reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit in the third quarter alone. It has posted billion-dollar quarterly profits throughout the year as USDT supply has kept growing.

Reserve Cushion Nearly Doubles

The Q3 report shows $191.45 billion in assets against $183.50 billion in liabilities. That leaves an excess cushion of $7.95 billion. In June, the buffer stood at $4.11 billion.

U.S. Treasury bills make up most of the reserves. They total about $132.4 billion, according to the report.

Tether has faced years of questions about whether USDT is fully backed. For most of its history, the company has published quarterly attestations rather than full financial audits.

This year, Tether began its first full financial audit with KPMG. The move is a long-awaited step toward addressing doubts about its reserves.

Ardoino also spoke about Tether’s reach at the Lugano event. He said the company now serves more than 730 million users worldwide. Tether is adding roughly 30 million wallets each quarter, he said.

He used the stage to pitch a suite of open-source technologies. Tether funds those projects with its profits.

The post Tether Says It Owns 150,000 Bitcoin, but Where Are the Other 50,000 Coins? appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The HKMA and HKUST launched a Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Toolkit for banks on November 2.
• Hong Kong’s banking sector scored 2.3 out of 10 on the HKMA’s Quantum Preparedness Index in July 2026.
• The regulator’s target is a full score of 10 by 2030.
• The toolkit helps banks inventory cryptographic assets, set priorities and build timelines with suppliers.
• The launch is a preparation step and does not mean quantum computers have broken bank or crypto encryption.

Hong Kong’s banks have a long way to go before they are ready for quantum computing. The city’s banking regulator measured the sector’s readiness at 2.3 out of 10 earlier this year. It now wants that score to reach 10 by 2030.

To help close that gap, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) launched a Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Toolkit on November 2. The project was developed with support from industry participants.

Where the Readiness Score Stands

The HKMA launched its Quantum Preparedness Index, or QPI, in July 2026. The index measures how prepared the banking sector is for quantum-safe cryptography.

The first QPI score came in at 2.3 out of 10. According to the HKMA, this showed that banks had begun addressing quantum-related developments, but overall readiness for the switch to PQC remains at an early stage.

The regulator’s goal is full quantum readiness, meaning a QPI score of 10, by 2030. The new toolkit is meant to help banks turn awareness into concrete action toward that target.

Banks use cryptography in many places, including certificates, customer logins, links between banks, software updates and stored data. Moving those systems to new standards can take years, because devices, vendors and older applications must keep working together.

The sector also has a reason to start early. As NewsBTC noted, data captured today can remain sensitive long after the original connection has ended.

What the Toolkit Asks Banks to Do

The toolkit sets out a structured framework to guide banks through their PQC transition. It covers four main areas: setting governance and accountability, assessing cryptographic exposure, identifying transition needs and monitoring progress.

It also includes practical tools to help banks get started. These include taking stock of cryptographic assets and dependencies, setting transition priorities, working more closely with suppliers and building realistic timelines.

Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive of the HKMA, said the index “has established a clear starting point for the sector.” He added that the next step is to help banks turn that understanding “into clear responsibilities, informed priorities and practical plans.”

Yuen said the toolkit gives banks a common foundation they can adapt to their own needs. “Our aim is to make it easier for banks to begin the work and sustain progress throughout the transition,” he said.

Prof. Frederik Anseel, Dean of HKUST Business School, described quantum preparation as “a leadership challenge.” He said banks can build knowledge and capability “even while the timing of the threat remains uncertain.”

The launch is a preparation program. It does not mean that quantum computers have broken banking or cryptocurrency encryption, and NewsBTC reported that no credible reading of the announcement suggests Bitcoin private keys are being routinely cracked by quantum machines.

The toolkit’s results are also an input for planning, not a replacement for independent engineering and formal testing. Different cryptographic methods face different levels of risk, and some newer methods can affect key size, speed or compatibility.

NewsBTC said the next things to watch are whether participating banks publish migration road maps, change how they buy technology and test post-quantum login systems with core platforms. Each of these would be a step toward the 2030 goal.

The HKMA said the toolkit will be updated over time to reflect new technology, international standards and lessons from banks. It is now available in the Fintech Knowledge Hub section of the HKMA website.

The post Hong Kong Banks Scored Just 2.3 Out of 10 on Quantum Readiness, Here Is the Plan to Fix It appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party has formally proposed delaying the country’s crypto income tax.
• The tax is set to start on Jan. 1, 2027, and would charge 22% on gains above 2.5 million won.
• Party leader Kim Min-seok wants the Digital Asset Basic Act passed before the tax begins.
• If approved, this would be the fourth delay since the tax became law in 2020.
• The presidential office was reportedly discussing pushing the tax to 2029.

South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party has formally proposed delaying the country’s tax on crypto income. The tax is currently scheduled to begin on Jan. 1, 2027.

Party leader Kim Min-seok made the proposal at a supreme council meeting held at the National Assembly. Local news outlet News1 reported his comments on Wednesday.

If the government approves the plan, it would be the fourth time the tax has been pushed back. Lawmakers first passed the levy in 2020.

Law Before Tax

Kim said party members agreed on a clear order of steps. They want the country to pass the Digital Asset Basic Act before any crypto tax takes effect.

The Digital Asset Basic Act is a planned legal framework that would set broad rules for crypto in South Korea. Kim said companies and investors need time to adjust once those new rules are in place.

The decision came after several rounds of talks. Kim said the party consulted through the Strategy and Finance Committee, held talks with the government, and met with crypto asset businesses.

Under the current plan, the tax would apply to yearly gains from transferring or lending crypto assets. The rate would be 22%, which includes local tax.

Investors would only pay tax on gains above a basic deduction. That deduction is set at 2.5 million won, or about $1,868.7.

This means an investor with yearly crypto gains below that amount would owe no tax under the current plan. Gains above that amount would be taxed at the full 22% rate.

A Promise of a Firm Timeline

Kim acknowledged that the tax has been delayed several times before. He said the party would set a clear deferral period this time.

He also listed tasks that need to be finished before the tax can start. These include using overseas transaction information and verifying the IT systems that would handle the tax.

Taxpayer guidance is also on the list of prerequisites. Kim said the party would prepare these items thoroughly during the delay.

The proposal does not change the law on its own. The current start date of Jan. 1, 2027, remains in place unless the delay is approved.

Last week, South Korea’s presidential office was reportedly discussing pushing the tax back to 2029. That would be two years later than the current start date.

The reported 2029 timeline is tied to the United States. It would line up with when the U.S. plans to join the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework.

The framework is designed to let tax authorities in different countries share information about crypto transactions. Kim’s mention of overseas transaction information as a prerequisite connects to this type of data sharing.

With the ruling party’s formal proposal now on record, the decision on a fourth delay moves forward. The government has not yet announced final approval of the deferral.

The post South Korea Wants Crypto Law First, Proposes Fourth Delay to 22% Crypto Tax appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Justin Sun has asked a federal judge to sanction World Liberty Financial and its lawyers.
• The company expanded its ownership disclosure from one entity to 22 in August, including UAE citizenship.
• World Liberty then argued its UAE ties remove the federal court’s jurisdiction over the case.
• A UAE-backed vehicle agreed to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty for $500 million in January 2025.
• Sun plans to pursue his $45 million dispute in California state court after the sanctions ruling.

Tron founder Justin Sun has asked a federal judge to sanction World Liberty Financial and its lawyers. He claims the Trump-linked crypto company waited months to reveal ownership ties to the United Arab Emirates, then used those ties to challenge the court’s authority over his case.

Sun announced the request on X on Nov. 3. The move is the latest step in his lawsuit over a $45 million investment in the company.

From One Owner to 22

At the start of the case, World Liberty listed only Florida citizenship in its court disclosures, according to Sun. He said court rules required the company to identify the members of its ownership structure.

In August, the company filed an updated disclosure. It expanded the list from one entity to 22, with citizenship in Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the UAE.

That filing came six days after an Aug. 20 hearing on World Liberty’s request to move the dispute into arbitration. Sun said the judge had signaled that some claims should stay in open court while others could go to arbitration.

World Liberty then argued that its UAE citizenship removed the federal court’s jurisdiction. Its reasoning was that foreign parties now appeared on both sides of the lawsuit.

Federal courts can hear certain cases based on the citizenship of the parties, under what are called diversity rules. A company organized in the US can still take on foreign citizenship for these purposes through its owners.

Sun said his lawyers had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the arbitration request. He argued the ownership details could have settled the jurisdiction question at the very beginning.

“World Liberty was proudly American when it was selling tokens. It discovered its UAE roots only when it needed a way out of an American federal courtroom,” Sun wrote on X.

The UAE Stake Behind the Filing

The foreign ties trace back to January 2025, days before Trump’s inauguration. An investment vehicle backed by UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan agreed to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty for $500 million.

Eric Trump signed the agreement. About $187 million went to entities controlled by the Trump family, according to reporting on the deal.

Sheikh Tahnoon is a brother of the UAE president and oversees investments in artificial intelligence and advanced technology. The deal drew scrutiny after the Trump administration expanded UAE access to advanced American AI chips, and Democratic lawmakers raised conflict of interest questions.

World Liberty has denied that the investment influenced government decisions. President Trump has said he did not know about the deal and that his sons run the business.

The company’s Gold Paper says it is not organized offshore. It describes World Liberty as an American corporation working to bring decentralized finance to the US.

Sun first bought tokens in November 2024, before the UAE deal. The investment became public months before World Liberty changed its court disclosure.

Sun sued in April, claiming the company used fraud to secure his investment and unlawfully froze his tokens. World Liberty has rejected those claims and accused him of misconduct in a separate defamation lawsuit.

In his sanctions request, Sun argues that either World Liberty gave its lawyers wrong information or the lawyers failed to properly check the ownership structure. The WLFI token traded near $0.05, down 4.65% over 24 hours.

Sun said he plans to pursue the original dispute in California state court once the federal judge rules on sanctions. The judge will decide whether the late disclosure warrants penalties against the company or its legal team.

The post World Liberty Financial Went From 1 Owner to 22 in Court, Now Justin Sun Wants Sanctions appeared first on Blockonomi.

The US midterm elections expectedly brought a new wave of fluctuations for bitcoin, whose price dumped to a new seven-week low before it rebounded by almost $3,000.

With the political uncertainty now out of the way, most altcoins have turned green, led by ZEC’s major breakout above $1,300. XRP, ETH, and HYPE are also in the green, and so is NEAR.

BTC Reclaims $78K

The previous business week also ended with a massively volatile trading session prompted by the largest hack in terms of USD value in crypto history against Binance. As reports started to emerge on Friday morning that the leading exchange was compromised for an unprecedented $6.3 billion, BTC’s price dived from $81,000 to a multi-week low of $76,400.

Its initial bounce failed, and the asset quickly dipped to $76,100. It finally rebounded slightly over the weekend, and even neared $79,000 on Monday morning. However, the predominantly bearish market sentiment returned, and BTC slipped to $76,500 on Tuesday morning.

More volatility ensued after the US midterm elections, in which the Democrats won convincingly. Bitcoin’s initial reaction was a nosedive to a seven-week low of $75,600 before the bulls stepped up and pushed it to $78,500 as of now.

Its market cap has rebounded to $1.570 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts continues to flirt with 60%.

Alts Turn Green

Ethereum has jumped past $2,300 after a 2.6% daily increase. XRP has challenged the $1.30 resistance following a 3% increase, while a similar pump from HYPE has pushed it to almost $87. BNB, SOL, XMR, DOGE, and ADA are also slightly in the green, while ZEC has stolen the show with a massive 14% surge to well over $1,300.

NEAR has reclaimed the $4.00 level after a 7% increase, while ENA, PUMP, ONDO, MORPHO, and PEPE have jumped by up to 8%. BTW has rocketed by 24% daily.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has risen by 2% in a day to $2.630 trillion on CMC.

The post ZEC Explodes by 13% Daily as BTC Price Reclaims $78K After Midterm Elections: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Last week’s Binance security breach was the most devastating attack in crypto history. It exposed the risks facing exchanges and the customers who trust them with their assets.

The incident has now prompted South Korean regulators to reconsider how much customer money exchanges should keep in offline storage. The latest reports suggest that discussions are underway to raise the existing requirement significantly.

Cold Storage Rule

According to News1, the Financial Services Commission held an emergency security meeting with major virtual asset exchanges and custody firms to examine ways to strengthen asset protection. Under the existing Virtual Asset User Protection Act, exchanges are required to keep at least 80% of customer assets in cold wallets, which remain disconnected from the internet, while the rest can be held in hot wallets to facilitate withdrawals and other transactions.

However, regulators are now discussing whether the minimum should be brought closer to 99%, a level already maintained by some major platforms.

The proposed change could create major challenges, particularly for smaller exchanges that may not have the same operational capacity as larger competitors. Although cold wallets offer stronger protection against online attacks, accessing funds stored in them involves additional approval and signing procedures. This means exchanges could have less money readily available to process customer withdrawals.

The concern is not limited to inconvenience.

In a market where crypto prices are highly volatile, delayed withdrawals could prevent investors from moving their holdings when they need to sell or transfer them. If an asset is rapidly losing value, waiting for funds to be released from offline storage could leave investors exposed to further losses.

There is already an example of how this can happen. Bithumb experienced withdrawal delays of approximately 13 hours for certain altcoins in August after insufficient hot wallet balances forced the exchange to move additional assets from cold storage.

Weak Links Behind the Heist

More than $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen in the Binance breach, which the FBI has attributed to the North Korea-linked hacking group TraderTraitor. Pyongyang has denied responsibility. Kim Yo Jong, department director of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, dismissed Washington’s allegations as politically motivated.

The incident has also prompted scrutiny of how exchanges secure their internal systems. CoinEx founder Haipo Yang, for one, identified three security weaknesses at Binance that he believes could have been avoided. First, he said the exchange had not properly “isolated” its development and operations environments. Employees with access to production systems should use dedicated machines, with coding, messaging, and web browsing kept on separate devices.

His second concern was the lack of meaningful two-factor authentication for production access. The exec said a single compromised key was enough to give an attacker access to live systems. Yang suggested using AWS Session Manager with hardware security keys to ensure that one stolen credential would not be sufficient.

Questions were also raised about Binance’s multisignature security setup. Yang pointed out that the different parties involved in approving transactions were not independently verifying them. He said this defeated the purpose of having multiple signers, as compromising one node could put the entire system at risk.

The post After Historic Binance Hack, South Korea Considers 99% Cold Wallet Rule for Crypto Exchanges appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin endured another volatile trading session as the US midterm results initially rattled risk markets and pushed the cryptocurrency to its lowest price tag in almost 7 weeks at around $75,600.

Interestingly, though, this sell-off was rather short-lived, with the asset rebounding to just over $78,000 as of press time as political uncertainty faded and buyers stepped back in.

Dem Sweep Sent BTC South

As many expected, Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections, handing President Donald Trump a divided government for the final two years of his term. What was less expected was that Democrats flipped several seats in traditionally Republican states and secured majorities in both chambers.

Bitcoin’s immediate reaction was quite painful, as the asset was rejected at $77,000 and tumbled to its lowest level since September 17 at $75,600. The decline wasn’t isolated: Nasdaq 100 futures also plunged sharply in the early election reaction, while the dollar weakened and Treasury yields fell.

The concern for crypto is rather straightforward: Democratic control of Congress could complicate parts of the Trump administration’s pro-industry legislative agenda, while increasing scrutiny of areas such as technology and financial regulation. At the same time, the political outcome is likely to create gridlock because Trump retains veto power over legislation passed by Congress.

The initial fear quickly faded, though, as the largest cryptocurrency erased most of the losses and jumped to just over $78,000. According to market commentators, the political outcome reduced uncertainty, while significant call-option buying also emerged during the rebound.

Local Bottom Found?

While crypto analyst Bren believes BTC might revisit the $56,000 bear-market low, Ali Martinez shared a contrasting opinion. He highlighted bitcoin’s short-term holder realized price, which currently sits around $75,800, indicating that the latest leg down brought the asset almost directly into that zone.

Such tests during previous uptrends have historically coincided with local bottoms, Martinez added. In March 2023, bitcoin bottomed at $20,000 while the metric stood at $19,800. Similar behavior was seen in June 2023 and May 2024 before the cryptocurrency jumped higher.

Meanwhile, Lacie Zhang, Research Lead at Bitget Wallet, offered a similarly constructive assessment in comments sent directly to CryptoPotato:

“Bitcoin has fully erased its early-session decline and is trading near $77,000, up roughly 1.8% over the past 24 hours after holding above the $75,700–$76,000 support zone. The recovery suggests spot demand has been sufficient to absorb residual selling pressure from recent liquidations and ETF outflows, helping Bitcoin stabilize after the latest bout of volatility.”

Zhang added that the broader trend remains consolidative below key resistance at $80,000, but BTC needs to reclaim that level so that the market flips constructive and bullish again.

The post Bitcoin Whipsaws After Democratic Sweep: BTC Reclaims $78K appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto analyst Bren expects Bitcoin to go back to its $56,000 bear-market low before it starts a stronger recovery, with the US midterm elections adding uncertainty to an already fragile market.

But despite his short-term caution, the trader believes 2027 could bring a new all-time high for the OG cryptocurrency, potentially after a bullish first and second quarter.

$56K a Likely Bear Market Bottom?

In a post on X on November 4, Bren explained that his immediate market outlook is bearish, with BTC not being able to sustain its recovery after hitting the $78,000 level, as well as a wedge/channel formation on the Ethereum chart making him reluctant to increase his exposure to riskier assets.

In a video accompanying the X post, the trader described the current correction as being in its last stages, which would put Bitcoin’s likely bear market bottom at $56,000. According to him, the price structure that has been developing since September is very likely to produce a higher low than another extended downturn.

However, for the analyst, early next year looks very bullish, especially Q1 and Q2, and at some point, he says BTC will register a new record.

“I think sometime in 2027 Bitcoin will make a new all-time high,” he said in the video.

According to him, if the primary crypto moves back above the $80,000 to $81,000 level, then it could make many market participants more risk-on and lead to them taking bigger altcoin positions, although he expects the buying to stay low until then.

Midterm Results and Bitcoin’s Price Backdrop

Bren’s outlook came against a rapidly changing political backdrop.

“Elections are always tough. Upsets are common,” the analyst wrote on X. “And the consensus result often produces an outcome that makes us go, ‘WTF?'”

Indeed, Democrats have reclaimed both chambers of Congress in the aftermath of the November 3 midterm elections, with projected results at the time of writing giving the party 255 House seats and 53 Senate seats.

As CryptoPotato reported before, midterms in the past have produced mixed implications for crypto investors, with Bitcoin falling more than 45% within 71 days of the 2014 polls and nearly 50% in 39 days after 2018’s. However, as trader Dealer.eth pointed out, those post-election lows went on to become the bear market bottoms of their cycles, with BTC gaining an average of 54% in the 12 months after the events.

At press time, the asset was within touching distance of $78,000 after gaining almost 2% in 24 hours. Nonetheless, that small pump was not enough to mitigate the drops across other timeframes, with BTC’s 7-day chart showing it almost 4% in the red, while across one month it was down over 9% and more than 27% lower than where it was one year ago.

The post Bitcoin to $56K Before a 2027 ATH? Analyst Shares His Forecast appeared first on CryptoPotato.

One analyst has said that XRP could reach $5 to $8 in 2027, although it may have to face further weakness before the end of this year.

The forecast is based on a long-term chart pattern that he says has repeatedly guided the Ripple token through major market cycles.

Another Reset Before a Recovery

In a recent series of posts on X, ChartNerd described the $5 to $8 range as “more than achievable” and identified 2027 as the target window. However, he first expects “Q4 turbulence” and is framing the market cycle as a peak, followed by a reset, then an expansion, with the whole setup repeating after that.

The chart accompanying his posts tracks XRP from 2014 into projected 2027 and 2028 price zones, with past cycle peaks identified near 2018, 2021, and the July 2025 all-time high of $3.65. These were followed by pullbacks toward a rising lower trend bar that ChartNerd is treating as a long-term support level that hasn’t failed ever in the chart’s history.

Back in June, with XRP about 70% below its ATH, the analyst suggested that a historical bottom could form in the following months, and now, he believes the asset is getting close to another such reset. However, he also warned of a so-called “Bart pattern” unfolding after the token lost the $1.30 support level, and in his opinion, unless the price goes back to that threshold, XRP could drop to between $1.16 and $1.04.

XRP Under Pressure

At the time of writing, XRP was trading near $1.25 per CoinGecko data, having changed very little in 24 hours but shaving off more than 3% of its value in seven days. It was also down more than 16% over one month, and about 48% lower than where it was a year ago, which has contributed to keeping it 65% below its record high.

Earlier, ChartNerd had shared some caveats on XRP’s long-term performance, arguing that it may have to revisit a historical demand zone against Bitcoin before it could start another period of outperformance. As he pointed out, XRP has underperformed BTC for at least 8 years, even after several catch-up rallies that came after the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency went back to the aforementioned zone.

Another popular analyst, EGRAG CRYPTO, has made even bolder claims, setting targets for the asset Ripple calls its “North Star” of $8, $13, and $30. However, he says the only way that outlook has a chance of ever becoming real is if XRP hits a monthly close above $1.65.

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