Qatar's mediation could pave the way for renewed US-Iran dialogue, potentially stabilizing regional tensions and impacting global trade routes.

The post Qatar mediates between US and Iran to ease tensions, reopen Strait of Hormuz appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

OpenLedger's B2C shift with no-code AI tools could democratize blockchain use, fostering broader adoption and innovation in crypto markets.

The post OpenLedger plans B2C shift with no-code AI customization over next two years appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Zaitsev's new AI-cyber fund highlights the growing trend of investing in AI-driven cybersecurity solutions, reflecting industry evolution.

The post CrowdStrike CTO departs to launch $170M AI-cyber fund appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The rise of Chinese AI models could reshape global AI leadership dynamics, intensifying competition and challenging U.S. market dominance.

The post Chinese AI models close gap with US rivals, challenge Anthropic’s dominance appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Binance's AI integration could revolutionize trading efficiency and automation, but it raises concerns about user oversight and risk management.

The post Binance launches Agent OS, letting AI agents trade and pay on its infrastructure appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trump Urges Senate to Pass Crypto’s CLARITY Act, Teases More Bitcoin Buys

U.S. President Donald Trump urged lawmakers to pass the Clarity Act on Wednesday — and also hinted that the government may accumulate more bitcoin. 

After gathering with crypto executives at the White House, President Trump said that getting the Clarity Act over the line would keep the U.S. ahead of China. 

Lawmakers were hoping to get a vote on the crypto market structure bill, or Clarity Act, in August. A vote will now go ahead in September. The bill will establish a framework for distinguishing between digital assets that are securities, commodities or payment stablecoins. 

“We’re ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader in not only Bitcoin and crypto, but also technologies like prediction markets, artificial intelligence and much more,” President Trump said. 

He added: “Now we need Congress to take the next step by passing the Clarity Act — a fair version of the Clarity Act — and this landmark structure legislation. It’s a very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, and keep us ahead of everyone else.”

When asked if the U.S. government would be accumulating bitcoin, President Trump said: “It’s been talked about — it’s taken a lot of pressure off the dollar, it’s been very, very good for the dollar, and I think if [regulators] came in with recommendations, I would certainly listen.”

President Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve last year. The order states that the U.S. cannot sell any of the bitcoin it has, most of which has been seized in law enforcement operations. But the EO does not commit to buying the asset. 

Nevertheless, the president has recently spoken highly of bitcoin: Just last week, Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News that “you see people paying with bitcoin and they don’t even know about cash anymore.”

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

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

Other lawmakers said it still fell short, and a number of pro-crypto Republicans accused Democrats of deliberately playing politics and delaying the bill. 

This post Trump Urges Senate to Pass Crypto’s CLARITY Act, Teases More Bitcoin Buys first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Shortsellers Get Destroyed With $1.7B in Positions Liquidated Following BTC Price Jump 

Daily liquidations of Bitcoin positions surged on Wednesday after the price of the leading digital asset flirted with $70,000. 

Over $1.7 billion in positions held by traders shorting the biggest cryptocurrency have been closed in the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data. 

And the vast majority — $1.5 billion — of those positions were liquidated in the past four hours. 

Bitcoin on Wednesday morning traded briefly as high as $69,000 before dipping again. It was recently priced at $68,253 after jumping more than 5% over a 24-hour period. 

The price surge comes after bitcoin had largely been flat over the past 30 days. Analysts have pointed out that the coin’s volatility has been at record lows. 

Bitcoin has benefited — along with other “risk-on” assets — from news that the U.S. Treasury planned to more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. 

The announcement from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was aimed at taming yields, which had surged to levels not seen in nearly 20 years.

Lower long-term yields reduces the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally supports risk-on sentiment. 

Bitcoin may have also benefited from investors expecting pro-crypto regulatory news: President Trump on Wednesday will hold a meeting with crypto and prediction market executives. 

Despite a vote on the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act getting delayed, regulators are keen to press forward with rules that the industry has long called for. 

On Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday a proposed framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead despite the landmark legislation stalling. 

This post Bitcoin Shortsellers Get Destroyed With $1.7B in Positions Liquidated Following BTC Price Jump  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

President Trump To Host Crypto Execs at White House 

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to host crypto bigwigs at the White House Wednesday. 

The meeting — first reported last week by POLITICO — will see executives from the prediction market and digital asset space meet to discuss regulation. 

According to reports, some of the big names due to meet include executives from Coinbase, Kraken parent company Payward, and Blockchain.com. 

It hasn’t been reported which prediction markets executives will be at the meeting. 

Despite the long-awaited crypto market structure bill — the Clarity Act — being delayed, regulators are moving ahead with digital asset initiatives. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead while the landmark legislation stalls. 

Pro-crypto lawmakers had hoped that the Clarity Act passed before Congress departed for August recess. A vote will now go ahead in September.

Lawmakers started mulling over a new draft of the bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year, in July. The text tackled the issue of ethics, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto.  

Some Democrats have criticized the president for alleged conflicts of interest as the Trump family has made money from crypto ventures. President Trump and the White House have always denied any wrongdoing. 

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help America become the crypto capital of the world, and received backing from major players in the space. 

Since taking office, the president has passed a number of pro-crypto pieces of legislation. High-profile lawsuits against crypto companies have also been scrapped, and the SEC has taken a more friendly approach to watchdogging the space. 

President Trump has reported over $1.4 billion in income from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures. 

This post President Trump To Host Crypto Execs at White House  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Blasts Past $68,000 After US Treasury Doubles Debt Buybacks

Bitcoin blew past $68,000 on Wednesday, jumping nearly 3% over a 24-hour period after news dropped that the U.S. Treasury planned to more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. 

The price of Bitcoin was recently at $68,473 at 10.30am in New York after briefly touching $68,982. The sharp jump came as yields dropped. 

Over the past week, the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency is up over 3%. Bitcoin had recently been flat over a 30-day period but is now also up by close to 3%. 

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that it will more than double the size of its government debt repurchases due to fixed income markets under pressure and yields surging to levels not seen in nearly 20 years.

“This increase in buyback operation sizes reflects Treasury’s desire to provide greater liquidity support in longer-dated nominal sectors where there is consistent strong sponsorship from market participants, as evidenced by the significant volume of  high-quality offers Treasury routinely receives in longer-dated buyback operations,” the department said in a statement. 

Lower long-term yields reduces the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally supports risk-on sentiment. 

Bitcoin behaved like a “risk-on” asset on the news, surging with stocks on the news, as the U.S. dollar fell sharply. 

The leading cryptocurrency has been battered since notching a new all-time high of $126,080 in October but has still experienced the shallowest bear market — so far — in its history. 

The coin’s volatility also stands at record lows: 2025 was the least volatile year for the asset and asset manager Fidelity on Wednesday said that its volatility is now lower than 98.5% of all days in its 17-year history. 

This post Bitcoin Blasts Past $68,000 After US Treasury Doubles Debt Buybacks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Volatility May Be Down But Expect a ‘Meaningful Move’ Soon, Says Fidelity 

Bitcoin has been sitting still recently, and the coin’s volatility is now lower than 98.5% of all days in its 17-year history, according to asset manager Fidelity.

Writing on X, the firm’s digital asset arm said that spot trading volume was also at its lowest level since 2019. 

Bitcoin’s price is virtually unmoved over a 30-day period, with some analysts saying the bottom is likely in. The coin was recently trading for $65,329, nearly 50% lower than the all-time high it notched in October 2025. 

“Think of it like a coiled spring: The longer volatility remains compressed, the greater the potential for a meaningful move once it breaks,” Fidelity Digital Assets wrote. 

The asset manager pointed to a post from earlier this month, where it noted that while volatility was down, such “periods of compression don’t tend to last forever.”

Investment manager VanEck on Tuesday said that bitcoin’s thirty-day realized volatility had fallen to 27.2% annualized, down from 30.4% the prior month and less than half bitcoin’s long-run average of roughly 80%. 

It added that based on the length of prior cycles, the firm sees a bottom potentially forming anywhere between September and November of this year. 

Bitcoin’s wild price swings have dampened — and 2025 was the least volatile year for Bitcoin, according to a K33 Research report from December. 

The firm predicted that 2026 would see the biggest and oldest digital asset beat both gold and equities in terms of gains.  

Following the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in 2024, bitcoin has become available to a whole new class of investors. 

Now, more cautious retail investors — previously put off by cold storage — can buy the asset via brokerage accounts. 

Institutional investors like sovereign wealth funds and banks are also able to buy bitcoin exposure via the ETFs. 

As bitcoin’s market cap has grown, the asset’s volatility has come down significantly, and now experienced less wild price swings than in the past. 

So far, bitcoin’s bear market is the shallowest it’s had in its 16-year history. 

This post Bitcoin’s Volatility May Be Down But Expect a ‘Meaningful Move’ Soon, Says Fidelity  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin accounted for 77.4% of the $1.297 billion in inflows recorded across US Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana crypto ETPs from Aug. 17 through Aug. 19, making the rebound heavily Bitcoin-weighted in dollar terms.

Farside Investors' Bitcoin table shows $297.5 million of net inflows on Aug. 17, $189.3 million on Aug. 18, and $517.2 million on Aug. 19. That puts the three-session Bitcoin total at $1.004 billion.

The Ethereum table shows $30.9 million, $71.4 million, and $186.8 million across the same sessions, for $289.1 million in total. Solana funds recorded zero, $1.6 million, and $2.5 million, respectively, for a three-session total of $4.1 million.

Across the three sessions, Bitcoin funds averaged $334.7 million per day, roughly 4.1 times the $81.0 million historical daily average displayed by Farside. Ethereum averaged about $96.4 million per day, roughly 4.3 times its displayed $22.6 million average. Solana averaged about $1.4 million, roughly 24% of its displayed $5.6 million average.

The figures show that Ethereum also participated in the rebound, although Bitcoin attracted most of the dollars. Solana's recent pace remained well below its own table average.

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The Bitcoin inflows were concentrated in three products. BlackRock's IBIT contributed $588.5 million over Aug. 17-19, while Fidelity's FBTC added $198.2 million. ARK 21Shares' ARKB supplied $111.6 million across the three sessions, including $77.7 million on Aug. 19.

BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) led Ethereum with $212.7 million over the three sessions. Among Solana products, Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) supplied $7.2 million across Aug. 18-19, partly offset by a $3.1 million Grayscale Solana Trust ETF outflow on Aug. 19.

The comparison has an important limit: the tables track different numbers of products and do not provide aggregate category assets under management. They also may not capture the entire US crypto ETP universe. Morgan Stanley, for example, launched its Ethereum Trust and Solana Trust on July 28, although neither product currently appears in Farside's corresponding flow tables.

The historical-average comparison is therefore a rough check on each group's pace rather than a full AUM-adjusted demand measure.

Across the three sessions, both Bitcoin and Ethereum accelerated sharply relative to their historical daily averages, while Solana remained below its own.

The post Bitcoin grabs 77% of $1.3 billion crypto fund surge as BlackRock leads the rebound appeared first on CryptoSlate.

President Donald Trump said on Aug. 20 that the US is considering accumulating sizable amounts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Current law gives his administration several ways to increase federal crypto holdings, though no public authority gives Treasury a funded program for multibillion-dollar open-market purchases.

For Bitcoin, Trump's 2025 executive order already directs Treasury and Commerce to develop budget-neutral acquisition strategies. For non-Bitcoin assets, the same order limits additional acquisitions to forfeiture and civil-money-penalty channels unless further executive or legislative action occurs.

A second executive order could remove that restriction for assets such as Ethereum, XRP, and Solana. Congress would still control federal appropriations and any investment powers that existing statutes reserve to lawmakers.

The 2025 order also requires implementation to comply with applicable law and the availability of appropriations, language that sets the boundary around Trump's options. A budget-neutral strategy still needs a lawful source of assets or funds, plus authority for Treasury to use them.

The White House's July 2025 digital assets report said work on operationalizing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile would continue. The public report identified no approved Treasury program for open-market Bitcoin purchases.

Forfeitures, gifts and taxes offer the clearest executive routes

Qualifying Bitcoin obtained through final criminal or civil forfeiture enters the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, while qualifying non-Bitcoin assets enter the Digital Asset Stockpile.

In January 2026, the US obtained legal title to more than $400 million in cryptocurrencies and other assets tied to the Helix mixer case.

Victim restitution, law-enforcement obligations, and forfeiture statutes can also reduce the amount Treasury retains. Trump cannot turn forfeiture into a scheduled acquisition program with a target purchase size.

Section 321(d) of Title 31 gives the Treasury secretary authority to accept, hold, and administer gifts of real or personal property when they aid Treasury's work.

Bitcoin qualifies as personal property for federal tax purposes. Treasury now administers the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, giving the department a plausible statutory basis to accept donated BTC into the federal framework.

A supplemental executive order could explicitly recognize gifts as an approved source for the reserve.

That same order could open the Digital Asset Stockpile to donated non-Bitcoin assets. Trump's current order blocks those additions outside forfeiture and civil-money-penalty proceedings until further executive or legislative action occurs.

Section 6311 of the Internal Revenue Code lets Treasury receive taxes through commercially acceptable means the Secretary chooses under Treasury regulations.

Federal taxpayers currently pay in dollars, and the IRS does not accept digital assets. Treasury could explore regulations that permit Bitcoin payments under Section 6311. The department would also need to determine whether it could keep received BTC in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

The Bitcoin for America Act would expressly allow federal taxes to be paid in Bitcoin and would direct received BTC into the reserve, but the bill has not become law.

These routes could expand federal crypto holdings through assets the Treasury receives directly.

Ideas that run into statutes written by Congress

Treasury could sell ETH, SOL, XRP, or other stockpile assets and direct the proceeds toward BTC, but federal fiscal law complicates that transaction because government receipts generally flow back into Treasury unless another statute authorizes their reuse.

The American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 would expressly authorize Treasury to sell, exchange, or convert non-Bitcoin stockpile assets and use the proceeds to increase the Bitcoin reserve or reduce federal debt.

The Exchange Stabilization Fund presents a similar obstacle. Section 5302 authorizes Treasury to deal in gold, foreign exchange, instruments of credit and securities for exchange-stability purposes.

The BITCOIN Act would add Bitcoin to that statute and establish a program to purchase 200,000 BTC per year for five years. Congress has not yet enacted those provisions.

Tariff revenue also requires congressional authority before Treasury can use it for crypto purchases. Federal receipts generally enter Treasury, and the Constitution gives Congress control over appropriations.

A president can direct agencies to study a tariff-funded Bitcoin program, but spending those receipts on BTC requires legal authority covering that purpose.

Gold faces two statutory barriers. Treasury gold certificates carry a congressionally fixed value of $42 and two-ninths of a dollar per fine troy ounce. Proceeds from Treasury gold sales are legally directed toward reducing the national debt.

The BITCOIN Act would rewrite the gold-certificate framework and use part of the resulting remittance to finance Bitcoin purchases.

The Federal Reserve offers no current workaround. Its open-market authority covers assets defined by the Federal Reserve Act, and crypto falls outside the current framework. Former Fed chair Jerome Powell previously said the Fed lacks authority to own Bitcoin under existing law.

Trump's proposed sovereign wealth fund also lacks a funded general investment mandate. His February 2025 order instructed Treasury and Commerce to design a plan covering funding, governance and investment strategy. The order made implementation subject to applicable law and appropriations.

The platinum-coin statute reaches the same fiscal boundary. Treasury has broad discretion over the denomination of platinum coins, but minting one does not authorize a Bitcoin purchase. Congress still controls the legal purpose for which federal funds may be spent.

Congress determines whether Bitcoin accumulation becomes a sovereign bid

The bull case requires lawmakers to turn one of these concepts into explicit purchase authority. A BITCOIN Act-style program could create scheduled acquisitions, identify a financing mechanism, and give Treasury clear statutory authority.

A narrower bill could authorize stockpile conversions, Bitcoin tax payments, or another dedicated revenue channel.

That framework would give markets a federal buyer whose scale and cadence investors could model. Extending the program to other crypto would require additional rules covering eligible assets and funding.

The bear case leaves the federal government accumulating crypto through irregular channels. Forfeitures would continue adding assets when cases conclude, gifts could expand holdings if Treasury formally adopts that route, and tax-payment rules could remain under study.

Under that outcome, Trump's latest comments would produce no scheduled federal purchase program. Treasury holdings could still increase, but their size would depend on assets received through specific legal channels.

Trump has room to broaden how crypto enters federal custody. A recurring multibillion-dollar buying program would require Congress to provide the authority, funding mechanism, or both.

The post Trump wants the US to become a Bitcoin whale, but Congress controls the wallet appeared first on CryptoSlate.

GnosisDAO has approved a plan to retire Gnosis Chain’s standalone Layer 1, a shift that will unlock roughly 350,000 staked GNO.

Under GIP-153, Gnosis Chain will become a zero-knowledge-proven Ethereum Economic Zone rollup that settles directly to Ethereum every block. The network will eventually retire its independent validator set and inherit security from Ethereum validators instead.

That change would unlock about 350,000 GNO currently committed to staking, equivalent to roughly 27% of the token’s circulating supply. The tokens are already counted as circulating supply, but ending staking would make them liquid again and remove their current role in securing Gnosis Chain.

GNO rallied 10% to as high as about $136 around the governance decision, its highest level since May, CryptoSlate data showed. The move came despite the prospect of a sizable increase in liquid GNO and reflected investor attention on Gnosis’ deeper integration with Ethereum.

The approval is a direction-level mandate rather than a final launch decision. GnosisDAO did not approve funding or a completed technical design, and the first EEZ version is targeted for around December 2026 or January 2027, depending on required infrastructure being ready.

GNO loses its staking role as Gnosis turns to Ethereum

The transition will also force Gnosis to rethink GNO’s economics after staking disappears.

Gnosis currently pays validator rewards from its treasury because network fees cover only a fraction of its security costs. GIP-153 estimates that model dilutes non-stakers by about 2.3% annually. Once the validator set is retired, the staking subsidy would end and Gnosis intends to link GNO instead to revenue generated by the rollup.

The exact mechanism remains unresolved. Gnosis is considering options including fee sharing or GNO buybacks tied to network revenue, with a separate governance proposal expected after the economics of operating the rollup become clearer.

The broader bet is that Gnosis can give applications direct access to Ethereum’s liquidity without requiring users to bridge assets between separate networks. Its planned synchronous composability would allow a Gnosis contract to call an Ethereum contract and use the result within the same atomic transaction.

Martin Koeppelmann, Co-Founder and CEO, told CryptoSlate:

“Ethereum is not scaling into one economy; it's scaling into a hundred islands. This proposal is Gnosis choosing the other path. After the transition, anyone with a mainnet wallet will be able to use a Gnosis dapp in a single transaction, and a Gnosis account will be able to use anything on Ethereum. Same block, no bridges.”

Notably, several DeFi projects, including Aave, Spark, Fluid, CoW Swap, Safe, Centrifuge and other projects have committed to building consumer-focused products in the environment.

The transition comes with a decentralization trade-off. Gnosis Ltd. is expected to operate the sequencer that initially orders transactions and produces blocks, while proofs and settlement move to Ethereum. GIP-153 explicitly describes the move toward a less decentralized execution layer as deliberate.

For GNO holders, the change therefore replaces one established source of token utility with an unfinished revenue model while simultaneously releasing a large block of staked tokens back into liquid markets.

The post A crypto network just voted to abandon its standalone blockchain and unlock 27% of its token supply appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is showing some of the strongest capitulation signals of the current downturn, suggesting the selloff may be entering a later stage even as the market offers little evidence of an imminent rebound.

Eight of the 12 indicators tracked by VanEck are currently flashing capitulation, while all 12 reached extreme levels at some point during the past three months.

The measures are designed to capture unusually severe market stress and selling pressure, conditions that have often clustered around the later stages of previous Bitcoin bear markets.

The readings come as Bitcoin trades around $65,000 after spending recent weeks trying to establish a floor above its June low of $58,500 following a sharp decline from its October 2025 peak of over $126,000.

The downturn is now entering its 10th month, bringing it closer to the duration of previous major bear markets.

Excluding the unusually short 2011 decline, the past three major drawdowns averaged about 12.7 months to reach their troughs, placing October or November within the historical window in which an accumulation phase could begin.

Yet VanEck's latest ChainCheck analysis suggests capitulation is a poor tool for timing that turn.

Bitcoin gained an average of 12.8% during the 90 days after eight to 12 capitulation indicators were triggered, below its broader 15.2% baseline return. Over 180 days, returns averaged 32%, again trailing the 36.3% baseline.

The signals only outperformed over a one-year horizon, a result VanEck cautioned was based on relatively few distinct episodes because many of the 115 observations overlapped.

The historical record points out that Bitcoin may be moving deeper into a bottoming process without giving investors a reliable timetable for when that process will translate into higher prices.

Options traders are still paying heavily for protection

The options market is showing considerably more anxiety than Bitcoin’s subdued spot trading would suggest.

VanEck data show 30-day realized volatility fell to an annualized 27.2%, far below Bitcoin’s long-term average near 80%, as the cryptocurrency traded within a relatively narrow $62,265 to $66,509 range during the measurement period.

Yet spending on downside protection increased sharply.

Premiums paid for Bitcoin puts climbed 42% over the past month to $551.8 million, while call premiums fell 10% to $237.6 million. That pushed VanEck’s put-to-call premium ratio to 2.30, a reading higher than 99% of observations since 2021 and more than three times its historical average of about 0.71.

The imbalance shows investors devoting unusually large amounts of capital to downside insurance even as realized volatility has collapsed.

However, outstanding positions tell a more complicated story.

Call open interest increased 5% to $19.1 billion, while put open interest fell 11.5% to $10.8 billion, pushing the put-to-call open-interest ratio down to 0.57 from 0.67.

That leaves an unusual divergence: outstanding options positions have shifted further toward calls even as put spending has surged.

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VanEck said the discrepancy may partly reflect older, shorter-dated puts expiring alongside the higher relative cost of new downside protection. Fewer put contracts can therefore remain outstanding even as investors spend considerably more to obtain protection.

One-month call implied volatility fell to 32.7%, near the bottom of VanEck’s readings since 2021, while put implied volatility remained around 40%.

The options market is then pricing relatively subdued overall moves while still demanding a substantial premium for protection against the risk that Bitcoin’s apparent stability breaks to the downside.

Bitcoin is stabilizing despite a difficult macro backdrop

That reluctance to abandon downside protection comes as Bitcoin attempts to form a floor against conditions VanEck described as unusually challenging.

The 30-year US Treasury yield has climbed above 5.3%, reaching its highest level since 2007, while the conflict between the US and Iran has stretched into a fifth month. Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has also sold Bitcoin this year to help fund dividends on its preferred stock.

Bitcoin has so far absorbed those pressures without revisiting its June low of under $60,000.

Data from CoinGlass shows that the flagship digital asset has risen nearly 3% this month, even as spot trading activity weakened considerably. The 30-day spot volume fell 27%, which is near levels last seen during the 2023 bear market.

The apparent stabilization has also come despite renewed distribution from longer-term holders. Coins held for more than one year fell by roughly 356,000 BTC over the previous 30 days, while the share of supply held by those investors slipped below 60%.

At the same time, institutional fund flows have significantly improved.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products attracted more than $1 billion of net inflows over the past 30 days. That reversed the prior month’s significant $2.4 billion of outflows.

The renewed ETP inflows have provided a source of demand even as broader spot activity remains unusually thin and longer-term holders continue to distribute coins.

Bitcoin's ability to remain above its June low through those competing pressures gives the market the appearance of an asset trying to establish a floor, but the options market shows traders remain unwilling to assume that floor will hold without another test.

The post Bitcoin flashes 8 capitulation signals, but traders just spent $552 million protecting against another crash appeared first on CryptoSlate.

In August 2026, Hyperscale Data sold approximately 686 Bitcoin for about $43.4 million, then used part of the proceeds to repay all of its Bitcoin-backed loans on Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol, according to its quarterly filing.

The repayment released the pledged collateral and left the company with no outstanding Morpho borrowings, removing the immediate loan-related collateral exposure.

The result resolves one source of financing pressure, but leaves a larger problem flagged by the company. Hyperscale said its available liquidity is not expected to cover operating requirements, obligations, and planned capital expenditures for the next 12 months, raising doubts about its ability to continue as a going concern.

As of June 30, Hyperscale had roughly $16 million of Morpho borrowings secured by cbBTC with a carrying value of about $25.4 million. After the quarter ended, it received another $31.6 million in aggregate net proceeds from additional Bitcoin-backed borrowing through Morpho.

Hyperscale then sold the 686 Bitcoin in August 2026, and the filing says only that a portion of the $43.4 million in proceeds repaid the Morpho balances in full.

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The completed repayment is the key change from Aug. 6, when an earlier 150.5-Bitcoin sale happened. The filing says Hyperscale received the additional borrowing after June 30, before eliminating the DeFi debt altogether in August.

Hyperscale reported $36.8 million in cash and cash equivalents against $201.7 million in current liabilities as of June 30. For the first half of 2026, it recorded a $49.1 million consolidated net loss and used $9.9 million of cash in operating activities.

Management expects the roughly 20-megawatt deployment at its Michigan AI data center to require more than $100 million of investment over time. The timing and amount depend partly on financing availability, meaning the Morpho repayment removed a near-term collateral obligation without resolving how the build will be funded.

Hyperscale resolved its Morpho exposure, but the company must still raise or generate enough capital to meet its obligations and complete the Michigan deployment while operating under a going-concern warning.

The post Bitcoin treasury Hyperscale sells 686 BTC to clear loans but says cash won’t cover next 12 months appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Coinbase is folding its derivatives venue, Coinbase International Exchange, into Deribit on 9 September 2026. For customers of that venue this is a booking exercise rather than a server move: open orders are cancelled, live positions are settled at the mark price, accrued funding is paid out and balances are booked to newly created Deribit subaccounts. Only then are the positions rebuilt, at the same settlement price, through specially flagged migration trades.

Anyone who does not want to take that route has an earlier date in the calendar than the completion day. And anyone with no exposure to crypto derivatives still learns something from this case that happens somewhere in the crypto market every quarter: what becomes of your capital when the venue underneath you is swapped out. The same question arises with every delisting, every chain migration and every exchange closure, and the answer almost always follows the same pattern. If you prefer to trade perpetual futures on-chain anyway, our comparison of the best perp DEXs is worth a look first, because custody is solved differently there than on a centralised derivatives exchange.

What happens technically when Coinbase International Exchange merges into Deribit

Coinbase has run two separate worlds for derivatives for years. In the United States the regulated business sits in its own structure, outside it in Coinbase International Exchange, or CIE. Deribit was added by acquisition; industry media put the deal at about $2.9 billion. Running two order books for the same product class ties up liquidity in two places, and ending that is exactly what the merger is meant to do.

Completion is scheduled for 9 September 2026 and, according to the reporting, takes about 30 minutes during which trading is suspended. The sequence inside that window matters, because each individual step has a different consequence for customers.

The four steps in the migration window

• Orders are cancelled. Everything sitting open in the book on the cut-off date disappears. Limit orders, stop orders and hedges you parked there no longer exist afterwards and have to be placed again on the new platform.
• Positions are settled at the mark price. The basis is the exchange reference valuation, not the last traded price. Profit and loss are locked in at that point and accrued funding is settled.
• Balances move to Deribit subaccounts. Whatever is left after settlement is transferred to the newly provided accounts.
• The positions are restored. Through so-called matched migration trades, offsetting trades at an identical settlement price that are flagged as migration in the history.
• The move itself costs nothing. No fees apply to the migration trades; from your first own trade afterwards, Deribit’s fee model applies.

Economically you are meant to hold the same position at the end as before. In accounting and tax terms, however, the process is not neutral, and that matters further down.

28 August is the exit deadline, 9 September the completion day

The number that belongs in the calendar is not the migration date. Anyone who does not want to be carried along has to act beforehand: close positions and close the CIE account. The trade publication crypto.news gives 28 August 2026 for this. Coinbase itself is vaguer on its own help page and says customers should close their accounts before the transition date, while elsewhere referring to two weeks’ notice, which would point to 26 August.

That discrepancy is real and you should not round it away. In practice: 26 August is the safe date, 28 August the one most recently quoted. Anyone who does nothing by then is treated as consenting and will be migrated. A third date sits in between: from 31 August the Deribit subaccounts are provided in read-only mode so that access can be set up and processes tested. Trading there only starts after 9 September.

The timeline at a glance

• 26 to 28 August 2026: last chance to exit. Close positions, withdraw collateral, close the account.
• 31 August 2026: Deribit subaccounts available in read-only mode. Time for new credentials and tests.
• 9 September 2026: completion, with about 30 minutes of suspended trading. Everything runs through Deribit afterwards.

Anyone who sees such chains more often will recognise the template. We went through it most recently for the crypto exchange deadlines running to the end of August, where several venues had set withdrawal dates at the same time.

Mark-price settlement locks in profit and loss on a fixed day

The mark price is the exchange-calculated reference valuation of a position, used to work out collateral and liquidation thresholds. As a rule it does not match the last traded price exactly, because it is smoothed from index and term-structure data. That is precisely the value that becomes the settlement basis on 9 September.

For you this means three things. First, a profit or loss that existed only on paper until then is locked in. Second, accrued funding, the periodic balancing payment between the long and short side of perpetuals, is settled at that moment. Third, a timestamp is created at which a disposal took place without you having made a trading decision.

Anyone holding a large position who cannot control the mark price for the moment in question carries execution risk in a window in which they cannot trade themselves. That is the strongest reason at least to run the numbers on a voluntary exit before 28 August instead of drifting into the date.

API keys and margin loans do not survive the move

Two things explicitly do not come along. Existing International Exchange API keys do not work on Deribit. Anyone trading automatically has to generate new credentials before 9 September and swap the endpoints in their software. A bot still running unchanged on the morning of 9 September will find no counterparty once the switch happens.

Margin loans are the second point and the more awkward one. These loans do not migrate and have to be repaid before the move. Anyone holding a position on borrowed capital therefore has to rebuild their financing alongside the technology. After the move, accounts start in Deribit’s cross standard margin model.

If you use trading software or signal providers that reach into exchange endpoints, a switch like this is the classic moment when something quietly breaks. Access that has run unchanged for years is no evidence that it will survive the cut-off date.

Cross standard margin: the collateral model changes with the venue

One detail easily lost in the excitement about dates: along with the venue, the rulebook by which your collateral is valued changes too. Cross margin means all positions in an account are covered from a shared collateral pool. If one position goes under water, it draws buffer away from the others. Isolated margin would secure each position separately and, in the worst case, liquidate only that one.

Anyone who has worked with a particular combination of leverage, collateral and liquidation distance should recalculate after the migration whether the same position has the same buffer in the new model. This is no formality, because liquidation thresholds decide in the volatile moment whether a position survives. If in doubt, check immediately after 9 September which margin mode is set for your account, rather than finding out during the first violent price swing.

Trade history: roughly twelve months of residual access through the old endpoints

Past trades from the International Exchange do not appear on Deribit. According to the information available they remain retrievable for about twelve months through the old interfaces, and not reliably after that. Anyone who needs their history for accounting, for a tax return or for their own analysis should export it while it is still reachable.

This is the point at which an institutional process becomes instructive for ordinary retail investors. Trading data belongs to the things you only miss once the tax office asks. A tool that collects transactions continuously, instead of hunting them down at the exchange at year-end, takes exactly that risk out.

For retail investors in Germany, nothing changes in the Coinbase app

Important for context, so that nobody panics: the parties affected are the institutional customers of Coinbase International Exchange. The Coinbase app that retail investors in Germany use to buy bitcoin or ether is untouched by this move. Anyone holding an account there has nothing to do by 28 August, no position to close and no balance to withdraw.

The value of the case therefore lies in the mechanism rather than in your own exposure. It shows with unusual clarity what an exchange may do with your capital when its structure changes, and how short the deadlines for it can be. The same logic hits you as a retail investor as soon as a token is delisted, a platform leaves the market or a project switches its chain.

Exchange merger, delisting, chain migration: three deadline types with the same pattern

Deadlines run constantly in the crypto market that at first glance have nothing to do with one another. Anyone who knows the shared blueprint does not have to understand each individual case from scratch.

The venue disappears

Two exchanges merge or one closes. Your position remains economically intact but is forcibly settled and set up again. Window for action: before the completion day. The Coinbase case is the textbook example.

The token disappears from the venue

With a delisting, trading ends first and withdrawals later. There is often a month between the two dates, and anyone who misses the second one has a hard time getting at their balance. How this double deadline is constructed is something we broke down in detail in delisting at a crypto exchange.

The project switches chain

Here the venue stays but the token is swapped for a new one. Anyone who misses the swap deadline ends up holding units on a chain nobody settles any more. The move of VANRY to Base in September 2026 follows exactly this scheme.

What all three cases share is that the decisive deadline falls earlier than the event making the headlines. Anyone who notes down the completion date has regularly noted it down too late.

Why a forced settlement pins down your tax year

This section is general context and does not replace tax advice. The mechanism can still be described clearly. When an exchange settles your position on a fixed date, a realised result with a date attached comes into existence. You did not choose that moment, but it counts.

With derivatives such as perpetual futures a result is realised on every close anyway; the forced settlement merely shifts the moment into a year in which you might not have wanted to trade at all. With spot holdings the effect is more delicate, because in Germany the holding period is part of what determines the treatment of privately held cryptocurrencies: a forced sale shortly before a deadline expires can cost you a position you deliberately wanted to hold for longer.

In practice one thing above all follows from this: document the process while the data is available. Settlement price, timestamp, funding payments and the flag marking a migration trade belong in your records. Once the history is no longer retrievable in twelve months, you will not reconstruct it. For capturing such events as they happen, a portfolio tracker with tax reporting is the pragmatic route.

How to tell whether an exchange deadline really affects you

Not every report about a cut-off date demands a reaction. The following checks separate the two in a few minutes.

1. Establish which product is involved. A report about a derivatives exchange does not concern you if you only trade spot there. In the Coinbase case that means, concretely: International Exchange is something different from the Coinbase app.
2. Check the legal relationship, not the brand. Large providers run several entities with different customer bases. What matters is which entity your contract is with, which is stated in your account settings or in the terms of use.
3. Look for the earlier of the dates given. When a notice names several dates, the latest is almost always completion and the earliest is your deadline.
4. Check inside your account, not in the press. Binding notices are the ones in the logged-in area and by email from the operator. Media reports supply the context, but the operator supplies the version that applies to you.
5. Check the technical connection. Anyone using interfaces, bots or recurring orders has a changeover to complete on top of the deadline, and nobody does it for them automatically.

This check takes less time than reading most announcements and answers the only question that counts: do you have to have done something by a particular day or not?

What is still open and where you should check for yourself

Two points cannot be settled conclusively from a distance. First, the exact exit cut-off between 26 and 28 August is worded differently depending on the source; what is binding is what your account says. Second, Deribit had not mirrored the move in its own announcement channel at the time of research, which is no contradiction of Coinbase’s account, but equally provides no third independent confirmation.

Anyone affected should open Coinbase’s help page on the merger while logged in and read the dates there against this. The most detailed public write-up of the mechanics is in the reporting by crypto.news.

Coinbase-Deribit merger: what to take away

1. First establish which entity you are actually a customer of. If you trade derivatives and are not sure whether your exchange is regulated and suitable for the German market, check it against our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges before a deadline forces a decision on you.
2. Pull the deadline forward by two weeks. With every announced changeover the earlier date applies, not the completion day. Closing positions yourself takes liquidity and time; which venues are suited to that is shown by the exchange comparison.
3. Secure your trade history before it disappears. Export trades, funding payments and settlement prices continuously instead of once a year. A tool from the crypto tax software and portfolio tracker comparison does that in the background.

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

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk.

Bitcoin and Ethereum took the headlines on August 19, but the third major smart contract platform quietly came along: Solana (SOL) rose 6.6 percent to $82.23 and is up 8.8 percent on the week, at a market capitalization of $47.9 billion and daily volume of $3.4 billion (CoinMarketCap, August 19, 2026, 21:45 CEST).

That puts SOL at its highest level in weeks, and the move has more under the hood than pure beta. Here is what is driving it, which zones traders are watching, and how to buy through regulated venues if that is your plan.

What is carrying the Solana price right now

The macro tailwind. The August 19 rally came out of Washington: doubled Treasury buybacks, new SEC token rules, a crypto summit at the White House. The mechanics, including billions in liquidated shorts, are in our market briefing for August 19. As the second-largest smart contract platform, Solana is among the first beneficiaries when capital climbs the risk ladder.

The meme economy runs on Solana. A large share of meme coin trading happens on Solana, from Pump.fun to the community tokens. Their comeback on August 19 (Pump.fun +11 percent, BOME +13.5 percent) directly means more transactions, more fees and more activity on the chain. Historically, rising usage lifts demand for SOL itself.

ETH strength rubs off. Ethereum jumped 9.7 percent to $2,098 the same day. When the market's number 2 runs, investors traditionally rotate into the direct platform competitors as well, Solana first among them.

The numbers at a glance

Source: CoinMarketCap.

Which zones matter now

No crystal ball, just mechanics: after a breakout day, two zones decide the follow-through.

Above: the area around $85 to $90, where SOL was rejected repeatedly in early summer. That is where the sell orders of buyers waiting to get out at break-even sit. A daily close above it would signal the market has digested that overhang.

Below: the breakout zone around $77 to $80 that launched the current move. Retests of that zone are normal after squeeze days and not a warning sign in themselves; only a decisive slide below it would invalidate the breakout.

For the record: these are observation zones drawn from the chart, not a forecast. The market decides whether they hold, not the article.

Buying SOL: the regulated routes

Solana is one of the coins consistently available at the large licensed venues, so the route for buyers is short:

Buying Solana — where it works for you

Venue	Status	Note (as of Aug 19, 2026)
Bitget	global exchange	deep liquidity, wide altcoin range
Coinbase	MiCA-licensed (Luxembourg)	€15 in Bitcoin for new users after the first trade via referral link
Bitpanda	MiCA-licensed (Austria)	football ticket giveaway (FC Bayern, Arsenal, AC Milan, FC Basel) for €50+ investments until Aug 24

EU users: Bitget is not onboarding EU clients pending its MiCA application; use Coinbase or Bitpanda instead. All venues with fees in the exchange comparison. As of: Aug 19, 2026.

Disclosure: links to Bitget, Coinbase and Bitpanda are partner links. If you buy through them, CryptoTicker receives a commission at no extra cost to you.

FAQ

Why is Solana rising today? SOL benefits from the market surge after the doubled US Treasury buybacks, the new SEC token rules and the White House crypto summit, plus the comeback of meme coins, whose trading largely runs on Solana.

Where is the Solana price right now? At $82.23 on August 19, 2026, 21:45 CEST, up 6.6 percent in 24 hours (CoinMarketCap).

Is Solana available on regulated exchanges? Yes. SOL trades at MiCA-licensed venues including Coinbase and Bitpanda, with savings plan options at several providers.

What is the biggest risk in buying SOL after a day like this? Part of the August 19 move was mechanical (market-wide short liquidations). Such moves can retrace sharply into the breakout zone; buyers should budget for pullbacks of several percent or spread their entry over time.

Sources

• CoinMarketCap: Solana price data (Aug 19, 2026, 21:45 CEST)
• The Block: Bitcoin hits $69,000, ether jumps 10% as Treasury buybacks, SEC crypto proposal fuel market rally (Aug 19, 2026)
• U.S. Department of the Treasury: Treasury Announces Increased Sizes of Nominal Long-End Liquidity Support Buybacks Beginning September 9 (Aug 18, 2026)

As of: August 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice.

Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed editorially before publication. All figures were checked against the primary sources linked in the text. The featured image was AI-generated.

Anyone staking ether today waits first. On 17 August 2026, 2,229,411 ETH sat in Ethereum's deposit queue, spread across 37,498 individual deposits. Those deposits do not get their turn immediately, because the protocol activates only a firmly capped amount per unit of time. That works out at roughly 39 days in which your capital is tied up and not yet producing any reward.

In the opposite direction almost nothing was happening at the same moment. The exit queue held exactly two validators with 64 ETH between them. The way in is currently long, then, the way out practically clear. cryptoticker.io carried out this survey itself on 17 August 2026.

The Ethereum Staking Queue: What Sits Between Deposit and First Reward

Staking on Ethereum means that ether is lodged as collateral and the associated validator takes part in running the network in return. The deposit alone is not enough for that. Between the moment the balance reaches the deposit contract and the moment the validator actually takes part and receives rewards, there is a queue.

This queue is not a provider's administrative step but a rule of the protocol. Ethereum deliberately limits how quickly the set of active validators may change. The reason lies in the network's security: if very many participants could enter or leave at the same time, the composition of the validator set could be shifted substantially in a short space of time. The limit makes such jumps impossible and spreads every change across days or weeks.

For you as an investor that has a very concrete consequence. Time in the queue is dead time. The balance has already left your own account but is not yet working. Anyone with an annual reward in mind who plans an entry point around it is calculating too optimistically without this lead time. How differently providers handle this phase can be read in our overview of staking platforms compared.

The Survey of 17 August 2026: 2.23 Million ETH Across 37,498 Deposits

The basis is our own queries made directly against the chain, not figures taken over from a report. The basis is a public beacon node providing the standard interface of the Ethereum consensus layer. We queried the state of the network at slot 15,012,295, which corresponds to epoch 469,134 and to 17 August 2026 at 12:59:23 UTC.

The method in one sentence: we queried the pending deposits, the exiting validators, the pending partial withdrawals and all validator balances, formed the active validator set from the committee assignments of the same epoch, and intersected the balances against that set. In doing so we checked 2,336,544 validator balances, 898,493 active validators, 37,498 pending deposits and 35 pending partial withdrawals. Every query returned HTTP 200.

How the 37,498 Deposits Break Down

The number of deposits is not the same as the number of new validators, and that matters for interpretation. 34,652 entries are for exactly 32 ETH, the minimum amount for a standalone validator. Behind those sit new validators with high probability. Alongside them are 216 entries above 31 ETH, 80 above 1,024 ETH, 73 above 1,800 ETH, 62 above 1,900 ETH and 59 above 1,920 ETH. Amounts of this order have been possible since the Pectra upgrade, because a single validator may hold up to 2,048 ETH. Such amounts are as a rule top-ups of existing validators or consolidations, not new entrants. At the lower end there are 58 entries above 1 ETH and 56 above 0.005 ETH.

For the waiting time, however, this distinction plays no part. The protocol measures the queue in ether and not in heads. Whether 2.23 million ETH is made up of 70,000 small or 3,000 large deposits changes nothing about the duration.

The Activation Limit of 256 ETH per Epoch: Why Throughput Is Capped

The bottleneck has a name and an exact value. The protocol limits the amount of balance that may be newly activated per epoch. We queried the applicable value through the same node's configuration interface rather than setting it from memory: the upper limit is 256 ETH per epoch. An epoch comprises 32 slots of twelve seconds each, so it lasts 6.4 minutes. That gives 225 epochs in a day.

This upper limit is a cap and not the base figure. In principle throughput follows the size of the network and amounts to one 65,536th of the total active balance. At the 42,240,256 ETH we measured, that would give 644.54 ETH per epoch. Because the cap applies, 256 ETH of that remain. The network has therefore grown well past the point at which the fixed upper limit binds. The limit becomes relatively tighter with every further increase, without changing in absolute terms. The technical derivation of this limit is set out in the protocol's associated improvement proposal, which is publicly available: EIP-7251.

57,600 ETH a Day: How the Queue Becomes Roughly 39 Days of Waiting

The waiting time follows from these two figures without further assumptions. 256 ETH per epoch times 225 epochs gives 57,600 ETH that can be newly activated each day. Divide the measured 2,229,411 ETH by that daily throughput and 38.7 days stand on paper.

This figure describes the state at a single moment and is not a forecast. The value holds exactly if not one further deposit arrives from the moment of measurement. That is precisely what does not happen. As long as new deposits keep coming in daily, the end of the queue shifts further back, and anyone joining today waits longer than the calculated value. If, conversely, hardly anything more arrives, the backlog clears faster. The 38.7 days are therefore to be read as an order of magnitude and not as a date.

The Exit Queue Stands at Two Validators: 64 ETH Waiting to Leave

More remarkable than the crush at the entrance is the finding on the other side. At the time of measurement exactly two validators were exiting, 64 ETH between them. Measured against 42.24 million ETH of active balance, that is a share which can no longer meaningfully be expressed as a percentage.

In practice that means: anyone ending a validator today stands in no queue worth mentioning. The protocol's fixed lock-up period remains, which is covered further below, but no backlog caused by other leavers. For liquidity planning this is the more important of the two figures. The exit queue has repeatedly been the point in the past at which staking turned unpleasant, because the way out dragged on for weeks. That situation does not currently apply.

What the finding does not say: it says nothing about the intentions of the remaining participants and permits no conclusion about how long this state will last. An empty exit queue can fill within a few days if many participants want to leave at once. The finding is a snapshot of the present and not an assurance about the future.

898,493 Validators and 42.24 Million ETH: The Active Stock as a Benchmark

To place the two queues, you need the quantity they relate to. At the time of measurement, 898,493 validators were active. Their total balance stood at 42,240,256 ETH. That gives an average balance of 47.01 ETH per active validator.

This average lies noticeably above the minimum of 32 ETH, and that is a consequence of the rule change already mentioned. Since validators have been allowed to hold more than 32 ETH, larger operators have been consolidating their positions instead of starting a separate validator for every further stake. The number of validators therefore grows more slowly than the balance staked, and the validator count loses explanatory power as a metric. Anyone wanting to follow the development of staking should look at the balance.

5.3 Percent of the Active Balance Is Queued: What the Crush Says About Capacity

The 2.23 million ETH in the entry queue correspond to 5.3 percent of the active balance. That is the growth already deposited and merely waiting to be let through. Were the queue worked off completely without anyone exiting, the staked balance would grow by exactly that share.

The comparison with throughput shows how tightly capacity is set. 57,600 ETH a day, against 42.24 million ETH of active stock, is a share of roughly 0.14 percent. So at best the protocol lets its stock grow by about one seven-hundredth per day. That figure explains why a backlog does not clear quickly once it has formed. The same figure explains why the network stays stable in turbulent phases.

What 39 Days of Waiting Do to the First Year's Reward

The waiting time can be translated into a quantity more relevant to the investment decision than the days themselves. A validator that spends 38.7 days in the queue is active for only 326.3 of the 365 days in the first year after its deposit. In that first year it therefore receives, on the arithmetic, 89.4 percent of what an already continuously active validator receives over the same period.

Put differently, the first year's reward melts away by 10.6 percent through queuing alone. This calculation rests solely on the waiting time we measured ourselves and on the number of days in the year. No assumption about the level of the reward enters into it, because that depends on factors which change daily and which we did not survey. The effect is purely temporal in nature and hits every level of reward in the same proportion.

From the second year the discount disappears, because the validator then runs continuously. Anyone planning for the long term should therefore not overrate the effect. Anyone reckoning with a one-year horizon, by contrast, loses a double-digit percentage share of the expected reward to a queue that appears in no yield figure.

Liquid Staking and Exchange Products: When the Queue Does Not Affect You at All

The waiting time we measured applies to the route via a new or topped-up validator. Not every route into staking runs that way, and that is the most important qualification in this article.

Anyone buying a liquid staking provider's share token on the market acquires a claim on staking that is already running. In that case no new validator is created, and no queue is passed through. The price for it is a different risk position, because a set of contractual terms and a market price stand between you and the protocol. Something similar applies to exchange-traded products that pass on staking income: there too a counterparty stands at the end between you and the validator.

With staking offerings from trading venues the position is mixed, and we cannot resolve it with the data collected. A provider with sufficient stock of its own can serve a customer immediately and carry the queue itself. Another passes the waiting time on unchanged. This cannot be read off the chain, because only the validator is visible there and not the contractual relationship behind it. If you want to know what applies in your case, you will find the answer solely in your provider's terms. Which providers have to be licensed in Germany for this at all is set out in our piece on staking under MiCA.

Tax in Germany: Why No Inflow Arises While You Are Queuing

For tax the waiting time is undramatic, and that is good news. Staking rewards are regularly treated in Germany as income from other services under section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act, and what governs is the moment of inflow. Anyone standing in the queue receives nothing, and without an inflow no taxable event arises.

Under this scheme the deposit itself likewise does not trigger a sale, because no asset is exchanged for another. The ether stays ether and merely changes its purpose. That is the difference from a swap into another token, which would count as a disposal.

The practical work begins with the first reward, and it begins immediately. From that point every single inflow counts, with its date and euro value. The waiting time is therefore a good moment to prepare the record-keeping rather than reconstructing it later from block data. For individual questions about your personal position, tax advice is the right route, because we are not tax advisers.

Partial Withdrawals and the 256-Epoch Lock-Up After Exit

Besides a full exit there is the partial withdrawal, in which a validator stays active and only draws off balance above its stake. These operations too stand in a queue. At the time of measurement, 35 partial withdrawals totalling 86.28 ETH were pending. That is a quiet figure, consistent with the picture of an empty exit queue.

Anyone exiting fully then has to wait out a fixed lock-up period before the balance can be withdrawn. The period is 256 epochs, which at 6.4 minutes per epoch amounts to a good 27 hours. We queried this value through the node's configuration interface as well. It applies regardless of how full the exit queue is and cannot be shortened. Only once this period has elapsed does the balance travel to the withdrawal address on file.

Limits of This Survey: What We Could Not Measure

The survey rests on a single measurement at a single point in time. A number of limitations follow from that, which we disclose because they bound what it can show.

We did not collect a time series. Whether the entry queue is currently growing or shrinking cannot be derived from a single snapshot, and so we do not claim it either. We do not know the level of the reward, because we did not survey it. We do not know who the waiting deposits belong to, and therefore cannot say what share falls to private investors, to providers or to institutional entrants. We cannot resolve how individual providers pass the waiting time on to their customers, because that relationship lies off the chain. And we queried only a single node, albeit through the standardised interface.

What is certain is what was measured directly: the amount in both queues, the number and size of the deposits, the number of active validators, their balance and the applicable protocol limits. All values derived from these, in particular the 38.7 days and the 89.4 percent, are calculations on that basis and not measurements.

Checking the Ethereum Staking Queue: What to Take Away

1. Check how long the queue is right now before you deposit. The state changes daily, and the 38.7 days of 17 August 2026 are a cut-off-date value. If you are choosing between providers, establish beforehand whether yours carries the waiting time itself or passes it on to you. You will find an overview of the offerings under staking platforms compared.
2. Factor the waiting time into your expectation. With a one-year horizon, 89.4 percent of the reward remains on the arithmetic after 38.7 days of waiting. Anyone planning for the short term, or who will foreseeably need the balance again, should check whether an investment without a lock-up fits better. The trading venues' terms are in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.
3. Set up your record-keeping before the first reward arrives. From the first inflow every single amount counts, with its date and euro value. Leave it until the spring and you will be reconstructing months from block data. We have gathered suitable tools under crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

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

If you bought during the first big altcoin wave in 2018, there is a fair chance a block of ICX is sitting in your portfolio or in an old wallet. The token of the ICON blockchain was a top-30 coin back then, and that is exactly the sort of position nobody looks at again for years. With ICX that now gets expensive: the ICON Foundation has announced the end of the chain, and there is a date after which a forgotten holding can no longer be rescued.

In German there is next to nothing to be found on this. On 17 August 2026 we searched German-language news sources for four different phrasings, using proper nouns and using generic terms, and got not a single hit on this process. A German holder looking for the deadline will find English blog posts from the Foundation and help pages from exchanges. This article sets out what is actually documented, what you have to check yourself, and where the matter can turn awkward for tax.

The ICON Blockchain Is Shutting Down: A Layer 1 Becomes a Read-Only Archive

ICON launched in 2017 as its own layer-1 blockchain with the aim of connecting other chains to one another. In its closing announcement the Foundation itself names the technical standards that came out of it, among them the transfer protocol BTP and the cross-network call interface xCall. Nine years on it concludes that a chain of its own no longer serves the purpose, and moves the project onto a different stack called SODAX, which works as an execution and liquidity layer across more than 18 networks.

For you as a holder, what counts is less the strategy than the date underneath it. The chain will be halted permanently on 31 December 2026. What remains is expressly a read-only archive and not a reduced operation: historical transactions are meant to stay queryable, new blocks no longer appear, and changes of state are therefore ruled out. A blockchain that no longer produces blocks can no longer execute a transfer. That is precisely what the deadline hangs on.

Two Key Dates Decide It: 30 September 2026 Ends the Two-Way Swap, 31 December 2026 the Migration

The Foundation names two dates in its schedule, and they mean different things. On 30 September 2026 the swap in both directions ends. From that day only ICX is converted into SODA, the way back is closed. That is the first irreversible change, and it affects nobody who intends to migrate anyway.

The hard date is 31 December 2026. It is at once the last opportunity to swap ICX for SODA and the day the chain is switched off. After that, according to the announcement, no further conversion is possible. In its report of 25 May 2026, the trade publication crypto.news describes the consequence for holdings that have not migrated with the wording that they will then be stranded on an inert chain and could become permanently inaccessible once the infrastructure is dismantled.

Work backwards from here rather than waiting for December. Depending on how you store it, several steps stand between you and the swap, each of which can cost days: a withdrawal from an exchange, the recovery of an old wallet, and in case of doubt the search for a seed you have not needed in years. If your holding sits in a hardware wallet, you also need firmware that supports the target chain at all. That is the real reason to deal with this now rather than in December.

The Swap Runs 1:1 Into an ERC-20 Token on the Sonic Chain

The exchange ratio is 1:1. That figure appears in the reporting and equally in Kraken's customer notice, and therefore comes from a party that has carried out the swap itself. ICX becomes SODA, and SODA is technically something other than the old token: an ERC-20 contract on the Sonic blockchain instead of a native coin on a chain of its own. The total supply of SODA is fixed at 1.5 billion units according to crypto.news.

This change of technical category is where most mistakes happen in practice. An ERC-20 token lives in a smart contract on a particular chain. So you need an address on Sonic, and you need a small amount of the network token S there in order to send a transaction at all. The Foundation points this out in its own instructions and names as the first step for holders to obtain a small S balance for future transactions. Skip that step and you end up with your SODA at an address you cannot move it from until you top up gas.

ICX on a Centralised Exchange: Kraken Completed the Swap in August 2026 Without Customer Involvement

Here lies the most important news for the average German holder, because they usually keep their old position not in a wallet of their own but in the exchange account they opened back then. Kraken has already dealt with the swap. Its help page on the ICON migration sets out the sequence with times: on 7 August 2026 at 14:00 UTC, trading as well as deposits and withdrawals for ICX were halted. Between 10 and 14 August 2026 the migration window ran, in which holdings were converted into SODA and trading in SODA was subsequently enabled. ICX itself is delisted at Kraken after the migration.

If your holding sits there, the matter is settled without your having done anything. Check all the same what your account actually shows, because an announced conversion does not automatically become an executed one. For all other venues the Foundation's statement applies, and it is deliberately open-ended: balances on centralised exchanges would be converted into SODA automatically as soon as the exchange in question takes on the migration. That "as soon as" is not a commitment. For Coinone, crypto.news reported support in May 2026; for German providers such as Bitpanda we have no reliable announcement, and so we assert none.

From this follows an uncomfortable but clear instruction: look in the help centre or the announcements section of your own venue to see whether ICX is listed there at all and whether a migration has been announced. If you find nothing, that is not the all-clear. In that case you are better off withdrawing the holding yourself and swapping it yourself. Which venues operate under regulation in Germany and what fees apply on withdrawal is shown in our crypto exchange comparison.

ICX in Self-Custody: Without Gas on Sonic You Get No Further After the Swap

If your ICX sits in a wallet of your own, the swap runs through the official migration portal that the Foundation names at sodax.com/exchange/migrate; a step-by-step guide is in the help section at support.sodax.com, where a separate area is maintained for the migration. Both are reachable and readable. What we cannot confirm is the process inside the portal itself: the page is a JavaScript application that without a browser serves only its marketing shell. We therefore document the 1:1 ratio via the Kraken notice and via crypto.news, not via a screenshot of the dashboard.

In practice that means: first check whether your wallet knows the Sonic chain and whether it can display ERC-20 tokens on that chain. Then set aside a small amount of S for the network fees. Only then start the swap. And after the swap, verify that the SODA are actually visible at your address rather than relying on the confirmation message. A token that does not appear in the wallet has often merely not been imported, but you want to know that difference before the chain is switched off and nobody can look anything up any more.

One side effect many underestimate: after the migration you are managing a token in a smart contract on someone else's chain and no longer a balance on a chain of its own. The accessibility of your holding therefore depends in future on the target chain and on the contract, no longer on ICON. Anyone holding their own keys should take that into account when choosing a wallet.

Economically Wound Down Since March 2026: Issuance and Staking Rewards Have Stopped

One point explains the urgency: the chain is in a wind-down phase and is no longer running normally. According to crypto.news, ICON has been at an economic standstill since 26 March 2026. All ICX issuance and the staking rewards have been discontinued, and the chain is only being kept alive so that the migration works. The liquidity that once belonged to the network has, according to the Foundation, been transferred into the liquidity structure of SODAX.

That has a consequence for how you assess this process: what price pages still show you for ICX stands for a residual holding in an orderly wind-down and not for a network with running revenues and incentives. We deliberately name no prices for ICX or SODA in this article and derive no expectation from them either. The matter is a deadline, and deadlines are not calculated in percent.

A look at our own back catalogue is worth mentioning, because it shows a widespread problem: our only article on this coin is an ICX price forecast from 20 February 2020. The text is six years old and describes a world in which the chain still produced blocks. When you come across old forecast pieces online about a coin whose chain is being switched off, the age of the source is the most important detail in it. That applies to our text just as much as to any other.

For Tax, a Forced Swap Is Not a Neutral Event: Holding Period, FIFO and the Duty to Document

Now the part where things can turn awkward in Germany, and where we word things carefully on purpose. A swap of one token for another is regularly treated for tax purposes as a disposal of the old asset and an acquisition of the new one. With private disposal transactions, the one-year period hangs on this: within a year of acquisition a gain is in principle taxable, after that it is not. For a holding from 2018 the period has long since elapsed, and that is precisely why the case ends up harmless for many holders.

Harmless it is not automatically, though, and you should keep three points cleanly apart. First: whether a purely technical 1:1 migration counts as a disposal at all or as the continuation of the same asset is disputed and not conclusively settled for this individual case. Second: if your holding consists of several purchases at different times, the allocation method decides which acquisition dates carry over to the new token; in practice the calculation is usually done on a "first in, first out" basis. Third: if your venue carries out the swap without your involvement, you have an event of tax relevance that you did not trigger yourself, and a duty of proof for it all the same.

Our own article of 10 August 2026 on the forced conversion of USDT at Revolut took the view, for a comparable case, that a compelled conversion is to be treated as a taxable sale. That is our editorial assessment from back then and not external confirmation for the ICON case; we cite it here only so that you ask the question. What you can do in any event without deciding a legal question: secure the records now. Account balance before the swap, date and time of the conversion, quantity, exchange ratio and your provider's announcement as a file. You will not be able to reconstruct these documents once the chain has been switched off, and a portfolio tracker is considerably more reliable for this than memory.

Miss the Deadline and You Hold a Token on an Inert Chain

What exactly happens after 31 December 2026 to a holding that has not been migrated? The documented answer is unsatisfying, and that is why the date has to be taken seriously. The chain no longer produces blocks, so the token can no longer be moved. A swap into SODA is, according to the Foundation, no longer provided for. The read-only archive allows you to look up your own transaction history, and that is exactly the difference between a record and an asset.

The wording from the Foundation's orbit, that holdings which have not migrated could become permanently inaccessible once the infrastructure is dismantled, sounds restrained and is not. A token without a chain, without a venue and without a swap path has no route left to a buyer. The comparison with other shutdowns from this cycle that crypto.news draws points the same way: let the hard deadline pass and you lose access, not merely a share of the price.

The conservative order is therefore: first locate the holding, then establish where it is stored, then the swap, and all of it before 30 September 2026 rather than before 31 December 2026. The earlier date is the better target, because after it you have only one direction left and every mistake stays without a way back.

The Pattern Behind the Individual Case: How to Spot a Forced Token Migration Early

ICON is an example of a type of event that keeps turning up in the contents of old wallets, and anything but a special case. A project changes chain or token, sets a deadline and leaves the execution to holders. Once you have understood the sequence, you will recognise it next time by the same signals, and they almost always come in this order.

• Issuance and rewards are stopped. A network that switches off its incentives is being wound down, not rebuilt. At ICON that was 26 March 2026.
• A migration portal appears with a fixed ratio. A fixed exchange ratio is the technical hallmark of a conversion, not of an offer.
• Centralised venues announce trading pauses. As soon as deposits and withdrawals are stopped, the venue decides for you, and you learn about it from a help page.
• There are two deadlines rather than one. First an option falls away, then access itself. The second deadline is the dangerous one, the first the useful one.
• The old material online ages quietly. Price pages and forecast articles carry on while the project is already being wound down.

You know the same mechanics from delistings, only with the opposite sign. We took apart the four barriers an exchange closes in sequence when it removes a token in a separate piece on delisted tokens. The important common denominator: of those barriers only ever one is truly irreversible, and that is the one that ends withdrawal.

Migration Announcement or Phishing: Five Features That Make the Difference

Every announced migration with a deadline is an invitation to fraudsters, because it supplies time pressure and because it requires genuine interaction with a wallet. Anyone who receives an email in this situation announcing exactly what they were expecting anyway is more likely to click. Stick to verifiable features rather than to a feeling about whether a page looks reputable.

1. You took the portal's address from the project's official announcement yourself, not from a message that reached you.
2. Nobody asks for your seed or your private key. A swap requires a signature, not a recovery phrase.
3. The deadline in the message matches the deadline in the primary source. Shortened deadlines are the most common means of pressure.
4. The exchange notice is in your provider's help section and not only in an email.
5. You check the new token's contract address against the official figure before granting an approval.

If you are unsure which warning signs are typical with withdrawals and approvals, a second look at the usual patterns in faked withdrawal and approval requests is worthwhile. The principle stays the same: a deadline is a reason to act, but never a reason to skip the checking step.

Swapping ICX for SODA: What to Take Away

1. Locate the holding and establish how it is stored. Check whether your ICX sits at a venue or in a wallet of your own. At Kraken the conversion ran in August 2026 according to the provider; at other providers you have to look it up yourself. If the holding is in self-custody, check whether your device supports the target chain: the hardware wallet comparison shows which models cover which networks.
2. Swap before 30 September 2026, not before 31 December 2026. After the earlier date there is only one direction left. If you have to withdraw the holding from a venue first, factor in withdrawal fees and processing time; the providers' terms are in the exchange comparison.
3. Secure the records before the chain is switched off. Note down the date, quantity, exchange ratio and your provider's announcement so that you can set out the event to the tax office later. You will find a suitable tool among the crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

The primary sources to read up on: the closing announcement of the ICON Foundation of 25 May 2026 with the full schedule, and the Kraken customer notice on the ICON migration with exchange ratio and time window.

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

Anyone who opened a crypto account before 2026 will hear from their exchange over the coming months. What it asks for is a tax self-certification: your country of tax residence, your tax identification number, and a confirmation that the details are correct. Ignore it and you do not lose your balance, but you do lose the ability to trade with it. That is what the German Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act, the KStTG for short, lays down, and the cut-off date is 1 January 2027.

German coverage of the new reporting duty is almost entirely about what the tax office will learn about you. That is one half of it. The other half asks something of you, and the consequence is not a query from the tax office but an account you can no longer trade on. This article explains the obligation, its deadlines, its consequences, and what we measured on 17 August 2026 about how providers communicate it in public.

Crypto Exchange Self-Certification: What the KStTG Requires From You

The KStTG transposes the EU directive DAC8 and the OECD's CARF standard into German law. It obliges crypto-asset service providers to identify their users for tax purposes and to report certain transactions once a year to the Federal Central Tax Office. Sections 4 to 6 set out how that identification works: the provider has to obtain a self-certification, check it for plausibility, and document it.

In practice the self-certification comes down to a handful of details. You are asked for the country or countries in which you are tax resident, the corresponding tax identification number, and an explicit confirmation that the information is accurate. Some providers also ask for your place of birth. The effort involved runs to a few minutes in the app. The problem is not the effort but that many people take the request for marketing and click it away.

Section 7(2) KStTG: The 1 January 2027 Deadline Applies to Existing Customers

The statutory wording is brief and unambiguous here. Section 7(2) reads: "In the case of a crypto-asset user who entered into a business relationship with the provider by 31 December 2025, the provider shall complete the measures under sections 4 to 6 by 1 January 2027."

What matters is whose deadline this is: the provider's, not yours. The exchange has to be finished by that day. From this follows a calculation that does not appear in the statute but does follow from the deadlines. If the block under section 8 takes effect at the earliest 60 and at the latest 90 days after the initial request, and if a reminder and a formal notice come before that, then the requests have to go out by autumn 2026 at the latest. That is an inference from two deadlines and not an announcement by any provider; nobody has named a mailing date. Only the direction is solid: the post arrives before the cut-off, not after it.

You can read the full text of the Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act yourself. Sections 7 and 8 sit there alongside the due diligence duties that precede them.

New or Existing Customer: Why 31 December 2025 Is the Dividing Line

The law knows two groups of people with differently strict rules. For everyone who began their business relationship by 31 December 2025, the transitional deadline quoted above applies, running to 1 January 2027. For everyone after that, section 7(1) applies, and it is stricter: there, identification has to be complete before a reportable transaction is carried out at all.

The Federal Central Tax Office describes the same sequence in its procedural guidance and puts it this way for new customers: "As a rule, obtaining the self-certification and confirming its plausibility are required before reportable transactions are carried out." For existing customers the authority names the same cut-off date as the statute. So anyone who has opened an account since January 2026 will already know the query; anyone who has held their account for years often still has it ahead of them.

Section 8 KStTG: Request, Reminder, Formal Notice, Then the Block

Enforcement is staged. First the provider requests the details. If no answer comes, a reminder follows, then a formal notice. Only when nothing comes of that either does the final stage take effect. The decisive sentence in section 8(3) is that the provider must then, "at the latest after 90 days have elapsed, but not before 60 days have elapsed since the original request, prevent the crypto-asset user from carrying out reportable transactions through the provider."

Two details here are easily skipped. First, the block is not a matter of discretion for the provider but a duty. It cannot be waived as a goodwill gesture. Second, the clock runs from the original request, not from the formal notice. Anyone who ignores the first email and only pays attention at the notice stage has already used up part of the window.

Between 60 and 90 Days: How Quickly the Block Follows the Request

The span is deliberately framed as a corridor. Before 60 days have elapsed the provider may not block; after 90 days it must. What happens inside that span depends on each provider's internal procedure. That fixes a window of roughly two to three months between the first request and the point at which trading ends.

For your planning that means this: once the first request arrives, you have plenty of time, but not unlimited time. Deal with it the same evening and the matter is closed. Leave it lying around and you need to remember when it came.

What the Block Hits: Reportable Transactions, Not the Whole Account

Precision pays off here, because the shorthand "the exchange freezes your money" is misleading. The law speaks of preventing the user from carrying out reportable transactions. What is meant are the operations that fall under the reporting duty, essentially exchange and trading activity. Withdrawing your own balance to your own bank account is not automatically part of that.

One provider describes exactly this distinction in its public help centre: users who do not supply their tax details first receive reminders; after that the account can be restricted so that trading ends while withdrawing the balance remains possible. How an individual provider implements that technically is its own decision, and the law only prescribes the lower limit. You should not rely on it: an account you can only empty is not a working account.

The Block Is Reversible: What Section 8(3), Second Sentence, Guarantees

Unlike a supervisory measure, this is not a permanent state. The law expressly provides for the way back: the business relationship can be resumed as soon as the user supplies the information requested. So anyone who only takes notice once the block hits has to submit the details afterwards and is then able to trade again.

That takes the drama out of the process that some quarters attach to it, but it changes nothing about the practical nuisance. Between the block and reactivation lies a processing time nobody guarantees. Anyone who wants to react to a price move during that time cannot.

The 17 August 2026 Survey: 24 Help Articles Across Six Providers

How well prepared are investors for this process? Rather than estimate, we measured it. On 17 August 2026 we queried the publicly searchable help centres of six crypto providers whose help interface is openly accessible, and evaluated every article that names DAC8, CARF, the self-certification, the tax identification number, or the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework in its title or body. We checked Bitvavo, Bitpanda, BISON, Gemini, Luno and Bybit; every request returned HTTP 200. cryptoticker.io carried out this survey itself on 17 August 2026.

The result in numbers: five of the six providers carry a relevant help article at all, 24 in total. At one provider the search found none. The distribution is uneven: Bitpanda alone accounts for eleven articles, mostly explaining where to find the tax number in the respective country, including separate texts for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. BISON, the provider run by Boerse Stuttgart, carries four, Bitvavo four, Gemini three, Luno two.

How Current the Pages Are

The revision dates stood out. At BISON, four of the relevant articles were updated between 11 and 16 August 2026, at Bitvavo two on 12 and 13 August. These pages are in motion, then, while the cut-off date draws closer. What a provider changes in the process is not something the date tells you; we only read off the time of the last change, not the change itself.

Not One Help Article Checked Names 1 January 2027

The most striking finding is an absence. In none of the 24 articles did the statutory cut-off date for existing customers appear. Neither "1 January 2027" nor the German equivalent nor 31 December 2026 turned up. One provider phrases the deadline for existing users along the lines of "by 2027", without naming a day.

The picture is similar for the mechanics of the block. Exactly one provider names any day-count deadline in this context, namely 60 days. That deadline applies there expressly to accounts opened from January 2026 onwards, so to new customers under section 7(1). The corridor of 60 to 90 days from section 8(3), which starts the actual clock for existing customers, appeared in none of the texts checked.

No accusation against the providers follows from this, and we make none. The law obliges them to obtain the self-certification; it does not oblige them to name a cut-off date in a public help article. The request itself reaches you by email or as a prompt in the app anyway, not through a help page. So the finding says something else: anyone who wants to inform themselves in advance will not find the deadline everything hangs on in the public explainers.

Tax ID, Tax Residence and Place of Birth: Which Details Are Required

The German tax identification number is an eleven-digit number that the Federal Central Tax Office assigns to every person registered in Germany. You will find it on tax assessments and on the notification sent when it was issued. Anyone who cannot find it can request it again from the Federal Central Tax Office; it does not change over the course of a lifetime.

Alongside the number, your tax residence is queried, meaning the country in which you are registered for tax. At one provider, your place of birth with town and country is part of it too. In every case the final step is a confirmation that the details are correct. It is precisely that confirmation which turns a data query into a self-certification within the meaning of the law, and section 6 KStTG governs when it is valid.

If you are wondering what happens to these details: the provider enters them into the annual report to the Federal Central Tax Office. This article here deals with the opposite direction: what you have to give the provider so that it can report at all.

Multiple Tax Residences: Why Moving Doubles the Declaration

Anyone tax resident in more than one country has to state every country concerned and every associated number. That affects more people than you might assume: cross-border commuters, emigrants in the year of their move, people with a second home abroad. One provider notes expressly in its help centre that all numbers have to be on file, and describes how further entries can be added later.

The same provider mentions a practical side effect at this point that is worth reading: for trading shares and ETFs on the same platform it applies a restriction where more than one tax residence is on file. That is not a requirement of the KStTG but a decision by the provider, though it does show that the declaration can have effects beyond the reporting duty. Anyone with multiple residences should read their provider's terms with that in mind. You will find an overview of the firms licensed in Germany in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Genuine Request or Phishing: How to Check the Message From Your Exchange

An email that asks for your tax number and residence and threatens an account block is the template for a scam attempt. That the genuine request sounds exactly the same does not make things easier. The rule against it is plain and applies regardless of how credible a message looks: do not click any link in the message, but open the app or type your exchange's address yourself. Genuine requests appear there too, usually as a notice banner or as a step in the account area.

Two further markers help. No exchange needs your password, your two-factor code or your wallet recovery words for the self-certification; anyone asking for those wants something else. And a genuine request never leads to a payment. The self-certification costs nothing.

How the Cut-Off Date Relates to Other Deadlines Now Running

1 January 2027 is not the only date currently running towards crypto accounts. Several providers have announced market exits, delistings and migrations this summer that take effect considerably earlier; we have compiled them in an overview of the exchange deadlines now running. The difference matters: those deadlines force you to withdraw balances, this one only asks for a declaration.

The two are connected nonetheless. Anyone closing accounts or moving holdings right now should check in the same pass whether the tax details are complete on the accounts that stay. Doing both in one go costs less time than walking the same path through the same menus twice.

Limits of This Survey: What We Could Not Check

The survey captures only what is public and machine-searchable. Four limitations belong with it.

First, the population. Of eighteen providers checked, only six offered an open, searchable help interface. The other twelve, among them several firms with large German customer bases, answered the automated request with 403, 404 or not at all. This evaluation says nothing about their help content. It therefore cannot be read as a ranking, and it is not meant as one.

Second, the channel. What was measured were help articles, not emails, app prompts or announcements in the account area. A provider may long since have named the cut-off date to its customers directly without it appearing in a help article. That is even the more likely route.

Third, the timing. This is a snapshot of a single day. Help pages change, and as the revision dates show, on this topic they are changing frequently at the moment.

Fourth, the implementation. At no point did we open an account, submit a self-certification or trigger a block. How a provider shapes the staged sequence in section 8 in detail cannot be observed from outside. The procedural guidance of the Federal Central Tax Office describes the procedure from the enforcement authority's perspective and is the second source against which we cross-read the deadlines.

Crypto Exchange Self-Certification: What to Take Away

1. Check whether you are an existing customer. If you opened your account by 31 December 2025, the transitional deadline to 1 January 2027 applies to you, and the request is probably still ahead of you. With several accounts it is worth going through all of them; our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers are licensed in Germany.
2. Complete the declaration in the app as soon as it appears. Have your tax identification number and place of birth ready, and enter every residence if you have more than one. Go through the app or an address you typed yourself, never through a link in an email. While you are in the account anyway, export your transaction data at the same time; suitable tools are in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
3. Note the date of the first request. The corridor of 60 to 90 days runs from it, not from the formal notice. If you have already hit a block, supplying the details is enough to have it lifted; switching provider is not necessary for that. Anyone who wants to switch anyway will find the alternatives in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

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

OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould told the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium the agency is moving at a rapid pace to beat a January statutory deadline, after already missing an earlier July target.

Bitcoin's steepest daily gain since March caught traders off guard, and Myriad's pump-or-dump market swung from 70-30 odds to nearly even in a single day.

The president said the U.S. is far ahead of China in artificial intelligence and defended the rapid construction of data centers and power plants needed to fuel the industry.

Trump touted his administration’s crypto policies and said regulators are working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. under a compliant framework.

Strategy, Coinbase, Circle, and BitMine are riding Bitcoin's short squeeze toward $70K—and two of them may be squeezing equity bears of their own.

New SEC data reveals a $275 million trust buying private Ripple stock over XRP.

The market is reversing way too rapidly, but not everyone is ready for it.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said crypto has firmly entered the U.S. mainstream.

It's not clear who'll take an upper hand on the cryptocurrency market: bulls or bears.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse joined a high-profile lineup of crypto executives and regulators at the White House crypto summit.

TLDR

• Korean authorities finalize 22% taxation on cryptocurrency income from foreign platforms beginning January 2027.
• Self-custody wallet transactions will be subject to taxation despite monitoring difficulties.
• Digital asset profits exceeding the 2.5 million won exemption threshold will incur up to 22% combined tax.
• Revenue authorities are developing surveillance infrastructure and utilizing CARF information for offshore monitoring.
• Taxation guidelines for yield farming, crypto lending, token distributions and blockchain splits await final determination.

Korean tax authorities have finalized regulations requiring taxation of cryptocurrency earnings from international platforms and self-hosted wallets starting January 1, 2027. The comprehensive policy will apply a combined 22% levy on qualifying digital asset earnings exceeding the yearly exemption amount. Officials are simultaneously developing enhanced monitoring infrastructure ahead of implementation.

Korean Authorities Expand Tax Coverage to Self-Hosted Crypto Storage

South Korea will impose taxes on proceeds from transferring or utilizing digital currencies irrespective of storage location. The regulation encompasses centralized domestic platforms, international trading services, and privately managed wallets under direct user control. Consequently, maintaining personal custody of assets will not exempt individuals from declaring taxable cryptocurrency earnings.

The National Tax Service has recognized that self-custody solutions present significant compliance challenges since users can create unlimited wallet addresses. Nevertheless, the department is developing transaction monitoring and analytical tools designed to detect undeclared taxable transactions. These capabilities are intended to minimize revenue losses when the updated digital currency regulations take effect.

The Finance Ministry has clarified that transaction geography will not influence tax obligations. Earnings produced through foreign platforms will adhere to identical taxation standards applied to domestically generated income. Korean authorities will therefore prioritize the nature of earnings rather than the physical location of digital holdings.

International Platforms Subject to Enhanced Information Gathering

Korean regulators intend to acquire foreign exchange data through established overseas financial account disclosure requirements. Tax officials will additionally leverage the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework for obtaining international transaction intelligence. CARF enables member nations to share information regarding cryptocurrency holders and regulated service operators.

This reporting infrastructure will bolster enforcement capabilities where domestic regulators lack direct access to foreign cryptocurrency platform records. Simultaneously, officials continue refining regulations governing international digital asset movements and associated service providers. These initiatives support wider governmental objectives to enhance visibility into offshore cryptocurrency operations.

South Korea has already established a revenue source management infrastructure for digital currencies in preparation for the planned rollout. The National Tax Service is additionally constructing a unified analytical platform for transaction and earnings intelligence. Nevertheless, officials have not released credible projections for anticipated revenue from cryptocurrency taxation.

Combined 22% Levy Maintains January 2027 Launch Timeline

Korean authorities will categorize taxable digital currency profits as miscellaneous income under existing regulations. Citizens will qualify for an annual 2.5 million won exemption before taxation applies. Earnings surpassing that limit face 20% federal taxation and up to 22% when combined with municipal income levies.

Officials have retained the January 1, 2027 effective date notwithstanding political pressure for additional postponement. The People Power Party has advocated for deferral or elimination of the proposed cryptocurrency taxation. Government departments continue developing administrative infrastructure necessary for deployment.

South Korea is simultaneously evaluating appropriate taxation methods for proof-of-stake rewards, crypto lending, token distributions, and blockchain forks. Officials must establish when taxable events occur and appropriate valuation methodologies for received digital assets. Complimentary cryptocurrency allocations may already constitute taxable miscellaneous income when categorized as merchandise or awards.

The post South Korea to Implement 22% Tax on Cryptocurrency Holdings Across All Platforms by 2027 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Rapid7 found 885,000 phone numbers tied to datasets supporting Operation ASTERIX’s crypto targeting activity.
• A German dataset produced 43,066 identified Crypto.com accounts from 316,002 phone numbers.
• Recovered files showed AI tools supporting coding, debugging, data processing, and phishing infrastructure.
• Attackers switched AI providers after safety refusals and attempted to bypass another model’s safeguards.

Rapid7 has uncovered Operation ASTERIX, a crypto fraud campaign that combined AI-assisted development with targeted phishing. The operation used phone datasets, account-validation tools, phishing emails, voice calls, and counterfeit wallet applications.

Researchers found evidence that attackers used AI coding tools throughout the campaign’s development. The exposed infrastructure gave Rapid7 an unusual view into an active crypto phishing operation.

Operation ASTERIX Used AI to Target Crypto Users

Rapid7 discovered roughly 885,000 phone numbers across multiple datasets linked to the operation. The attackers used validation tools to identify numbers connected to cryptocurrency accounts.

One German dataset contained 316,002 mobile numbers. The operators identified 43,066 associated Crypto.com accounts from that list.

The campaign then narrowed its target pool using enriched records. Those records included names, contact details, locations, and account-related information in some cases.

Rapid7 said this information helped attackers make support impersonation appear more convincing. The operation coordinated emails and follow-up calls around matching support details.

The phishing infrastructure impersonated brands including Crypto.com and Binance. Attackers also maintained counterfeit applications resembling Trezor Suite, Ledger Live, and Exodus.

Rapid7 also recovered evidence of AI-assisted development from the exposed server. The operators used GitHub Copilot and Claude Code for coding, scripting, data processing, and infrastructure work.

AI Tools and Fake Wallet Apps Expanded Operation ASTERIX

The investigation showed that AI tools supported several parts of the campaign. Recovered artifacts indicated their use for application packaging, debugging, code changes, and phishing infrastructure.

Rapid7 found that Claude refused some requests involving code obfuscation. The operator then switched to Kimi and attempted to bypass its safety controls.

However, Rapid7 could not confirm whether that bypass attempt succeeded. The recovered evidence instead documented the operator’s effort to switch tools after encountering model restrictions.

The fake wallet applications formed another major part of the campaign. Rapid7 recovered versions designed to imitate popular cryptocurrency wallet software across macOS and Windows.

The operation also hosted a counterfeit Claude Code installer. According to Rapid7, that distribution channel attempted to install a malicious wallet application alongside the legitimate software.

Rapid7 discovered the campaign while much of its infrastructure remained active or under development. The firm notified relevant providers and authorities, including Apple’s security team, after documenting the activity.

The post Rapid7 Uncovers Operation ASTERIX, AI-Powered Crypto Phishing Campaign appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Solana is trading near $78, just below the $81 level flagged as a breakout point by crypto researcher gum.
• The next major resistance sits at $104.38, matching the weekly 50-EMA on the chart.
• SIMD-0550 would raise SOL’s disinflation rate from 15% to 30%, speeding up the path to 1.5% terminal inflation.
• SIMD-0553 would add resource-based fees that get fully burned, aiming to raise long-term SOL burns.
• Solana’s RWA sector passed $2.8 billion in May, with SOL holding 97% of tokenized-equity trading volume.

Solana is trading near the $81 level that traders are watching for a possible breakout. Crypto researcher gum flagged this level in a recent post shared on X.

Gum said a move above $81 could open the way toward $104. That level lines up with the weekly 50-EMA on the chart he shared.

On that chart, Solana sat near $78.42, below its 20-week EMA at $81.64. The 50-week EMA sits higher at $104.38, marking the next resistance zone.

The weekly RSI on gum’s chart read 43.14. That is below the neutral 50 mark, showing momentum has improved without turning fully bullish.

Two Tokenomics Proposals Under Review

Solana’s inflation schedule may change under proposal SIMD-0550. It would raise the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%.

That change would cut the time needed to reach the 1.5% terminal inflation rate. The timeline would drop from about 5.7 years to 2.8 years.

A second proposal, SIMD-0553, would add resource-based fees to the network. The resource portion of those fees would be burned rather than kept by validators.

Supporters of SIMD-0553 say it could raise SOL burns as network usage grows. Solana’s own documents list SIMD-0550 as under review and SIMD-0553 as a draft.

Real-World Asset Activity Keeps Growing

Solana’s real-world asset sector passed $2.8 billion in value in May. That figure came from a Solana Foundation report.

SOL accounted for 97% of all tokenized-equity spot trading volume across blockchains during that period. This shows the network’s growing role beyond memecoins.

Gum pointed to rising onchain volume and steady app retention as added support. He said broader usage could raise demand for blockspace over time.

More blockspace demand could strengthen the case for higher fee burns under SIMD-0553. Still, usage growth does not guarantee a higher SOL price on its own.

The next step for both proposals is governance voting. Gum said the two measures were moving toward a final vote when he posted his analysis on August 19.

Approval alone will not change SOL’s supply schedule right away. Implementation and actual burn levels will decide whether the changes affect price.

For now, traders are watching whether SOL can close above $81 on the weekly chart. A break above that level would shift the near-term structure, with $104 as the next test.

The post Solana (SOL) Price: Weekly Chart Shows $81 Support and $104 Resistance Levels appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Bitcoin jumped as much as 8.7% Wednesday, hitting an intraday high of $69,749.
• That’s Bitcoin’s biggest one-day move since March 4 and its highest price since June 1.
• The rally followed a U.S. Treasury plan to double long-bond buybacks starting September 9.
• Over $1.14 billion in short positions were liquidated across crypto in a single hour.
• Prediction markets flipped from 70% bearish odds to a near coin flip within 24 hours.

Bitcoin jumped as much as 8.7% on Wednesday, hitting an intraday high of $69,749. That’s its steepest one-day move since March 4.

The price also marked Bitcoin’s highest level since June 1. Traders had not seen a green candle like this in over five months.

The rally was not sparked by crypto news. The U.S. Treasury said it will double its long-bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, starting September 9.

That move pushed long-end yields lower and weakened the dollar. Lower yields make non-yielding assets like Bitcoin more attractive to hold.

A weaker dollar also makes dollar-priced assets cheaper for foreign buyers. Analysts have started calling this pattern “QE Lite.”

What Else Drove the Rally

The Treasury announcement landed the same day as a White House meeting between crypto executives and regulators. The SEC also proposed easing registration rules for some digital-asset offerings.

The combination pushed the market higher fast. Within an hour, $1.14 billion in short positions were liquidated across crypto, according to CoinGlass.

Bitcoin alone accounted for $677.64 million of those liquidations. The squeeze forced traders betting on a price drop to buy back in.

Crypto-linked stocks moved higher too. Strategy gained nearly 12%, Coinbase rose 9%, and Circle and BitMine each climbed roughly 9% to 10%.

Prediction Markets Scramble

The rally caught prediction markets off guard. On Myriad, a market asking whether Bitcoin would pump to $84,000 or dump to $55,000 had been pricing roughly 70% odds of the dump just days earlier.

By Wednesday afternoon those odds had flipped to nearly even. The dump side sat at 51.9%, while the pump side rose to 48.1%.

Longer-term markets barely moved. Polymarket’s 2026 Bitcoin price market was pricing a 56% chance BTC touches $55,000 before year-end and 51% odds of reaching $75,000, figures that held steady from last week.

Kalshi traders had been even more cautious before the rally. They gave Bitcoin only a 54% chance of clearing $67,500 in August and 31% odds of hitting $70,000, both levels Bitcoin passed on Wednesday.

The gap between near-term and year-end predictions tells its own story. Short-term traders were caught off guard by a move they hadn’t priced in.

The next price level to watch sits at $70,284, the lower edge of a resistance band on Bitcoin’s chart. A daily close above that level could open the door toward $73,245.

Losing the $68,000 level would pull Bitcoin back into the trading range that has held since June.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price: Jumps 8.7% to $69,749 in Sharpest Rally Since March appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Trump urged Congress to make the administration’s crypto policies permanent through legislation.
• The CLARITY Act would divide digital asset oversight between the SEC and CFTC.
• Senate negotiations remain divided over ethics rules, DeFi treatment, and stablecoin rewards.
• The CFTC will discuss crypto, AI, and prediction markets at its first advisory committee meeting.
• Odds of the bill passing have dropped sharply since February, according to prediction markets.

President Donald Trump asked Congress on August 19 to pass a “fair” version of the CLARITY Act. He spoke at a White House event with executives from Coinbase, Gemini, Ripple, and Chainlink Labs.

Trump said the bill would keep the United States ahead of China in crypto innovation. He called the measure “very bipartisan,” though Senate talks are still unresolved.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told the crowd that passing the law would protect current crypto policies from being reversed later. He described the bill as a genuine compromise between parties.

The CLARITY Act would split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It would also set rules for exchanges, brokers, and custodians.

The House passed its version of the bill in July 2025 by a vote of 294 to 134. The Senate Banking Committee later approved it, but no floor vote has happened yet.

Ethics Rules and DeFi Treatment Divide Lawmakers

Democrats want limits on crypto holdings for senior officials in all three branches of government. This includes rules that could affect Trump’s own digital asset ventures.

Negotiators also disagree on how to treat decentralized finance protocols. Rules covering stablecoin rewards matter to Coinbase, which earns revenue from USDC trading activity.

Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, short of the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. That means Democratic support is required before lawmakers leave for the November elections.

A crypto.news analysis from August 18 found that Polymarket’s odds of passage fell from 82% in February to under 20% by mid-August. Galaxy Digital cut its own estimate to 10% on August 14.

SEC and CFTC Continue Separate Rulemaking

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins linked the agency’s new crypto proposal to the need for congressional action. He said the plan gives entrepreneurs more certainty to raise money using digital assets.

The SEC’s proposal would create two funding paths for crypto offerings. One allows up to five million dollars raised over four years. The other allows up to seventy five million dollars over twelve months.

Atkins said the SEC cannot rewrite the legal line between securities and commodities on its own. Only Congress can grant the CFTC full authority over spot digital commodity markets.

The Treasury Department is also implementing the GENIUS Act, signed by Trump in July 2025. Its stablecoin rules cover issuer authorization, reserves, and disclosure requirements.

The CFTC held its first Innovation Advisory Committee meeting on August 20, one day after the White House event. Executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and Grayscale took part.

The three hour meeting covered digital assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. The committee can advise the CFTC but cannot write rules or take enforcement action.

Public comments tied to the meeting can be submitted through August 27 and will become part of the official record.

The post Trump Urges Senate to Pass CLARITY Act at White House Event appeared first on Blockonomi.

[PRESS RELEASE – VICTORIA, Seychelles, August 20th, 2026]

Global crypto exchange BYDFi is participating as a Gold Sponsor at Coinfest Asia 2026, taking place August 20-21 at Melasti Beach in Bali. Positioned as “The World’s Crypto Festival Built for Institutions, Builders & Traders,” the event brings together participants across digital assets, finance, technology, and trading. Attendees can meet the BYDFi team at Booth A1 throughout the two-day event.

Coinfest Asia 2026 Returns for Its Fifth Edition

Coinfest Asia 2026 marks the fifth annual edition of the event, spanning five beach clubs at Melasti Beach as one integrated venue. With more than 150 CEOs and industry leaders expected across the two-day event, the program combines conference sessions, product discovery, networking, and community experiences within the beachfront setting.

The 2026 agenda is organized into three intent-based tracks: Institutional, Builders, and Traders. Together, they cover digital asset adoption, stablecoins, tokenization, regulation, AI, blockchain infrastructure, product development, market narratives, and trading strategy. Asia Go-To-Market Sessions add localized perspectives on regulatory environments, user behavior, and ecosystem development across key Asian markets.

Trading Conversations and Community Interaction in Bali

At Booth A1, BYDFi is meeting with traders, builders, institutional representatives, partners, and community members to exchange perspectives on market access, product usability, and changing trading needs. Visitors can also learn more about BYDFi’s trading experience across spot trading, perpetual contracts, copy trading, trading bots, and TradFi trading.

The booth features a Lucky Wheel where attendees can take part in on-site interaction and receive exclusive BYDFi merchandise. The activity has drawn a steady flow of visitors, with attendees gathering around the booth to watch, participate, and speak with the BYDFi team.

Reliability in a Fast-Moving Market

Coinfest Asia 2026 brings institutions, builders, and traders into one setting as digital assets become increasingly connected to the wider financial system. For BYDFi, the conversations taking place in Bali offer a timely view of shifts in technology, industry priorities, and user expectations.

This environment reinforces BYDFi’s focus on practical product improvement, steady execution, and a dependable trading experience. As user needs continue to change, that focus remains central to how BYDFi carries Built for Reliability forward.

About BYDFi

Founded in 2020, BYDFi now serves over 1,000,000 users across 190+ countries and regions. BYDFi is Newcastle United’s Exclusive Official Crypto Exchange Partner and is listed by Forbes Advisor Canada among the best crypto exchanges in Canada for 2026.

BYDFi is dedicated to delivering a world-class crypto trading experience for every user.

BUIDL Your Dream Finance.

• Website: https://www.bydfi.com
• Support email: cs@bydfi.com
• Business partnerships: bd@bydfi.com
• Media inquiries: media@bydfi.com

X (Twitter) | Instagram | Telegram | YouTube | TikTok | How to Buy on BYDFi

The post BYDFi Joins Coinfest Asia 2026, Connecting with Institutions, Builders and Traders in Bali appeared first on CryptoPotato.

It gives us great (mostly unbiased) pleasure to write such an article, especially after weeks and months and nearly a year of painful declines or lack of any actual upside movement. After all, the cryptocurrency market is used to explosive movements, but this wasn’t the case for a long time. At least not in the ‘right’ direction.

Let’s quickly recap what happened in the past 24 hours: bitcoin traded at $64,400, then exploded to $70,000, then it was briefly pushed back to $68,000, then went on the offensive again, and then rocketed past $71,000 minutes ago for the first time since very early June.

As Glassnode put it, this was its most impressive daily close since February, but that one followed a major retracement. What makes the current pump so spectacular is that it had “no crash to bounce off.”

The last daily bitcoin:native close this large was in February, and that was just the rebound from the -14% day before it.

This one had no crash to bounce off. Against its own 30d volatility it was a 5.8 sigma move – the largest to the upside since October 2023. pic.twitter.com/SqiitTuTYc

— glassnode (@glassnode) August 20, 2026

The Main Catalyst

Perhaps the most important factor behind this mind-blowing surge was the US Treasury Department’s announcement that it will at least double the maximum size of liquidity-support buybacks for longer-dated government debt. It will raise them from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, and the changes will commence on September 9 and will continue until November 4.

This announcement came after the 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.34% on Tuesday, the highest level in nearly 20 years, as inflation concerns, heavy government borrowing, and concerns about the overall US fiscal outlook skyrocketed. The same Treasury yield dropped immediately to 5.20%, while stocks, gold, and crypto moved in the opposite direction. The dollar weakened as lower bond yields can make non-yielding and riskier assets relatively more attractive.

More US-Related Reasons

Since we are on the US topic, let’s explore two more possible factors that could be regarded as promising for risk-on assets. The first came from the POTUS, who paused the tariffs against Canada and later announced a deal to cut some of them from 25% to 15%. Tariff news has impacted BTC for over a year and a half, and trade deals tend to benefit the asset’s moves.

The other one, expectedly, also came from Trump. This time, though, it concerned Iran. Instead of warning of new ballistic attacks, the POTUS took a different approach, targeting the country’s economy.

After admitting that the Iranian government had failed to make a deal with the US, he outlined the new strategy, which will focus on bringing the country down through economic activity.

“I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless, and their country is hanging by a thread.”

Obviously, this is not the perfect outcome, especially for Iran, but at least there are no new damaging physical attacks or another threat of a nuclear massacre. Risk assets like that.

ETFs and OI

Now let’s focus more on BTC itself. The first reason here is the ETF inflows. Data from SoSoValue shows that the daily net inflows stood at just over $517 million for yesterday. This was the highest number since early May, when the flows were $630 million and $532 million for two consecutive trading sessions. Recall that bitcoin went on an impressive run back then, peaking at $83,000 within a week or so.

To put things into perspective, the netflows yesterday alone were a lot higher than the entire month of July, when the funds attracted $172.43 million.

Lastly, let’s examine the open interest, which had built up to its highest position since 2023. When leverage increases so much, every smaller move becomes much larger, which is evident from the cascade of liquidations of traders betting on the wrong side.

And the OI just a few days before yesterday’s explosion was even higher than before the October 2025 massacre, when the liquidations topped $19 billion. In other words, something was brewing for weeks, as BTC doesn’t like standing in one spot for too long.

The post What Sent Bitcoin Flying Above $71,000? 5 Factors Behind the Surge appeared first on CryptoPotato.

It was almost painful for days to write these price updates, but this isn’t the case today, as bitcoin recorded its most impressive surge in 2026 that wasn’t after a notable decline. The asset skyrocketed by several grand yesterday and tapped a two-month peak at over $70,000.

The altcoins have all turned green as well, helping the total market cap add $200 billion in the span of less than 24 hours.

BTC Rocketed Past $70K

It was less than a week ago, on Friday, when the bears appeared to be in control of the market, pushing the largest digital asset to $62,500. Although it rebounded in the following days, it remained sideways at $63,000 with little to no indication of an upcoming breakout.

The first signs emerged on Monday and Tuesday as the cryptocurrency gradually increased to $64,000 and even briefly tapped $65,000. It was stopped there and slipped to $64,400 yesterday before all hell broke loose. What took place in the following few hours was almost thought to be impossible in the crypto markets.

Bitcoin initiated a massive leg up that drove it higher by over $6,000 in hours. It smashed through several key resistance zones and finally touched $70,000 for the first time since mid-June. Although it was stopped there at first and slipped to $68,000, the bulls were more persistent and drove it higher to well over $70,000 as of press time again, while the community comments on the possible reasons behind this surge.

Its market capitalization has exploded by over $100 billion in a day to $1.410 trillion on CG. Its dominance over the alts stands tall at 57%.

Alts See Nothing But Green

Ethereum has taken the main stage during this revival, surging by over 17% to a multi-month peak of its own at $2,270. HYPE has also taken full advantage of the situation, especially after some promising words from Trump, and now sits at $72 following a mind-blowing 24% pump. SOL, XRP, DOGE, RAIN, ZEC, LINK, and BNB are all in the green.

There are a few exceptions, such as XMR and WLFI, but the dominant market sentiment among the alts has flipped significantly.

This has pushed the total crypto market cap to $2.470 billion as of press time – or roughly $200 billion higher than yesterday.

The post Crypto Markets Add Over $200B Daily as Bitcoin (BTC) Surges Past $70K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

President Donald Trump met with executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, and other major crypto companies at the White House on Wednesday as the administration sought to take a stronger position in the digital asset industry.

The discussion focused heavily on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, Bitcoin, and the push to bring more crypto activity into the US.

CLARITY, Bitcoin and Hyperliquid

Trump called on Congress to pass “a fair version” of CLARITY and said the legislation would help keep the US “ahead of China.” The bill passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 but has remained stalled in the Senate over issues including tokenized equities, stablecoin rewards, and concerns about potential conflicts involving the Trump family and the crypto industry.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the legislation would make the country’s crypto policy “durable into the future, so it could survive for decades and decades to come.” The exec expects the bill to get “more than 60 votes” when the Senate takes up a cloture motion on September 15. Trump backed Armstrong’s assessment of the bill’s support and said,

“It’s very bipartisan, I would say. Lot of Democrats support.”

During the meeting, Trump also said the US has discussed plans to buy “sizable” amounts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He later said,

“We’re going to ensure America remains the undisputed leader, not only in Bitcoin and crypto, but also in technologies like prediction markets and artificial intelligence.”

Hyperliquid was another topic raised during the meeting. Trump said Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig is working to bring the perpetuals-focused trading platform into the US in a “fully compliant and legal fashion.” HYPE jumped more than 20% following the remarks and climbed to $71.

Markets Cheer, But Hurdles Remain

Crypto markets reacted strongly after the White House meeting and the latest signals on regulation. Bitcoin gained 7% and tapped $70,000, while Ethereum posted a bigger jump of nearly 18% and reached $2,327. XRP also moved higher as it climbed to $1.14.

But the bigger question for the industry is still in Washington. Trump can urge lawmakers to move ahead, but the CLARITY Act must still clear political hurdles in the Senate. Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, for instance, warned lawmakers to slow down rather than rush toward a Senate vote. Speaking at the SALT Wyoming Blockchain Symposium on Wednesday, Gallego said Democrats and Republicans still need to work through disagreements over ethics and stablecoin yield.

“Don’t go for a fast vote. A fast vote gets you a fast result, but I’m not sure it’s the result you want.”

It is important to note that Senate Democrats have pushed for language that would prevent public officials, including the president, from selling digital currencies. But Gallego said that repeated efforts to reach the White House on the ethics language have made little progress.

The post Trump Wants the US to Lead Crypto: Here Are the Biggest Takeaways From the White House Meeting appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Most of July and August were highly dull trading periods for the entire cryptocurrency market, with little to no movement, a lack of actual interest, and missing volume.

It all changed yesterday afternoon when the market was revived with major price rallies across all assets. Ripple’s XRP also exploded alongside its peers, but there could be more to its story.

The Story

The cross-border token finally broke decisively away from the $1.00 danger zone, surging by double digits to a monthly peak at $1.14 before it retraced slightly to the current $1.10. There are several reasons, besides the big one behind the market’s resurgence, that can be attributed to XRP’s uptick.

As reported earlier this week, whale activity picked up on several fronts. The number of transactions worth more than $1 million soared by 280% within a single day, reaching almost 40 compared with roughly 10 during each of the preceding two days.

Although this wasn’t necessarily an accumulation signal since large transactions can be buying, selling, or simply transfers, it followed another notable whale development in which market participants holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP purchased roughly 72 million tokens in 24 hours.

The token supply sitting on exchanges was also moving in the right direction for months, as over 240 million XRP left Binance, Upbit, and Coinbase between June and mid-August. These platforms’ combined reserves went down from roughly 5.36 billion to 5.12 billion tokens.

Last but not least, the overall network activity has risen lately, with the XRP Ledger recording almost 50,000 active addresses within 24 hours, the highest figure in over two months.

XRP Bears Caught Off Guard

XRP open interest had skyrocketed to $2.7 billion earlier this week, the highest since the October 2025 massacre. 75% of these positions were positioned long. However, that didn’t mean three-quarters of the actual capital was betting on higher prices.

Notional exposure remained balanced because every derivatives contract has both a long and short side. Perhaps more importantly, the actual trading flow leaned bearish. Around $375 million in 24-hour short volume was recorded compared with $304 million on the long side.

Popular analyst Bird also weighed in on the OI, indicating that when it surged between 2022 and 2024, XRP ultimately got wrecked. However, it all changed in November 2024.

“That time was different. OI exploded… but instead of price rejecting and leverage being wiped out, XRP broke out with it. A completely new trend began.”

Bird added that XRP spent the past few months getting “absolutely destroyed,” as prices capitulated, leverage was flushed, and sentiment deteriorated. OI built up quietly again, and XRP responded with a massive green candle.

The analyst admitted that “one green candle doesn’t confirm anything,” but believes the comparison to previous cycles looks less like the failed leverage spikes of 2022-2024 and “increasingly” more like November 2024 as long as XRP “keeps moving higher while OI remains healthy.”

The post XRP Explodes to a Monthly High: These Signals Hinted a Big Move Was Coming appeared first on CryptoPotato.