Modal Labs' rapid valuation growth highlights the escalating demand and investment in AI infrastructure, underscoring a shift towards efficient, scalable solutions.

The post Modal Labs nears $750M funding round at $16B valuation appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The ad campaign may alter voter perceptions and impact Collins' reelection chances in a competitive Maine Senate race.

The post Democratic PAC targets Collins in ad over Medicaid cuts despite her opposition appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

BitGo's strategic shift towards asset servicing in tokenized securities could redefine crypto infrastructure, influencing industry standards and competition.

The post BitGo’s new Chief Product Officer prioritizes clarity in product development appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The collaboration could set new standards for AI safety, influencing industry practices and regulatory frameworks for autonomous systems.

The post Anthropic collaborates with Nvidia to enhance agent security with new open platform appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Robinhood's crypto trading growth signals increased market engagement, yet historical comparisons highlight volatility and evolving strategies.

The post Robinhood reports 24% increase in daily crypto trading volume in September appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Belarus Approves the Country’s First Crypto Banks: Report 

The first crypto banks have opened in Belarus, according to reports, after the European country earlier this year created a legal framework for Bitcoin banks. 

While not yet named, the crypto banks will start operations after obtaining accreditation from the National Bank of Belarus, Russian news agency Interfax reported Monday. 

Back in January, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed Decree No. 19 “On Cryptobanks and Certain Issues of Control in the Field of Digital Tokens,” officially creating a legal framework for bitcoin and crypto banks in the country. 

“The practical outcome of today’s discussion is the launch and registration of the first crypto banks in the country’s history,” Interfax reported the press service of High-Tech Park saying in a statement.

High-Tech Park is a tax and legal regime in Belarus. Digital asset transactions are permitted in the zone. 

The statement added that banks would be regulated by Hi-Tech Park and the National Bank. 

Dmitry Kalechits, first deputy director of the High-Tech Park supervisory board secretariat, was quoted saying that the move would “improve the flow of the financial ecosystem” and drive foreign investment to Belarus. 

President Lukashenko last September backed the National Bank’s initiative to establish crypto banks in the country. 

The country has long pushed pro-crypto regulations. A 2017 decree legalised crypto mining and trading and temporarily exempted individuals’ crypto income from tax and declaration. That exemption was extended to 2025 and has since been narrowed, with income from foreign platforms now taxed at 13%.

Lukashenko has repeatedly promoted Bitcoin mining as a use for surplus electricity, and in 2025 the Mogilev region began preparing sites for mining farms with his backing.

This post Belarus Approves the Country’s First Crypto Banks: Report  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Blasts Nigel Farage’s ‘Bitcoin Account’ 

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey has appeared to slam Reform Party leader Nigel Farage’s use of Bitcoin. 

In a Monday speech, the finance minister said that Nigel Farage — a pro-crypto member of parliament — was “Liz Truss with a Bitcoin account.” 

Farage, who is leading the increasingly popular Reform Party, has come under fire recently for receiving donations from crypto entrepreneurs. Liz Truss was the UK’s shortest serving Prime Minister who was heavily criticised for her debt-fueled 2022 mini budget. 

“Nigel Farage — he wants you to think he’s a man of the people,” Healey said. “But when it comes to the economy, he’s Lizz Truss with a Bitcoin account.” 

Healey went on to say that his leading Labour Party would help the UK get ahead “through fiscal discipline, through good work, through strong industries.”

His comments were criticized by the Bitcoin community on X, who asked what a “Bitcoin account” even was. 

“Apparently ‘Bitcoin account’ is now a thing,” the Simply Bitcoin account wrote on X. “Incredible stuff from one of the people running Britain.”

Populist Farage has long been a pro-crypto politician. Since 2020, he has framed Bitcoin mainly as a question of personal freedom and opposition to state control of money.

Farage has also said that he was debanked by private British bank Coutts and that led him to develop more interest in digital assets. 

Just last year, he said at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference at Las Vegas that he’d slash crypto capital gains taxes and force the Bank of England to establish a Bitcoin reserve if elected as the next Prime Minister.  

Farage has come under fire this year for receiving millions of dollars in the form of crypto donations from tech entrepreneur and Tether investor Christopher Harborne, and Ben Delo, one of the founders of the now-closed BitMEX crypto exchange. 

The Metropolitan Police have opened an investigation into reports that Reform broke rules against overseas donations. Reform denies wrongdoing and says it will cooperate.

This post UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Blasts Nigel Farage’s ‘Bitcoin Account’  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Citi and Coinbase Working Together To Build Stablecoin Infrastructure for Businesses

Citigroup is working with America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, in its latest blockchain-based venture. 

The two companies said in a joint statement Monday that they were teaming up to allow Citi clients to move between regular money and stablecoins without having to build or manage both banking and crypto systems themselves.

The announcement comes as banks worldwide utilize Bitcoin’s underlying technology to speed up their processes and cater to crypto-hungry customers. 

Citi last month said it would allow institutional investors to custody both traditional assets and bitcoin within one framework, rather than needing separate systems, later this year. 

“Our clients operate in an increasingly fast-paced and complex global economy, and we’re focused on delivering the solutions they need,” said Debopama Sen, Head of Payments, Services, Citi. 

“Our goal is to build the next generation of payments infrastructure — one that is seamless, interoperable, and operates across both traditional and digital payments instruments and networks.”

There are two parts to the deal, the announcement said. Firstly, Coinbase Virtual Accounts, built on Citi’s banking-as-a-service platform, will give Coinbase’s payments customers bank-account-like features so they can accept, hold, send funds. Citi will provide the regulated banking backbone so that incoming fiat can be automatically converted to stablecoins. 

Secondly, Citi’s merchant platform, Spring by Citi, will use Coinbase’s infrastructure so that Citi’s enterprise clients can accept stablecoin payments at checkout. Coinbase will convert the stablecoins to fiat, and Citi settles the funds, so merchants never have to hold or manage crypto directly.

“Fintechs building on Coinbase have always needed a fast, compliant bridge between fiat and stablecoins, and Citi gives us that at scale,” Coinbase’s Head of Infrastructure Product, Alec Lovett, said. 

Coinbase and Citi first announced last year that they would partner to enhance digital asset payment capabilities for institutional clients.

Citi has a number of blockchain offerings, including Citi Token Services, which enables real-time cross-border payments using tokenized deposits.

The firm since last year has also been working with other top banks — including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America — to explore issuing a stablecoin product.

This post Citi and Coinbase Working Together To Build Stablecoin Infrastructure for Businesses first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy and Strive Scoop Up More Than 2,700 Bitcoin in a Week

Bitcoin treasuries are loading up again. 

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, announced Monday that it had bought 1,665 coins last week for $142.7 million — its second buy in a row after a brief hiatus. 

The Nasdaq-listed company added that it had also bought back $152 million in its preferred stock, STRC. Strategy now holds 847,666 bitcoins worth $70.5 billion, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Elsewhere, the fifth biggest bitcoin treasury, Strive, said it had last week snapped up 1,107 BTC for a total cost of  $94.5 million — bringing its holdings to 27,462 coins. 

The two companies have continued to stack coins despite the bitcoin treasury model taking a hit. Major treasuries like Strategy, Satsuma, Smarter Web Company, Sequans, Nakamoto, and Empery Digital have all sold bitcoin this year to repay debt, fund operations or finance buybacks, while others have folded or pivoted to AI infrastructure as their share prices collapsed. 

Strategy stock (MSTR) has lost over 50% of its value over the past year. Strive (ASST) is down by more than 30% over the same period. 

Still, both Strategy and Strive have reassured investors that it’s just business as usual and bitcoin will bounce back. 

Strive CEO Matt Cole has repeatedly said that the company is debt-free, with zero margin requirements, and zero encumbered bitcoin, calling it a balance sheet built to thrive through volatility. 

Strategy has defended having to sell bitcoin this year, with CEO Phong Le boasting that the company now has a “bullet-proof balance sheet” because of the sales, and that it was the “right trade at the time” to sell when it did.  

The software company last week announced it plans to pay investors daily dividends on four of its preferred stocks — STRF, STRC, STRK, and STRD.

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at close to $83,409, down 3% over the past week. 

This post Strategy and Strive Scoop Up More Than 2,700 Bitcoin in a Week first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dollars In, Bitcoin Out: Breez SDK Debuts New Stablecoin Feature

Despite being so-called digital dollars, stablecoins aren’t always simple to use. They run on various crypto networks that need different digital wallets — the type of thing that can put crypto newbies and seasoned bitcoiners alike off. 

But Bitcoin software provider Breez has come up with a solution: Apps built on its Breez SDK can now let users with a bitcoin balance accept stablecoin payments from over 30 networks. 

Breez’s SDK is a developer toolkit that lets apps add bitcoin payments without building the payment infrastructure themselves. It handles wallet creation, sending and receiving and Lightning Network payments. Developers can offer bitcoin features with a few lines of code instead of running nodes or managing liquidity.

Breez said Monday that with the new feature, the receiver picks the sender’s network and an amount. The SDK generates a deposit address and shows what will arrive, and the sender pays from their usual wallet as normal. 

Flashnet converts the payment in the background, and the funds land in the receiver’s non-custodial wallet as bitcoin, or as dollars if they use the stable balance feature. 

Breez released its send USDT/USDC feature in June, allowing a single Breez-powered balance to now move stablecoins in both directions across nearly any network. 

It’s the latest in a series of usability upgrades, after Passkey Login, instant Cash App onboarding, and Stable Balance.

Breez has been layering on features to make bitcoin apps feel more like regular fintech apps: passkey login instead of seed phrases, instant onboarding, dollar-denominated balances, and now cross-chain stablecoin payments. Breez’s Glow, which debuted in August, is its reference app for showing what the SDK can do.

Breez in July announced it was working with Turnkey in a deal letting developers add non-custodial Bitcoin to apps running wallets from their own servers — solving a custody problem that has kept many of the largest consumer platforms from integrating Bitcoin at all.

This post Dollars In, Bitcoin Out: Breez SDK Debuts New Stablecoin Feature first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

When stETH holders seek ETH through Lido’s withdrawal queue, the protocol can use ETH in its buffer to finalize their requests. Some of that buffer is also protected for new validator deposits. The more ETH set aside for deposits when both uses compete, the less is immediately available to the withdrawal queue.

Lido’s Curated Module Committee gained the power to change that priority on Sept. 25. As of Sept. 27, the configured deposit reserve remained at 1,500 ETH, and the committee had yet to open a motion to adjust it. Its first published plan would remove the protected slice temporarily, then consider restoring it for a new staking module. The timing effect for stETH holders depends on how much ETH enters the buffer, how many withdrawals await finalization and whether validators are ready to accept deposits.

Where the buffer goes

Lido’s contract documentation describes three portions of buffered ETH, allocated in order. A deposits reserve comes first, followed by a reserve for unfinalized stETH requests. ETH left over after both allocations is unreserved and can also fund validator deposits. This order keeps some validator-deposit capacity available when withdrawal demand would otherwise absorb the buffer.

The 1,500 ETH target governs the protected portion. The effective reserve can be smaller if the buffer holds less ETH; it is spent as deposits are made and restored toward the target with an accounting oracle report. A reduction below the reserve already in place takes effect immediately. An increase waits for the next report before more ETH receives deposit priority.

The setting matters most when both withdrawal requests and executable validator deposits seek a limited pool of ETH. Setting the target to zero would let the withdrawal reserve claim ETH that had been protected for deposits. Actual finalization still depends on available ETH and the queue, while validator deposits can continue from any unreserved buffer. With enough ETH to cover both uses, the target makes little difference to pending withdrawals.

The committee said in a Sept. 2 statement that the original 1,500 ETH target helped seed Curated Module v2 during a migration from its earlier curated module. It now says the keys needed for that migration have been seeded and the existing Community Staking Module has few depositable keys before its planned 0x02 version launches. In the committee’s view, today’s protected reserve mainly directs stake toward the older curated module. It proposes setting the target to zero until 0x02 CSM is live.

The second step would serve different operators. Lido describes 0x02 CSM as a permissionless module approved by the DAO, with a mainnet launch still pending. The committee says it could restore a 1,500 to 2,000 ETH target after launch if node operators provide demand for new validators. That reserve would keep ETH available for deposits into the new module even during withdrawal pressure. The precise setting remains undecided, and a larger target alone cannot create depositable validator keys.

The committee has pointed to an expected October launch, while Lido’s documentation describes a broader fourth-quarter target. The return of deposit priority therefore depends on a launch and on actual operator capacity. For stETH holders in the protocol queue, the tradeoff would become more acute if withdrawals remained heavy as those new keys became available.

What Lido’s stress model shows

The analysis used to size the initial reserve simulated how this choice could affect withdrawals. It took 360 days of historical staking inflows and withdrawal requests, then ran 500 simulations that each resampled 100 days. Its high-stress case assumes a roughly 30-day Ethereum validator exit queue plus about five days for skimming and oracle processing. The output measures ETH-weighted average time from a stETH withdrawal request to Lido finalization in those scenarios. Actual exit times may differ.

The 10,000 ETH row is a model scenario above the committee factory’s 9,600 ETH limit; the study has no 9,600 ETH row.

In the model, protecting 1,500 ETH for deposits changes normal-case average finalization from 2.3 to 2.6 days compared with zero. Under high stress, the corresponding averages are 6.3 and 7.9 days. A 2,000 ETH target extends the modeled stressed mean to 8.5 days. Those comparisons show the modeled cost of guaranteed deposit capacity when the buffer is contested. Today’s queue and each holder’s wait depend on live conditions.

The distinction between protocol finalization and other exits also matters. A stETH holder can seek ETH by selling the token on a secondary market, where available liquidity and price govern the exchange. Lido’s withdrawal queue has its own finalization process; an Ethereum validator’s exit from the network is a separate step that can influence how quickly funds reach that process.

The governance proposal gives the committee’s 5-of-9 multisig authority to initiate Easy Track motions for this single target, up to 9,600 ETH. The DAO can object to a motion, set the target directly, revoke the permission or remove the factory. The ceiling limits the committee’s setting through this route, while a single motion can still span the permitted range.

On-chain target-setting events still showed 1,500 ETH on Sept. 27, and the reserve factory’s motion records showed no creation since the Sept. 25 activation. The operational question is which condition will prompt the committee to use its new authority: the limited deposit capacity it cites today, or future operator demand for 0x02 CSM. The withdrawal consequence will be determined by whether those deposits and a heavy stETH queue compete for the same buffered ETH.

The post Lido’s 1,500 ETH reserve target could slow stETH withdrawals in a crunch appeared first on CryptoSlate.

At about 04:20 UTC Monday, Bitget's public feed showed BTC and ETH futures trades taking place after the exchange's Sept. 24 security breach. On Sept. 28, Bitget said it had opened BTC withdrawals on the Bitcoin network, the first stage of its phased plan. The notice says the service is open; it does not document a completed customer withdrawal. Trading activity and the ability to send assets off the exchange face separate tests.

Bitget said its security systems detected unauthorized transfers from some hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on Sept. 24. It suspended withdrawals while keeping trading and deposits open. The exchange initially estimated affected assets at about $351.6 million. A Sept. 25 update raised the estimate to approximately $387.5 million after it identified more transactions from the original incident; Bitget said the revision did not reflect additional unauthorized transfers.

Bitget says customer balances remain unaffected and its Protection Fund will cover the incident's financial impact. Those assurances come from the exchange. The practical question for customers is whether they can successfully transfer assets or trading proceeds out of their accounts.

The company's phased reopening plan sets 08:00 UTC for each of these dates:

The first scheduled restart was still ahead when the public trading snapshot was taken at 04:20 UTC. Bitget has since said BTC withdrawals on Bitcoin are open. Its service notice does not establish whether individual transfers have completed. A customer with ETH on a network scheduled for Sept. 29, for example, would face a different timetable from a customer withdrawing BTC on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin withdrawals and futures trading are separate tests

Bitget's public trade feed returned 100 BTCUSDT futures fills between 04:20:25 and 04:20:49 UTC on Sept. 28. It returned 100 ETHUSDT fills between 04:20:34 and 04:20:52 UTC. Those records show that the two USDT-margined contracts matched trades during those seconds. The records cover those two contracts and those seconds; other markets and customer-specific execution prices remain outside their scope.

A separate snapshot around 04:21 UTC showed $22.14 million of displayed BTC futures buy and sell orders and $10.29 million of ETH orders within 0.05% of each contract's midpoint. That band counts orders priced no more than 0.05% away from the middle of the best buy and sell quotes. The BTC quoted spread was about 0.012 basis points and the ETH spread about 0.038 basis points.

A hypothetical $500,000 sell against the displayed buy orders would have averaged 0.0095% below the BTC midpoint and 0.0183% below the ETH midpoint, before fees. The calculation models a static book; no customer order produced those prices. Orders can be canceled, replenished or changed while a trade is placed. The snapshot captures one moment during the withdrawal suspension.

A TokenInsight study provides the historical comparison. Sampling nine venues every 30 minutes from Aug. 16 through Sept. 14, it put Bitget first for combined BTC and ETH futures depth within the wider 0.05% band, at a $41.60 million median. At the tighter 0.03% band, Bitget ranked third at $15.25 million, behind MEXC and Hyperliquid. The study ended before the breach. Their different windows and methods preclude a measured before-and-after change or a current peer ranking.

A futures book measures displayed interest in a derivative. Withdrawal access requires separate evidence about conversion and transfers across the intended network. The public fills establish trading in two contracts at a particular time; Bitget's timetable and its BTC reopening notice describe the phased return of off-platform transfers. The next observable test is whether Bitcoin withdrawals complete in practice, followed by each asset and network in the plan.

The post Bitget says Bitcoin withdrawals are open after $387M hack, but ETH and USDT must wait appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Brazil will require regulated financial institutions to report large crypto transfers involving self-custody wallets from Oct. 1.

Under Resolution BCB 588, institutions authorized by the Banco Central do Brasil must notify the Financial Activities Control Council (Coaf) whenever they send virtual assets worth at least $10,000 to a self-custody wallet or receive the same amount from one.

The requirement covers both deposits from and withdrawals to wallets controlled directly by users. The filing obligation falls on the institution processing the transfer, with qualifying transactions reported to Coaf by the next business day under Brazil’s existing anti-money-laundering framework.

The threshold operates automatically. Institutions do not need to determine that a transaction is suspicious before filing a report, meaning legitimate transfers between an exchange and a customer's personal wallet can enter Coaf's reporting system solely because they meet the amount and transaction-type criteria.

Brazil already requires financial institutions to separately report transactions they assess as suspicious.

The new provision adds another layer by giving authorities visibility into large movements crossing the boundary between regulated platforms and self-custody, even where no suspicious activity has been identified.

The October measure also precedes tighter controls on some outbound crypto transfers.

Resolution BCB 584, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2027, establishes a precautionary holding procedure for certain virtual-asset transfers leaving regulated institutions. Those transactions may be delayed while additional checks are conducted, although the framework allows earlier release where specified conditions are met.

Together, the measures increase scrutiny at the point where crypto enters or leaves Brazil's regulated financial system.

Exchanges, banks and other covered providers will need to identify self-custody counterparties, calculate transaction values and integrate automatic Coaf reporting into their monitoring systems before the October deadline. By January, some will also need processes that can hold outbound transfers for further review.

Rules land as Brazil's crypto market expands

The tougher oversight is being introduced in one of the world's largest crypto markets.

Brazil accounted for $252.5 billion of crypto activity during the period measured by Chainalysis, giving it the largest market in Latin America and helping it rank first in the firm's 2026 global crypto adoption index.

That ranking reflects broad participation rather than dominance in every category. Brazil placed third in flows through crypto services, fourth in on-chain balances, third in domestic peer-to-peer activity, and second in cross-border flows. The US ranked second overall.

The scale of those flows makes the self-custody threshold commercially significant. High-value users, trading firms, and businesses that regularly move assets between regulated platforms and private wallets are more likely to trigger automatic regulatory filings, while exchanges will bear the operational cost of identifying and reporting them.

Brazil's measured crypto economy nevertheless contracted 1.6% during the latest period, showing that the regulatory expansion is arriving even as near-term activity has cooled.

The post Brazil’s $252 billion crypto market gets $10,000 self-custody reporting rule appeared first on CryptoSlate.

More USDT was issued without a sustained rise in balances held by smart-contract accounts on Ethereum, according to a Bank for International Settlements working paper published Sept. 15, 2026. On Tron, those accounts held about 1% of USDT through most of the study's historical series. Together, the findings challenge the assumption that a larger stablecoin supply automatically means more capital has entered decentralized finance.

The BIS paper tracks where tokens sit, not why every holder owns them. Its holder-balance chart stops before 2026 on its date axis, so its percentages cannot be read as September 2026 measurements. That timing matters as current dashboards continue to show large USDT balances on both networks.

On Ethereum, smart-contract accounts held more than 20% of the network's USDT during part of 2021 and 2022. Their share hovered around 15% to 20% until late 2024, then moved down to roughly 10% to 15% as issuance expanded. The drop is a change in the proportion of tokens in contracts, not a finding that the absolute balance kept falling. The BIS authors say the issuance growth did not bring a sustained increase in contract holdings.

A lower share can result when newly issued tokens accumulate outside contracts even if the amount in contracts stays near its earlier level. The study's Ethereum series reflects that distinction: it shows far more USDT in non-contract accounts as issuance grew, without a comparable sustained increase in smart-contract holdings. The percentage change alone is therefore a poor way to infer a withdrawal of dollars from DeFi.

Figure 10 of the study places Ethereum contract-held USDT at roughly $10 billion to $15 billion toward the end of its plotted period, and Tron's at around $1 billion or less. These are approximate chart values. Ethereum's dollar balance fluctuated in the low tens of billions while the share shrank; on Tron, contract balances remained a small slice of a much larger supply. The two percentages have different chain-specific denominators and cannot be treated as a single measure of DeFi adoption.

What a token balance can reveal

The researchers reconstructed USDT holdings from Ethereum and Tron transfer event logs. They identified smart-contract accounts from contract deployments, classified other addresses as externally owned accounts, and cross-checked token supply against mint, burn and blacklist-destruction events. Following the token itself gives a different view from adding up deposits reported by DeFi protocols, where the same tokens may be counted more than once.

Protocol-level total value locked measures assets assigned to particular DeFi applications. The BIS reconstruction instead follows one token across addresses on two networks, including holdings outside those applications. It is better suited to asking how USDT is divided between account types, while protocol TVL can describe the scale of selected venues. Neither turns a balance into a verified description of the holder's purpose.

That distinction improves the measurement, but an account type is still an imperfect guide to economic use. A smart contract may hold USDT for a bridge, wrapper or custodian rather than a DeFi lending or trading strategy. An externally owned address may be used for payments, savings, remittances or exchange custody. Tron's roughly 1% contract-held share therefore does not show that the remaining tokens were spent as payments. Nor does Ethereum's falling share prove that DeFi use contracted.

The current scale is substantial. When checked on Sept. 28, DefiLlama showed about $183.7 billion in USDT market cap across chains, including about $73.3 billion on Ethereum and about $92.5 billion on Tron. Those figures are a later, third-party supply snapshot, not an update of the BIS holder breakdown. They cannot show whether today's tokens are in DeFi contracts, exchange wallets or other accounts.

A current claim about DeFi deployment would require a current breakdown of balances in identified DeFi contracts on each chain, with bridges and custody separated where possible. The historical BIS percentages cannot supply that update. Rising USDT totals, by themselves, establish neither more DeFi deployment nor more payments, and they say nothing about demand for ETH or TRX.

The post USDT grew on Ethereum through 2024, but smart contract holdings stalled, BIS data show appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto exchange operators and digital depositories in Russia will be able to apply for entry into official registers from October 5, when new Bank of Russia admission rules take effect. The move gives firms a route into the regulated crypto market envisioned by a law that took effect in September. Each applicant still needs a separate regulator decision.

In a September 24 notice, the Bank of Russia said the rules also cover operators of information systems used to issue digital financial rights. Its Russian regulation sets qualifications for managers and certain officers, lists documents applicants must submit and governs decisions on register entries. A firm seeking admission must document that it meets those requirements before the bank considers its entry. The published rule tells applicants what to provide and how the bank will make its decision. It does not grant a particular applicant the status it is seeking.

How firms enter the market

The bank's exchange-operator guidance says its electronic application form becomes available on October 5. Under the ordinary route, the regulator has 30 working days to decide after receiving the last required document. For a digital depository, that decision window is 60 working days. These are periods for a decision, not promised approvals or dates for customer trading. The clocks begin with a complete set of required documents, rather than with the October 5 effective date itself. Exchange operators and depositories also face different ordinary review windows, so the single start date for the rules cannot be read as a common timetable for admitting firms.

Some existing banks, brokers and participants in an experimental regime can use a faster notification route, with eligibility depending on the role sought. The regulator says qualifying firms must submit documents before September 1, 2027. That route also requires a decision on a register entry.

Russia's crypto law took effect on September 1 and envisages buying and selling through regulated intermediaries. It requires testing for both qualified and non-qualified investors and sets a 300,000-ruble annual purchase limit per intermediary for the latter group. Those terms describe the intended market; the October rules address how firms can enter it.

The assets that non-qualified investors may buy are being handled separately. In August, the central bank named Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether's USDT for public exchange trading in a draft directive open for comment. The October admission procedure does not finalize that proposed list.

For investors, the next markers are the Bank of Russia's decisions on individual firms and the status of the separate asset rules. An effective admission procedure alone does not establish that regulated retail trading is available.

The post Russia lets crypto exchanges apply October 5 – but even Bitcoin lacks final retail clearance appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Base network receives a hard fork on Tuesday, September 30, 2026, at 18:00 UTC. It is called Cobalt, and for you as a holder it means one thing above all: deposits and withdrawals over Base will stand still for some time that evening. Binance has announced the freeze from 17:00 UTC, an hour before the switch. Trading continues; only transfers between the exchange and your own wallet pause. Your tokens do not disappear in the process, they are not swapped, and no second coin appears. If you want to move something over Base that evening, do it beforehand or wait until the next morning.

The real stumbling block lies elsewhere: the exchange resumes transfers without further announcement as soon as the network is running stably. There is no starting gun you could wait for — you have to look yourself. This article sets out what actually happens in a hard fork, why exchanges regularly cut the bridge at such moments, and what the date means for your balance, your holding period and your own node.

Base hard fork Cobalt: the timetable for Sepolia and mainnet

Cobalt is the Base hard fork that follows Beryl. Beryl was the June 2026 upgrade that brought the B20 token standard and the Reth V2 node software to the chain. Cobalt builds on it and was re-scoped in two rounds in September before its contents were settled.

Activation is not a loose plan but a fixed timestamp compiled into the node software. For the Sepolia testnet (chain ID 84532) the value there is 1790186400, which is September 23, 2026 at 18:00 UTC. For mainnet (chain ID 8453) it is 1790791200, that is September 30, 2026 at 18:00 UTC. Exactly seven days apart.

That sequence is why the mainnet date is more reliable than an announced date usually is: the testnet already went through the fork on September 23, and the maintenance window closed cleanly at 20:00 UTC. An upgrade that has cleared the testnet is rarely pulled at short notice. That is a difference from networks where an activation date is computed from an ongoing validator vote and can shift as soon as approval falls below a threshold.

What a hard fork is, and why it is not a new coin

A hard fork is a change to a blockchain's rules under which the new rules are no longer compatible with the old ones. Every node that wants to validate the network's blocks needs the new software for that. A node on an old version regards the new blocks as invalid and drops out of the network.

The opposite term is the soft fork: there the rules are merely tightened, old nodes still accept the new blocks, and the network stays on one line even without a complete update. A soft fork is backwards compatible, a hard fork is not.

From this incompatibility grew the misconception that a hard fork automatically produces a second coin. That happens only when a meaningful share of participants deliberately continues under the old rules — that is how Bitcoin Cash (BCH) emerged from Bitcoin in 2017. Such a chain split presupposes two camps that both want to carry on, each with miner or validator support and with exchanges that list the split-off chain.

None of that is visible at Cobalt. There is no competing version of the Base network, no group wanting to stay on the old software, and nothing you could "claim". It is a pure maintenance upgrade, of the kind Ethereum has carried out regularly for years. Anyone offering you a "fork airdrop" for a planned network upgrade, or asking you to connect your wallet to unlock tokens, is attempting fraud.

The Binance transfer freeze begins an hour before the fork

Binance has announced that it will support the Base upgrade and has set the freeze for September 30, 17:00 UTC — one hour ahead of the fork at 18:00 UTC.

Affected are deposits and withdrawals of tokens over the Base network. That is a network statement, not a token statement: the same coin you cannot withdraw over Base may under some circumstances still be moved over Ethereum or another supported chain — at different fees and with a different duration. If your exchange offers several networks for the same token, that is the way out on this particular evening.

How long the pause lasts, nobody commits to in advance. Experience from comparable upgrades ranges from about an hour to several hours, depending on how quickly the exchange's nodes follow the new chain and how many confirmations it waits for before release.

Trading continues, only deposits and withdrawals stand still

The point often gets swallowed in reports on network upgrades although it is the most important in practice: trading on the exchange is not affected by a network hard fork. Buying, selling and swapping run in the exchange's internal book without any transaction arising on the blockchain. So as long as your balance sits on the exchange, you can keep trading.

What stands still is only the way out and the way in: the withdrawal to your own wallet and the deposit from it. Precisely those two operations are real transactions on Base, and precisely those the exchange pauses until it is certain its nodes see the right chain.

From this follows simple scheduling. If all you want to do on Tuesday evening is watch, the fork does not concern you at all. If instead you want to bring a balance from the exchange into self-custody — onto a hardware wallet, say — then the afternoon is the right moment, not the evening. A transaction that starts at 16:55 UTC but would only be confirmed at 17:05 UTC can get stuck in the exchange's queue.

Network upgrade and deposits: why the bridge between exchange and chain is cut

An exchange is liable for every credit it books into a customer's account. A deposit is credited only once its own nodes see the transaction in a block and that block counts as sufficiently secured. In the minutes around a hard fork, precisely that foundation is uncertain.

Two things can happen. First, a reorganisation can occur: the network discards a short sequence of blocks and replaces it with another. A transaction that looked confirmed a moment ago is then no longer included. Had the exchange already credited it, the balance in the account would no longer be matched by a transaction on the chain. Second, an exchange node can simply be stuck on the old software: it then sees a chain the rest of the network no longer follows.

The pause is therefore not a sign of a problem but the opposite — it is the precaution. You find the same pattern at every larger network upgrade, whatever the chain. We have traced it among others at the BNB Chain and at MultiversX, and in the sharper variant at an emergency hard fork at Core DAO that came without the usual lead time. The sequence is the same every time: freeze shortly before the date, switch, observation, quiet resumption.

What Cobalt brings technically: B20 extensions and conditional transactions

Cobalt's scope covers four areas according to the network's technical documentation. For holders they are all unremarkable; for developers and node operators they are not.

• A series of additions to the B20 token standard, introduced with the preceding Beryl upgrade.
• Conditional transactions: transactions that only become valid once the state of the chain matches a previously defined condition. For you as a user that is invisible at first; it is a tool for applications meant to execute only under certain market conditions.
• A first step towards decoupling fork timestamps from the node software. Until now an activation date such as September 30 is hard-compiled — every future upgrade therefore forces a software update. If that value becomes dynamic, dates can be adjusted without every operator having to install a new version.
• A new registry for TEE prover signatures, in which attestation is verified directly on chain.

What deliberately does not appear on this list: any change to balances, to addresses or to the validity of existing tokens. A hard fork of this kind does not touch your holdings. Your address stays the same, your seed stays the same, and you need to change nothing in your wallet.

Balances in your own wallet: what happens to your tokens during the fork

If your tokens sit in a self-custodied wallet on Base, the least changes for you. The chain runs on, your balance stays at the same address, and transactions remain possible — apart from possibly brief interruptions around the moment of the switch, when individual nodes and RPC providers are still catching up.

There is one qualification nonetheless. Your wallet usually does not speak to a node of its own but through a provider's RPC endpoint. If that provider is stuck on the old software after the fork, you may see an outdated balance or a transaction that does not go through. That is a display error on the way to the chain, not a loss: your tokens sit on the chain, not in the app. If it happens, a look at a block explorer as a second source helps before you repeat anything.

What you should expressly not do in that situation: send the same transaction several times because it does not appear. In the period of increased throughput after an upgrade, a transaction can sit in the pool longer and then execute after all. Anyone who pushes another one through ends up with two transfers and two lots of fees paid.

Node operators need the minimum version, everyone else waits

Anyone running a Base node themselves is the only party with a real task before the date: the software must run on a version that knows Cobalt. A node on an older version regards the blocks after 18:00 UTC as invalid and is thereafter cut off from the valid chain.

Important here: the minimum versions for testnet and mainnet are not identical according to the technical documentation. Anyone running both networks should check the figures separately and not rely on a version that sufficed on Sepolia also being enough on mainnet.

For everybody else — and that is the great majority — there is no task. You need to update nothing, confirm nothing and sign nothing. Experience shows this is exactly where fraud attempts start: fake "upgrade portals" that demand a wallet connection for an announced fork, supposedly to make your tokens fit for migration. A genuine network switch never requires a signature from end users. How to check a provider before the first euro is set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges; Base itself is the Ethereum layer 2 developed by Coinbase, which explains its link to Ethereum — an overview of the ecosystem is in the piece on the tokens on Base.

Tax and holding period: a hard fork is not a sale

The question comes up at every network upgrade, and in the Cobalt case the answer is pleasingly short: a protocol upgrade without a chain split is not a disposal. You swap nothing, you receive nothing, your token stays the same. Your holding period under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act therefore also runs on unbroken — the one-year period, after which a gain from the sale of privately held crypto assets remains tax-free in Germany, does not start again.

The case would be different only at a genuine split, where you receive a new token in addition to your existing one. The German Federal Ministry of Finance has addressed this in its circular on crypto assets; classifying such allocations is demanding in the individual case and belongs in the hands of a tax adviser. At Cobalt the question does not arise, because no new chain comes into being.

One practical note remains nonetheless. If on September 30 you withdraw your position from the exchange before the freeze, that transfer is not a sale either — a transfer between two of your own wallets triggers no tax. The operation should, however, be recorded in your documentation as a transfer and not as a disposal, otherwise software will later compute a gain for you that never existed.

The hard fork cluster: what Core DAO, MultiversX and the BNB Chain have shown

This Base date is the latest instance of a pattern that has repeated several times in 2026, and the cases differ in exactly one point: the lead time.

At the BNB Chain and at MultiversX the date was fixed weeks in advance, the exchanges announced the freeze, and the process was unspectacular. At Core DAO the hard fork came as an emergency measure — there holders had barely any time, and the transfer freeze caught many without warning. The Base case lies at the calm end of this series: announced, tested on the testnet, with a moment fixed to the minute.

The transferable lesson is less technical than organisational. Anyone leaving a balance permanently on an exchange depends on its schedule at every such date — and learns of the end of the freeze only when they look themselves. Anyone self-custodying is not affected by the freeze but carries the responsibility for their own access credentials. That is not a recommendation in either direction, but the trade-off that sits behind every one of these dates.

Base hard fork: how to proceed now

1. Check by Tuesday afternoon whether you need to move anything over Base that evening. If so, do it before 17:00 UTC, or switch to another network, provided your exchange offers the token there as well. Which venues support which networks is shown in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Decide where your balance should sit after the date. Anyone repeatedly caught out by such freezes is holding more on the exchange than they actually want to. The alternative and its costs are in the comparison of hardware wallets.
3. Record your transfers cleanly in your documentation. A withdrawal to your own wallet is not a sale and must not appear as one. Tools that keep transfers and disposals apart are among the crypto tax tools.

And if you have nothing planned for Tuesday evening: then the right action is to do nothing. The fork runs without you, your balance stays where it is, and by Wednesday morning deposits and withdrawals are highly likely to have been open again for a while.

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

Sources: Binance announcement on the Base network upgrade and the technical overview of the Cobalt upgrade.

Ethena is ending the ENA rewards around its dollar token USDe at the end of the month. Anyone holding USDe or its yield-bearing variant sUSDe will receive no further token subsidy from October 1, 2026. What remains is the return the protocol actually earns in the market. The yield does not disappear, then, but its base becomes narrower and more volatile. For investors in Germany a second layer comes on top that many underestimate: BaFin wound up the USDe business of the German Ethena entity back in 2025, and there has been no redemption claim against a German issuer since.

Ethena's announcement of September 26 in its own words

The news comes from the protocol itself. On the official @ethena account on X it said on September 26, 2026 that token incentives connected to the growth of USDe had fallen by roughly 85 percent since the first airdrop in 2024, and that from the end of this month there would be no token incentives whatsoever and no associated inflation (Ethena on X, September 26, 2026).

Two terms matter here, because they are often conflated. Token incentive means the protocol distributes its own ENA tokens to users so that they hold or stake USDe. Inflation in this context means that this very distribution increases the circulating supply of ENA. If both fall to zero, the protocol stops paying for growth with its own tokens.

The governance token's price reacted sharply over the weekend. ENA traded at $0.2601 at around 19:50 UTC on September 28, 2026, down 9.1 percent in 24 hours but up 26.5 percent over seven days (our own reading on CoinGecko). The weekly gain therefore still stands; the daily loss eats part of it back.

ENA emissions: how incentives fell 85 percent since the 2024 airdrop

The 85 percent figure describes the end of a long wind-down, not a sudden cut. According to Crypto Briefing, Ethena has paid out more than $750 million in rewards since launch (Estefano Gomez, September 26, 2026). That money was the fuel for growth over the first two years.

To understand why the protocol is now putting this lever away entirely, look at the revenue side. Ethena's income depends on funding costs in the derivatives market. When those cool off, paying for further growth with your own tokens becomes expensive, because the subsidy is no longer covered by current earnings. That cooling is precisely the reason Ethena itself gives.

Delta-neutral yield: where the sUSDe rate really comes from

Delta-neutral means a position is hedged against price moves: every unit of cryptocurrency held is matched by an equally large opposing position in the derivatives market, so that a rising or falling price barely changes the value of the overall position. That is exactly how USDe is built. Behind the token sit yield-bearing ether tokens, Bitcoin and dollar tokens, and against them stand short positions in perpetual futures.

The return comes from two sources. The first is the yield on the staking tokens posted as collateral. The second is the funding rate, the balancing payment that flows regularly between the long and short side on perpetual futures. As long as more capital is betting on rising prices, the long positions pay the short side, and Ethena sits on the receiving end. This mechanism is the real engine, and it was so before the announcement too. How it works out in detail is broken down in our piece on the origin of the USDe yield.

Funding rate and sUSDe yield: around five percent, but not guaranteed

The decisive question for holders is how much is left once the subsidy falls away. One documented reference point: the support pages of the provider Eco listed roughly 5.01 percent annual yield for sUSDe as of September 15, 2026, describing a marked compression against the double-digit figures of previous years. That number is a snapshot, not a commitment.

What matters is the direction of the swing. The yield is high when funding costs are high, and that is typically the case in phases of rising prices and crowded long positioning. When sentiment turns, the rate falls, and in exceptional cases it can go negative. For such phases Ethena holds an insurance fund, which according to the same source stood at $61 million in March 2026, at a circulating supply of $5.6 billion at the time. That is a buffer, not a guarantee.

From this follows a plain insight for your own planning: a yield that hangs on market sentiment is no substitute for a fixed-term deposit. Anyone using dollar tokens as a yield component should know the terms of the alternatives rather than rely on a single number. An overview of the providers and their conditions is in our comparison of staking platforms.

USDe supply shrinks from $15 billion to $4.9 billion

The subsidy worked while it ran, and its wind-down can be read off the size of the token. At the peak in October 2025, roughly $15 billion in USDe was in circulation. At the end of August 2026 the figure was below $5 billion, a fall of more than 65 percent (Crypto Briefing, September 26, 2026).

Our own reading on CoinGecko on September 28, 2026 confirms that order of magnitude: USDe supply stood at roughly 4.90 billion tokens at a price of $0.9998. Of sUSDe, a good 1.04 billion units were in circulation, at a price of $1.25 and therefore a market value of around $1.30 billion. About a quarter of the stock is staked.

The $1.25 price for sUSDe follows from how the token is built. sUSDe pays nothing out. The token becomes more expensive relative to USDe the more yield has accrued. From the gap between 1.00 and 1.25 you can read that roughly 25 percent in yield has flowed into the token since launch. This calculation comes from the price data above and is not a forecast. Anyone posting sUSDe against lending rates is therefore always working with a moving figure.

The ENA buyback from $7.5 billion in USDe supply

The second half of the switch concerns the governance token. A buyback tied to the size of the stablecoin takes the place of the distribution. A governance proposal adopted in September 2026 sets the first threshold at $7.5 billion in USDe supply. If supply rises above it, 95 percent of the protocol's net proceeds flow into open-market purchases of ENA (Crypto Briefing, September 26, 2026).

Measured against the $4.90 billion of September 28, 2026, some $2.6 billion is missing to reach that threshold, about 53 percent above today's supply. That is the point at which the new mechanism takes effect at all. Until then ENA carries the switch without the buyback, and it is precisely this gap that explains why the market has not read the news uniformly.

BaFin and MiCAR: how Ethena GmbH was wound up in Germany in 2025

Here lies the part of the story that weighs more heavily for investors in Germany than any yield figure. USDe was initially issued in Europe by Ethena GmbH, a German company. The firm used a transitional provision of the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCAR for short, filed an authorisation application with BaFin in July 2024 and withdrew it on April 3, 2025. The procedure thus ended without authorisation.

The supervisor drew the consequence. On April 15, 2025 BaFin ordered the wind-down of the authorisation-requiring business in USDe tokens. On June 25, 2025 it set the redemption process in motion: holders could redeem their tokens from June 25 to August 6, 2025, for 42 calendar days, and exclusively against the dollar token USDC (BaFin, consumer notice of June 25, 2025). It was the first measure with which BaFin enforced MiCAR.

This history forms the frame German holders stand in today. It is not thereby closed. The protocol itself remains active, the token exists globally, and it is traded. What has fallen away is the European issuer with authorisation.

No redemption claim in Germany: the consequences for your USDe holdings

An authorised issuer under MiCAR must take the token back at any time and at par. That claim is the core of consumer protection on dollar tokens, and in the case of USDe it is no longer enforceable against a German company for German holders after the 2025 wind-down. Anyone holding the token today holds it through routes outside German supervision.

In practice that means three things. Redemption runs through the market, that is, through prices on a trading venue, and not through a statutory claim. The quality of the backing remains a question of trust in the protocol's reports. And availability depends on the platform through which you hold the token, which is the most sensitive point in stressed phases.

Tax: sUSDe income between investment income and private disposal

The tax treatment of sUSDe is no side issue, because it decides how much of five percent reaches you. Two frameworks come into question, and which applies depends on how the token is classified in the individual case.

The first framework is Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act, that is, investment income with flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge. The second is Section 23, the private disposal transaction: there a holding period of one year applies, after which a gain remains tax-free, and within the year an exemption threshold of €1,000 for the sum of all such gains in the calendar year. Because sUSDe pays nothing out and the return arises solely through the rising token price, classification as a disposal gain is the obvious reading, but it is not thereby settled.

Only one thing is solid at this point: the question belongs settled before the next sale, not after, and it belongs put to a tax adviser. What you can do yourself is keep the records clean, documenting every acquisition, every swap and every date. Every acquisition, every swap and every date belong documented while the transactions are fresh.

Worked example: 10,000 USDe at five percent over one year

An example makes the order of magnitude tangible. It uses the snapshot of roughly 5 percent documented above and is a model calculation, not an expectation. Anyone holding 10,000 USDe in sUSDe and staying at that rate for a year would arrive at about $500 in pre-tax income.

If that amount falls under Section 23 and you sell after more than a year, it remains tax-free. If you sell within the year, the €1,000 exemption threshold applies, so that at this amount and with no further such gains in the year no tax arises either. If instead it falls under Section 20, some $125 would be due at 25 percent withholding tax, leaving about $375. The spread between $500 and $375 is not a detail but a quarter of the income.

Two items are still missing from this calculation, and both weigh on the result. Currency risk between the US dollar and the euro hits you in full, because USDe is pegged to the dollar and not to the euro. On top come the fees of the access route, which diverge sharply by platform and network.

USDe without ENA incentives: the key points for your decision

1. Settle your access route. Check which platform you hold USDe through and which supervisor it answers to, because there has been no redemption claim against a German issuer since 2025. Which houses in Europe work with authorisation is shown in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Measure the yield against alternatives. From October the funding rate alone carries the return, and it fluctuates. Set the roughly 5 percent against the terms of other providers, for instance in the comparison of lending providers.
3. Raise the tax question before the sale. The difference between Section 20 and Section 23 costs a quarter of the income in the example above. Document every transaction and have the classification settled, supported by a tax tool.

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

The Dogecoin price stood at $0.0932 on Monday evening, 4.2 percent below its level of 24 hours earlier. In euro terms that is about €0.0822. The real story is not in that number, though, but in where it is set: trading in Dogecoin now takes place mainly on the derivatives market, and according to data from the analytics firm CoinGlass, roughly $1.5 billion in leveraged positions are open there. Measured against a market capitalisation of $14.5 billion, a good tenth of the entire Dogecoin market therefore rests on contracts that are closed by force as soon as the price moves a few percent the wrong way.

For a retail investor in Germany that changes the arithmetic in three places: the permitted leverage, the distance to forced closure, and tax. This piece works through all three using today's numbers.

Dogecoin price on Monday evening: $0.0932 after a 4.2 percent daily loss

The starting position in numbers, as of the early evening of September 28: Dogecoin trades at $0.093171 on CoinGecko market data, down 4.24 percent within a day. Over 30 days it is still up 11.55 percent. Market capitalisation stands at $14.55 billion, rank twelve in the overall market, on 156.11 billion units in circulation. The price is 87.3 percent below its all-time high of $0.731578 set in May 2021.

On Kraken, where many German investors trade directly in euro, the price stood at €0.08215 on Monday evening, with a daily high of €0.08591 and a daily low of €0.08060. The gap between high and low is therefore 6.6 percent in a single day. That figure matters in a moment, when liquidation distances come up.

Open interest of $1.5 billion against a $14.5 billion market cap

Open interest is the sum of all futures contracts currently open and not yet closed out. It measures how much capital is tied up in bets on the price, not how many coins actually change hands. CoinGlass puts Dogecoin open interest at roughly $1.504 billion. Over the same period, according to that source, about $4.47 million in Dogecoin positions were closed by force.

Set open interest against market capitalisation and the ratio comes to 10.3 percent. For Bitcoin the same ratio usually sits in the low single digits. The higher it runs, the more the derivatives market drives short-term price action, because every larger move triggers a chain of forced closures that amplifies the move itself.

Our own measurement at OKX: the derivatives market turns over eight times the spot market

So that you do not have to rely on a single data source, cryptoticker.io measured the situation at a large exchange on Monday evening. For the DOGE-USDT pair at OKX we compared turnover over the past 24 hours on the perpetual contract and on the spot market. The figures apply to this one exchange, not to the market as a whole.

The result: the perpetual contract turned over roughly 5.66 billion Dogecoin in 24 hours, about $527 million at Monday evening's price. Spot trading on the same exchange came to roughly $64.8 million over the same period. The derivatives market therefore moved about eight times the spot market at this venue. Open interest at OKX alone stood at 1.017 billion Dogecoin, some $94.9 million. cryptoticker.io collected this analysis itself on September 28, 2026.

A funding rate of 0.005 percent per eight hours points to a long majority

The funding rate is the balancing payment that flows between buyers and sellers on a perpetual contract every eight hours, so that the contract price does not drift away from the spot price. When it is positive, buyers pay sellers, and that means more capital is betting on rising prices than the other way round.

At OKX the funding rate on the Dogecoin perpetual stood at 0.00509 percent per eight-hour period on Monday evening. Annualised, that is about 5.6 percent that a long position carries in running fees alone before the price has moved at all. The value is low, but it is positive, and it is positive on a day that is down four percent. The majority of leveraged positions are therefore still betting on rising prices while the price falls. This is precisely the constellation that produces the cascades in which a two percent slide becomes a five percent slide within minutes.

Leverage of two to one at German providers, 50 times at offshore exchanges

This is where German law parts company with what the numbers above describe. At OKX the maximum selectable leverage on the Dogecoin perpetual is 50 times. An offer like that is not aimed at German retail investors.

What governs the matter in Germany is the general administrative act issued by BaFin on July 23, 2019 on contracts for difference. For CFDs with cryptocurrencies as the underlying, the act prescribes initial margin of 50 percent of notional value. That equates to leverage of two to one and is the strictest limit of any asset class covered there; for major currency pairs initial margin is 3.33 percent, for single stocks 20 percent. Two safeguards come on top: negative balance protection, which caps your total liability at the balance of the trading account, and close-out once account equity falls below 50 percent of the total initial margin requirement.

The difference is considerable. At two to one, forced closure arithmetically kicks in only after a price loss of around 25 percent. Anyone using a provider without European authorisation at 50 times leverage loses that protection entirely and trades outside the framework the German supervisor can enforce. How the platforms in this segment differ on leverage, maintenance margin and fees is set out in our overview of the best perp DEXs.

The liquidation distance on a 50-times leveraged position is around two percent

The arithmetic behind it is simple enough to do yourself. At 50 times leverage you post two percent of the position value as collateral. Once that collateral is used up, the position is closed. After maintenance margin, forced closure therefore sits roughly 1.8 to 2.0 percent away from the entry price.

Hold that figure against today's session: Dogecoin swung between $0.0914 and $0.09781 in a single day, 7.0 percent between low and high. A 50-times leveraged position would therefore have been stopped out several times that day, regardless of whether it was betting on rising or falling prices and whether the direction proved right in the end. At two to one under the German rule, by contrast, the same 7.0 percent daily range would not have touched a position.

Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies to the coin, Section 20 to the derivative

For tax purposes, buying outright and trading on leverage are two different worlds, and the distinction costs or saves four-figure sums depending on the case.

If you hold Dogecoin directly in your own wallet or in an exchange account, Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act on private disposal transactions applies. Once a year has passed between purchase and sale, the gain is tax-free. Within the year there is an exemption threshold of €1,000 per year covering all private disposal transactions together. If it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable at your personal income tax rate, not merely the excess.

A perpetual contract or a CFD, by contrast, is a forward transaction under Section 20 (2) of the Income Tax Act. There is no one-year period there and therefore no tax exemption after twelve months. Flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent applies, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. The earlier restriction under which losses from forward transactions could only be offset up to €20,000 a year was removed by the legislator in the 2024 Annual Tax Act, retroactively for all open cases. Losses from forward transactions have since been fully offsettable against investment income again. Anyone who traded on leverage in 2022 or 2023 and holds an assessment subject to review should look at this with their tax adviser.

Levels at $0.0914 on the downside and $0.0978 on the upside

Two levels emerge from the daily data at which the next few days will be decided. On the downside sits the daily low of $0.0914. If the price falls below it, the long positions built up over the past week would be affected, and the positive funding rate suggests that some of them are open. On the upside stand the day's opening level of $0.09721 and the daily high of $0.09781.

The framing matters: these are measured price levels from a single day's trading and not a forecast. Where the price goes depends on factors that none of these numbers captures. The value of the levels lies in showing where liquidation cascades would start. That is information about risk, not about direction.

Buying routes in Germany: MiCA authorisation, exchange-traded product or self-custody

Three routes lead to a Dogecoin position in Germany, and they differ markedly in cost, tax and custody.

Buying outright through a trading platform authorised under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, is the standard route. Since the end of the German transition period, providers targeting customers in Germany must hold such authorisation. The coin you buy belongs to you, the one-year clock runs, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet. Which platforms hold the authorisation and what they charge in fees is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

The second route is an exchange-traded product through an ordinary securities account. The third is leveraged trading, the subject of this piece, and it is the only one that leaves you holding no coin at the end but a claim against a counterparty. That ready-made exchange products can disappear again was shown recently in the United States, when a provider wound up its Dogecoin fund after less than a year. The details are in our report on the closure of the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF.

What derivatives dominance means for the valuation of Dogecoin

A market in which eight times the spot turnover runs through perpetual contracts behaves differently from one in which coins actually change hands. Price moves arise faster there, run further, and turn just as abruptly, because part of the move consists of forced closures rather than a change of view among investors.

For interpretation that means two things. First, a four percent daily loss says less about actual demand under this structure than it would in a spot-driven market. Second, volatility is very likely to stay high for as long as open interest sits at a tenth of market capitalisation. Anyone holding Dogecoin for the long run can sit those swings out. Anyone working with leverage is trading in precisely the segment that creates them.

Dogecoin price: the key points for your decision

1. Settle the buying route before a position is opened. An outright purchase with a one-year clock and leveraged trading under withholding tax are two separate decisions, not two grades of the same one. An overview of authorised platforms is in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Hold the liquidation distance against the daily range. With a 7.0 percent daily swing, a distance of two percent is not a position but a bet on the next quarter of an hour. Which platform applies which leverage and which maintenance margin is shown in the comparison of the best perp DEXs.
3. Keep the documentation running from the start. Forward transactions and outright purchases land in different tax buckets and belong in separate records. The tools in the comparison of crypto tax software read both automatically.

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

Polygon was for years the answer to every fee question: anyone who found Ethereum too expensive moved to Polygon. Today it looks as if nobody is left there. Our own measurement on September 28, 2026 gives a more precise picture, and it is less comfortable than the impression. The chain holds $765 million, and over 30 days it produced $37.05 million in fees, of which $30.98 million came from a single protocol. That is 83.6 percent. And that very protocol, the prediction market Polymarket, has announced that it is leaving Polygon.

This overview works through the ecosystem in order: what the chain is today, who actually uses it, where POL stands against its all-time high, how you get there in practice, where trading happens, and which risks an investor in Germany should know beforehand. cryptoticker.io collected all figures itself on September 28, 2026 from DefiLlama and CoinGecko data.

Polygon at a Glance: Chain ID 137 and POL as Gas and Staking Token

Polygon is an independent network with chain ID 137 that presents itself as a fast and cheap complement to Ethereum. Technically it is EVM-compatible: the same smart contracts, meaning self-executing programs on the blockchain, run unchanged on both networks, and tokens follow the ERC-20 standard.

Since the switch, the network token is called POL and has replaced MATIC. POL does two jobs at the same time: it pays transaction fees, and it is the deposit in staking, meaning locking up tokens to secure the network in return for a reward. If you still hold old MATIC balances in a wallet, check whether the switch has gone through. On exchanges it usually ran automatically; in self-custodied wallets it did not always.

The project has also repositioned itself strategically. What was once a playground for applications of every kind has turned into a claim to be infrastructure for payments and stablecoins. That direction explains the changes to the network described further down.

Who Still Uses Polygon in 2026: $765 Million TVL and $37 Million in Monthly Fees

Total value locked, or TVL, is the sum of the values held in a network's contracts. For Polygon, DefiLlama reported exactly $765,279,235 on September 28, 2026. For comparison, on the same day: Arbitrum $1.43 billion, the Robinhood Chain that launched only in July $1.02 billion, and Base $6.19 billion. A chain that ranked among the industry's largest in 2021 now sits behind a network three months old.

Trading looks similar. Polygon's decentralised exchanges handled $6.73 billion over 30 days, $1.35 billion over seven days and $207 million in 24 hours. Fees across all protocols together came to $37.05 million over 30 days, $7.10 million over seven days and $929,000 in 24 hours.

The impression of an abandoned network is therefore wrong, but only by half. Trading continues, and it runs into the billions. The question is who is doing it.

One Protocol Carries 83.6 Percent of Polygon Fees, and It Wants Out

Of the $37.05 million in fees over the past 30 days, $30.98 million traces back to Polymarket, the largest prediction market in the industry. A prediction market is a venue where shares in the occurrence of future events are bought and sold. Measured by trading volume the share is smaller, though still large: $2.20 billion of $6.73 billion over 30 days, or 32.7 percent.

Polymarket has publicly announced a move to its own chain. Josh Stevens, responsible there for engineering in the DeFi area, wrote on April 25 that Polymarket's development had clearly outgrown its own infrastructure. The reason given for the move is competition for blockspace: when many applications compete for room in the blocks at the same time, fees fluctuate and confirmations are delayed, and a high-frequency venue copes badly with both. Its own chain gives full control over block time and fees.

Figures on the scale of the dependency differ, and the range itself is the news. Reporting on the move put Polymarket's share of Polygon fees at 56.3 percent. My own measurement on September 28 produces 83.6 percent. The dependency therefore grew while the move was being prepared. For Polygon that means the departure takes away the main source of revenue rather than one important customer among many. We described how Polymarket is positioned in regulatory terms in Europe in Polymarket and its EU authorisation.

No date for the move has been set publicly, and the target chain was not finally settled as of the most recent word on it. If you hold POL, follow that date, because it is the single most important factor bearing on the network's revenue.

Courtyard, Quickswap, Aave: What Is Left Without Polymarket

The second tier deserves a close look, because it shows what the chain carries under its own power. In the 30 days to September 28 the network itself collected $2.21 million in fees. Behind it comes Courtyard with $2.17 million, a service that stores physical collectible cards in a vault and makes them tradable as tokens. Then follow Quickswap with $908,000, Uniswap version 4 with $680,000 and version 3 with $496,000, the prediction feature in MetaMask with $426,000 and the lending protocol Aave version 3 with $265,000.

Take Polymarket out of the count and around $6.07 million in monthly fees is left across all remaining protocols. This is not a dead chain, but it is a small one. The composition is worth noting: the strongest remaining single item is the tokenisation of real collectibles, ahead of every trading and lending protocol. Anyone testing the payments-chain story finds the first piece of evidence here that Polygon really is used away from pure crypto trading.

POL Against Its All-Time High: 90.8 Percent Below the March 2024 Peak

The plain figures, measured on September 28, 2026 at CoinGecko: POL trades at $0.1191, which converts to €0.1048. Market capitalisation stands at $1.265 billion, with roughly 10.62 billion tokens in circulation. The all-time high is $1.29 and dates from March 13, 2024. That leaves the token 90.8 percent below its peak.

The short view is friendlier than the long one. Over 30 days the price gained 13.6 percent; over twelve months it shows a loss of 46.3 percent. Both are observations and neither is a forecast. We do not issue a price target, and anyone who reads one should look at who set it and what it rests on.

The supply side matters for the classification. Circulating and total supply are practically identical for POL, so no large release of locked tokens is still pending that could weigh on the price on top of everything else. What does exist is a continuing issuance of new tokens that pays for staking rewards and an ecosystem fund. Holding POL without staking it means carrying that dilution without taking a share in it. The usual ways to change that are set out in our comparison of staking providers.

Payments and Stablecoins: $2.99 Billion Sits on the Chain

A stablecoin is a token tied to a currency whose value it is meant to track. On Polygon, DefiLlama measured $2.99 billion in such tokens on September 28, 2026. That is more than the chain's entire TVL and the real reason the project sees its future in payments: whoever sends a transfer has no use for credit or yield; what they need is a fee in the cents range and a confirmation that arrives reliably.

On its own site the project puts this focus front and centre and describes the network as groundwork for moving money rather than a field for speculation, see the official Polygon site. Part of it is the Agglayer, a layer intended to pool liquidity across several EVM networks so that a balance does not fragment across dozens of chains.

For you as a user in Germany the practical point lies elsewhere: a stablecoin on Polygon is no bank deposit. There is no deposit insurance, and the peg to the reference value depends on the issuer's backing. If you genuinely want to use crypto for paying, a card is the more common route; the differences are set out in the comparison of crypto credit cards.

The Ithaca Hard Fork of July 29, 2026: Failover for Payments

A hard fork is a change to the network rules that every participant has to adopt. On July 29, 2026 the fork named Ithaca went live on Polygon's mainnet, according to the accompanying reporting the fourth update within five months.

Its content fits the payments strategy exactly. Ithaca brings automatic failover that keeps operations running when a block producer drops out, additional checks that filter out particularly demanding transactions, and better monitoring tools for node operators. None of that excites investors. These are the properties a payment provider demands before it sends real money across a network.

For holders one thing matters above all: exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals for a few hours around such changes. Anyone who wants to withdraw at that moment has to wait. Ahead of an announced date, look up whether your provider has flagged a pause.

Adding the Network, Bridging, Polygonscan: The Practical Route onto the Chain

There are two routes onto Polygon, and the more convenient one is rarely the one guides name first.

The simple route runs through an exchange: buy POL or a stablecoin and withdraw it directly to the Polygon network. Look closely when selecting the network, because the same currency often exists on several chains, and a withdrawal to the wrong network is lost in the worst case. Always send a small test amount first.

The second route is a bridge, a service that locks an amount on the source network and credits it on the target network. It costs fees on both sides and pays off above all when your balance already sits in a self-custodied wallet. You enter the chain with chain ID 137; most widely used wallets now know Polygon on their own, so there is nothing to type in by hand. Never enter a network access point that somebody sent you in a message.

You can look up every movement in the Polygonscan block explorer. An explorer is the network's public ledger search, in which every transaction, every address and every contract can be viewed. For everyday use two functions matter most there: the overview of the approvals you have granted, and the option to trace a stuck transaction.

Where Trading Happens on Polygon: Uniswap Version 4 and Quickswap

Measured by trading volume over the past 30 days Polymarket leads with $2.20 billion, followed by Uniswap version 4 with $1.79 billion, Uniswap version 3 with $727 million, Ramses with $579 million, Metric with $510 million and Quickswap with $302 million.

Quickswap deserves a mention because it is one of the few large venues that grew up on Polygon alone and still runs today. On fees it even sits ahead of both Uniswap versions. If you swap on the chain, compare two things beforehand: the venue's fee and the depth of the market in the pair concerned. In thin pairs the spread costs more than any fee.

NFTs on Polygon: Collectible Cards in a Vault Instead of Profile Pictures

In 2021 and 2022 Polygon was the standard choice for cheap NFT projects, because minting there cost cents instead of dozens of dollars. Little of that wave is left. What has taken its place is more interesting: the chain's second strongest fee earner after Polymarket, at $2.17 million over 30 days, is a service for physical collectible cards that makes the stored cards tradable as tokens and provides for redemption against the real card.

This is a different kind of NFT from a profile picture: behind it sits an object in a vault. For valuation that means two risks come together, namely that of the collectors' market and that of the custodian who holds the object and has to hand it over in a dispute.

Risks: Dependence on One Protocol, Stale Approvals, Thin Pairs

Four points belong on the list before money goes onto this chain.

Concentration risk. A chain that draws 83.6 percent of its fees from a single application depends on that application. This risk is currently the largest at Polygon, and it has already been announced.

Stale approvals. Anyone active on Polygon since 2021 has in all likelihood granted approvals there to contracts that have long stopped being maintained. An approval stays valid until you revoke it, and a contract taken over later can use it. Work through the list in Polygonscan once; it is the most effective half hour a long-standing user of this chain can invest.

Thin liquidity in old tokens. Many projects from Polygon's heyday are barely traded any more. A quoted price does not mean there is a buyer at that price.

Custody. Leaving POL on an exchange means trusting the provider. For longer-term holdings a wallet whose keys you hold yourself is the obvious choice, with the recovery phrase secured away from your home.

Crypto Tax in Germany: POL Staking Is Not a Tax-Free Side Effect

Three points are relevant for investors in Germany, and the second is regularly overlooked.

First, the sale. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG) selling or swapping POL is a private disposal. After a holding period of one year the gain stays tax-free; below that an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year applies to all such transactions together, and once it is exceeded the entire gain becomes taxable. Swapping POL into a stablecoin already counts as a sale here.

Second, the staking rewards. They have to be recorded as other income, valued at the time they arrive, and a separate and much lower exemption limit of €256 a year applies to them. The amount received is at the same time the acquisition value for a later disposal, from which the one-year period starts again. Receiving rewards monthly therefore builds up twelve individual items over the year.

Third, the switch from MATIC to POL. Whether such an exchange counts as a disposal for tax purposes or as a mere renaming depends on the specific technical arrangement and is a question for a tax adviser, not for a line in an article. Keep the record of the date and the price of the switch to hand, and you can support either reading.

Polygon: What to Take Away

Polygon is still in use, and heavily dependent on one application. The network earns real money, but the largest part of it comes from an application that wants to leave. Alongside that, a smaller and self-standing ecosystem has grown up in which payments, stablecoins and tokenised collectibles set the tone, while the token trades 90.8 percent below its high of March 2024.

1. Put Polymarket's migration date on your watch list. It is the single most important factor bearing on the chain's revenue. Until then: size the position so that a drop in network revenue stays bearable, and pick venues by fees, for instance with the exchange comparison.
2. Decide deliberately between holding and staking. Holding POL alone means bearing the continuing issuance of new tokens without sharing in it. The terms and lock-up periods of the providers are set out in the staking comparison.
3. Clear out stale approvals and keep a record of staking income. Both cost time once and far less money later. For recording the inflows as they arrive, a tool from the tax tool comparison helps.

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

Shiba Inu stands at $0.0000056 on Monday, September 28, 2026, equivalent to €0.00000493. That is 5.31 percent below the level of 24 hours earlier, 0.23 percent below seven days ago and 11.81 percent above 30 days ago. All values according to CoinGecko on Monday afternoon, September 28, 2026. The short answer to the question in the headline is this: the price currently hangs less on the meme and more on an infrastructure that is not running properly again. Anyone drawing up a Shiba Inu price prediction without looking at activity on Shibarium is working with half a data set.

Shiba Inu Today: Where SHIB Actually Stands on September 28, 2026

Market capitalisation is $3.295 billion, ranking 37th in the overall market. 589.24 trillion SHIB are in circulation. The high of October 27, 2021 was $0.00008616. The price today is 93.5 percent away from that level, and that is the figure against which every expectation for the coming months has to be measured.

More important than the distance to the record is the range of recent weeks. SHIB climbed briefly above $0.000006 after the news of the Shibarium fix and reached a multi-week high of $0.000006254. The coin has not held that level. It currently trades around ten percent below it again.

A word on notation, because with SHIB it is the most common source of error. Many exchanges and apps show the price to eight decimal places, others in units of one million tokens. Confuse 0.0000056 with 0.000056 and you are out by a factor of ten. When comparing two providers it is therefore worth checking which unit each interface is working in.

Shibarium After the Reorg Fix: 1,680 Transactions a Day Against 4.69 Million in August 2025

Shibarium is the project's own layer-2 chain, a side chain that settles transactions more cheaply and then anchors the result on Ethereum. The chain launched in 2023 and was long the strongest argument that there is more behind SHIB than a dog logo.

That very argument is under pressure. According to an analysis by The Crypto Basic of September 22, 2026, Shibarium most recently processed around 1,680 transactions a day. On August 21, 2025 the figure was 4.69 million. That amounts to a fall of 99.96 percent. The developers have fixed the underlying reorganisation problem of the chain, but the switch to the new RPC service is, according to the same report, not yet complete.

For a price forecast that is the central open question. A chain that is barely used generates barely any fees, and without fees the burn mechanism has no fuel. The causal chain is therefore not speculative but arithmetically traceable.

The Explorer Shows Only 53 Percent: Why the Shibarium Figures Are Currently Too Low

There is an objection to the figures above, and it is a fair one. The block explorer Shibariumscan rebuilt its data set after the fix and was about 53 percent through on September 20, 2026. An explorer is a blockchain's search engine: it reads out the blocks and makes them searchable. While that rebuild runs, it shows less than actually took place.

The order of magnitude can be quantified. The explorer most recently listed 611.96 million transactions, while the chain has processed more than 1.56 billion over its entire life. The stock on display therefore stands at just under 40 percent of the real one.

From that follows a rule of caution for every figure quoted from Shibarium statistics in the coming weeks, including those in this text: each of them is an interim reading. Full reindexing is announced for the fourth quarter of 2026. Only afterwards will it be possible to say whether 1,680 transactions a day reflect reality or merely the section the explorer has sorted so far.

Burn Rate and Circulating Supply: What 589 Trillion SHIB Mean for Every Price Forecast

The burn is the most quoted argument in SHIB forecasts. It means the permanent destruction of tokens by sending them to an address from which nobody can retrieve them. At the end of September, destructions ran at around 476.96 million SHIB within 24 hours. That sounds like a lot.

Set against the circulating supply it looks different. 476.96 million out of 589.24 trillion tokens is 0.000081 percent. Extrapolated to a full year at an unchanged pace, that would be around 0.03 percent of the circulating supply. For the stock to halve by this route, more than two thousand years would pass. The calculation is deliberately rough, because the daily burn rate swings sharply, but the order of magnitude does not change with it.

Anyone who has worked that figure out once reads price targets differently. A SHIB price of one cent would, at today's circulating supply, require a market capitalisation of around $5.89 trillion. That is roughly three and a half times what Bitcoin weighed in at on the same day. Such targets circulate all the same, and they are the reason a look at the supply should come before a look at the forecast.

Levels for SHIB: $0.0000052 Below, $0.0000063 Above

Two traceable reference points emerge from the recent trading range. On the downside the next watched zone is at $0.0000052. That support comes from the area in which the price turned several times before the Shibarium news. If SHIB falls below it, that support is gone and the next reference would be the September low.

On the upside the level is the multi-week high at $0.000006254. It is relevant because it is the point at which willingness to buy ran out after the good news. A close above it would be the first sign that the market does after all reward the infrastructure work.

Both levels are observation points, not predictions. Neither replaces the question of whether use of the chain comes back. If it does not, the range simply shifts downwards over time, no matter how often it has held before.

Liquidity in SHIB: $97 Million in Daily Turnover on a $3.3 Billion Market Cap

This measure is rarely named and yet decides the price at which an order actually gets filled. In the 24 hours to Monday afternoon, SHIB worth $97.3 million changed hands. Measured against the market capitalisation of $3.295 billion, that is 2.95 percent.

For comparison, the obvious neighbour: Dogecoin came to $1.038 billion in turnover on the same day at a market capitalisation of $14.36 billion, or 7.23 percent. The meme coin with the bigger name is currently traded more than twice as intensively as SHIB. If you are weighing the two against each other, the assessment is in our Dogecoin price prediction.

In practice a thinner order book means a larger market order moves the price against whoever placed it. With a price carrying seven decimal places that is barely noticeable, because the difference looks minuscule. Calculated in percent, it is not. A limit order that fixes the maximum price costs nothing in this market situation but patience.

Buying Under MiCA: Which Providers May Trade SHIB in Germany Since CASP Authorisation

Since the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation applies in full, every trading venue addressing customers in Germany needs an authorisation as a provider of crypto-asset services. The abbreviation for that is CASP, for crypto-asset service provider. The authorisation is granted by the national supervisor and then applies across the single market.

For everyday use that means one concrete check: BaFin runs a company database in which a provider's status can be looked up by name. Anyone using a trading venue for the first time can find out there within a minute whether it is supervised. Which houses carry SHIB and how their fees differ is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

On costs there is a peculiarity that applies specifically to tokens with very small unit prices. Some providers round the quantity to whole tokens, others to eight decimal places. On a purchase of €200 the difference is not material; with automated savings plans executed weekly, the rounding adds up measurably over a year.

SHIB as an ERC-20 Token: Custody Between Exchange Account, Software Wallet and the Shibarium Bridge

SHIB is an ERC-20 token, so it normally lives on Ethereum. ERC-20 is the technical standard by which tokens behave on that chain, and it is the reason practically every Ethereum wallet can display SHIB without being adapted for it.

Anyone moving tokens to Shibarium uses a bridge for it. A bridge locks the balance on the source chain and issues an equivalent on the destination chain. This construction is the point at which the largest sums in the crypto market have been lost in recent years, and during the chain's ongoing rebuild it carries additional uncertainty. If you use no application on Shibarium, you have no reason to leave a balance there.

For holdings kept longer, storing the keys separately remains the most effective protection against account takeovers and exchange failures. The devices differ above all in which chains they support and how recovery is organised; those differences matter more before a purchase than the price does.

Holding Period and Exemption Limit: How the Tax Office Treats SHIB Gains in 2026

Gains on the sale of crypto assets fall in Germany under private disposal transactions per Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain stays tax-free. Below that, an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year applies, and the word limit is to be taken literally: exceed it and the entire gain is taxable, not merely the part above it.

With SHIB that has a consequence which arises less often with more expensive coins. Because the quantities are large and the unit prices tiny, many part-purchases quickly build up, for instance through savings plans. For calculating the period, every additional purchase counts on its own, usually under the method in which the tokens bought first count as sold first. A sale in December can therefore be partly tax-free and partly taxable.

Anyone using several trading venues will barely get that allocation right by hand. Tools that merge purchase and sale data and track the periods for each tranche take exactly this work off you, and the box below in this text leads to the common providers. The text of the law itself can be read at the Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 23 of the Income Tax Act.

Bull Case and Bear Case for SHIB: What Forecasting Models Assume for 2026

The published models lie far apart, and that spread is part of the information. One model assumes a median of €0.00000238 for the end of 2026, which against today's level would be a fall of around 46 percent. Another arrives at an average of €0.00000657 for the same period, a gain of about 75 percent. Further models name corridors that go considerably beyond that.

These values come from automated forecasting sites and are not analyst estimates in the sense of a named person with a rationale. The models extrapolate past price paths and know nothing about the state of Shibarium. Anyone quoting them should label them as what they are: extrapolations, not assessments.

More reliable than any of these figures is observing chain usage itself. If daily transactions climb back into the six- or seven-figure range once reindexing is complete, the bull case has a basis. If they stay in four figures, the bear case carries, regardless of which model outputs which median.

Shiba Inu Price Prediction: How to Proceed Now

1. Look up chain usage yourself before you believe a figure. Call up the daily statistics at Shibariumscan and note the previous day's transactions. Remember today's value, and in four weeks you will have your own reference point instead of a quoted number. If you would rather not write the figure down by hand, tools with a history function are in the overview of the best analytics platforms.
2. Work through buying routes and rounding. Compare the same amount at two providers, once as a market order and once as a limit order, and look at the quantity actually credited. Given SHIB's low liquidity that is the cheapest test you can run. If you buy in fixed instalments instead, hold the execution intervals and minimum amounts against each other; the differences are in the savings plan comparison.
3. Put periods and custody in order while the year is still running. Enter the purchase date for every tranche and see which of them reach the twelve-month mark before December 31. Holdings you want to keep longer belong off the exchange and in your own custody; which device fits your chains is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Back to the opening question: nothing dramatic is going on with SHIB right now, and that is precisely the finding. The price moves in a narrow range while the chain meant to carry it is being rebuilt. The next solid piece of news is therefore not a price figure but the completion of reindexing in the fourth quarter.

The figures on chain usage come from the analysis by The Crypto Basic of September 22, 2026, the price and market data from CoinGecko.

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

A UC San Diego-led team impersonated a hardware security module without extracting its key.

Coinbase and Citi expanded an existing deal so Citi's institutional clients can accept stablecoin payments, while Coinbase business accounts run on Citi's banking rails.

Anthropic's mid-tier model tops its own flagship on Terminal-Bench 4.0 and costs half as much per token, but an independent tester found it burns more tokens than any model it has measured.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has invited the OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs to a Canberra hearing on October 1, after an OpenAI agent quietly accessed Australia's Medicare data and nobody said a word for months.

OpenShell and Sentry give AI agents a hardware-enforced leash, arriving after a summer of agents breaching a government site, hacking their own tests, and going rogue during a security evaluation.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz remains bullish on Bitcoin despite the cryptocurrency hovering near a key technical level, saying he still likes the chart and would not be surprised to see BTC reach $100,000 before the end of the year.

Tom Lee's BitMine now holds over 6 million Ethereum as it continues to purchase the asset regardless of the crypto market conditions.

In exactly 11 days, XRP activates crucial smart-execution features designed to capture trillions in institutional asset volume.

Cardano (ADA)'s 68% price drop on a one-year basis has bulls watching October closely.

Stellar (XLM) breaks its historic speed record, hitting 217.4 TPS as institutional real-world asset funds flood the network.

TLDR

• FFAI stock jumps 53.19% after hours as a $200M robotics deal fuels the rebound.
• Faraday Future plans to combine its robotics business with Nasdaq-listed AIxC.
• The company is expanding into Robotaxi services and intelligent cabin technology.
• AIxC plans to become FFR and focus fully on robotics after dropping crypto.
• FFAI targets stronger robotics revenue growth through its Physical AI strategy.

Faraday Future stock rebounded sharply after hours as the company outlined a major robotics restructuring and automotive strategy shift. FFAI closed at $1.41, down 12.42%, before jumping 53.19% to $2.16 after the market closed. The move followed plans to combine its robotics operations with AIxC at an estimated $200 million valuation.

Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc., FFAI

Faraday Future Plans $200M Robotics Combination

Faraday Future signed a non-binding term sheet to combine its robotics assets with Nasdaq-listed AIxC. The parties valued the robotics business at about $200 million, while AIxC carries an estimated $55 million pre-transaction valuation. Following completion, FFAI expects to become AIxC’s largest controlling stockholder.

AIxC also plans to adopt the FFR name and abandon its existing cryptocurrency strategy. Instead, the company would focus entirely on robotics development, manufacturing, deployment, sales, data, and related services. The proposed structure also includes an 18-month lock-up arrangement covering shares linked to the robotics business.

Faraday Future said its robotics division shipped 552 devices through August and generated about $1.52 million in cumulative revenue. The company reported average second-quarter contribution margins above 30% across its robotics products. Management expects robotics ecosystem revenue to reach $7.1 million during 2026 before rising substantially during later years.

Robotaxi Strategy Expands Faraday Future Business

Faraday Future also plans to reposition its automotive operations around Robotaxi services and intelligent cabin technology. The company intends to work with RoboShare on autonomous shared mobility operations and vehicle deployment services. FFAI also plans to explore connectivity with external Robotaxi networks, including possible integration with the Cybercab ecosystem.

The company wants to extend its EAI cabin technology into other intelligent vehicles while connecting its own cars to mobility networks. This approach would shift part of Faraday Future’s business toward a lighter-asset shared transportation model. RoboShare would provide supporting services involving vehicle onboarding, operations, rentals, and customer access.

Faraday Future also plans to expand its role as a Physical AI investment and holding company. The company aims to incubate businesses before supporting independent financing, operations, and possible public listings. That structure could separate mature operations while allowing FFAI to retain ownership exposure to their future business development.

The post Faraday Future (FFAI) Stock: Rebounds as $200M Robotics Deal Drives Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

Dogecoin has remained in the spotlight as the cryptocurrency market has become more active, with positive investor sentiment towards major digital assets. Market players are attempting to better understand Dogecoin by studying the movements in the market, its trading volume and economic conditions to determine the direction of the market. The following article discusses why it is gaining more attention, market trends associated with Dogecoin, and signs investors are anticipating in the near future.

Dogecoin is a hot topic once again with the happenings in the cryptocurrency market. Stronger digital asset sentiment has led to a reassessment of cryptocurrencies by investors, especially those which are more established, have been in the market longer and offer liquidity. Although Bitcoin is still the main driver of the market, attention has been diversifying to other assets, with Dogecoin included.

To view the updates in the market, the Dogecoin price page on Binance is useful. It enables users to see data in the market and Dogecoin, such as its current price, market cap, trading volume in the past 24 hours, the total supply and price data in the past. It serves as a reference for those interested in investing in Dogecoin to see how it reacts to the market.

Recent changes to the doge price have reflected trends in the larger cryptocurrency market instead of showing unique movements for Dogecoin alone. Many traders look for any clues that can be drawn from the data on Binance and compare that to information for the rest of the markets to see if momentum is strengthening or weakening. As the market becomes more active, these metrics are gaining more interest from both seasoned traders and retail traders.

Dogecoin attracts renewed attention from traders

Since its launch, Dogecoin has captured attention from traders in cycles. As much as Dogecoin is one of the most famous digital assets, it has not been without its competition; Dogecoin has been more active than most new crypto assets. As confidence in the crypto market returns, Dogecoin is consistently referenced because of its popularity and brand recognition.

Traders are willing to wait even for market corrections for many reasons; numerous retail and institutional traders can enter and exit the market easily because of Dogecoin’s liquidity and its presence on the major exchanges.

Finally, Dogecoin’s market presence gives it a lot of data. Dogecoin has seen rapid rises and sharp corrections many times before, and new traders to crypto often look for patterns with the little data they have. Dogecoin even has a long history compared to most new cryptocurrencies, and savvy traders know Dogecoin is in the top ten coins for market capitalization on Binance.

Renewed interest brings short-term market rallies in most cases. It has led to improved market sentiment, more trading actions, and increased interest in cryptocurrency. Investors are still balancing all of these with other macroeconomic factors.

Market sentiment improves across major cryptocurrencies

Market sentiment, more often than not, improves gradually. It requires a combination of economic factors, positive expectations, and improved performance across top cryptocurrencies.

For most traders, Bitcoin often is the first variable in the market sentiment equation. When Bitcoin is recovering from a weak performance and is rising, traders again consider all of the altcoins. Dogecoin has absolutely been a beneficiary of positive trading sentiment in the market, and especially in times when traders are looking to hedge with riskier portfolios.

Volume is another good indicator for market confidence. Increased trading volumes signify a greater level of trading participation; however, it might not deter a price level. Investors often relate volumes to price levels in determining the strength of a price move.

Recent trading data from Binance shows that Dogecoin is a very actively traded cryptocurrency. Good trading volumes are present in the market, and this is especially positive for trading participants. Sentiment is often modified by events occurring outside of the cryptocurrency market. Investors especially modify their strategies for digital assets based on inflation expectations, interest rate shifts, and other financial market confidence events. Sentiment in the cryptocurrency market is especially influenced by these events and can determine the market direction.

Key factors influencing Dogecoin price movements

There are many influences on Dogecoin’s price, of which market sentiment is one of the most recognizable. Market sentiment is only a small piece of the puzzle. Liquidity is a huge factor for price formation. Trading volume impacts an asset’s price discovery/efficiency, and Dogecoin’s established market position has helped it maintain liquidity.

The performance of other cryptocurrencies matters too, as price shifts and trading volume of Dogecoin are generally responsive to the price and volume of BTC and ETH.

External events matter too, especially those that affect sentiment/preferences. Price/volatility changes that are external to Dogecoin also affect its price/risk. The response of market participants to the Dogecoin price shift attributed to the factors mentioned above usually causes Dogecoin’s price to shift either to an overwhelming extent or without justification.

How trading activity is shaping Dogecoin momentum

Binance statistics show significant daily trade volumes for Dogecoin. Strong liquidity creates an efficient market to quickly respond to changes. Price is one measure of an asset’s value. But when looking at price, many traders will also look at levels of volume and some technical indicators. If volume is increasing alongside price, it usually means stronger buying pressure. However, increased price with low volume is usually seen as a sign of increasing weakness.

The hallmark of Dogecoin’s market behavior is volatility, as prices can change quickly, making it a risky market. This means many will use market behavior, various indicators, technical analysis, and even broader economic analysis to drive their investment decisions.

Crypto markets are still relatively new and fast-moving; for the moment, trade volumes are one of the signs most regularly used to indicate confidence. How or if the current momentum will turn into a sustained trend will depend on the market, the economy, and the level of confidence in the digital assets market.

The role of community support in Dogecoin’s resilience

Community involvement has been central to Dogecoin since the inception of the cryptoasset. Other digital assets rely on technological or commercial advancements, while Dogecoin continues to sustain interest through its large and active user base.

The Dogecoin community helps keep the cryptoasset relevant throughout the community’s bullish and bearish periods. Public awareness initiatives through online forums, charity events, and social media have occurred year-round despite Dogecoin’s low trading volumes in bear markets and the generally low trading activity of the crypto market.

The Dogecoin community’s support does not directly influence the Dogecoin market. The trading community determines Dogecoin’s price through supply and demand, market liquidity, and the state of the economy. However, the community’s support can sustain interest during bear markets and relatively low trading volumes, and can help encourage renewed interest during positive trading activity.

Because Dogecoin has a long history in the cryptoasset community and has been seen in previous trading cycles, Dogecoin’s trading community has more recognition. This recognition can also influence trading activity in the Dogecoin market if confidence returns. That said, experienced traders separate community support from their investment decisions, as the community can be enthusiastic for a brief period. Market sentiment and online forums of a cryptoasset community can vary within a short period, emphasizing the need for long-term focus.

What technical indicators suggest for the weeks ahead

The most common approach for forecasting the Dogecoin market is to rely on the cryptoasset’s price behaviors through technical analysis. Traders ignore market commentary or opinions. Instead, traders rely on historical price data and volume to identify price patterns and trends.

Support and resistance levels are probably the most popular indicators. Support is a price level where traders are willing to buy, and resistance is where traders are selling. While these levels are not absolute, and price can break through these levels, most traders will use these levels to predict possible future movements.

Moving averages are another popular indicator. Moving averages can show the direction of price over a period. A common trend that traders may see is that if a short-period moving average crosses above a long-period moving average, the price is trending up. The opposite is true if the short-period moving average crosses below the long-period moving average.

Trading volume is an important indicator as well. Dogecoin has consistently high volume, and traders can compare volume and price easily. A price increase that is accompanied by an increase in volume is a good sign that the price movement is bullish. The opposite is true if the volume decreases.

Momentum indicators can show the state of the market by showing how fast price is moving. If price is moving fast in one direction, the market may be overbought or oversold. Volatility is another important indicator, especially in crypto. One major sign that traders look for is price movement that is sustained for a period of time, usually a few days. Because a major characteristic of crypto is high volatility, many analysts choose to look at price movement that is sustained rather than single trading sessions.

How macroeconomic trends are affecting crypto markets

Cryptocurrency markets do not exist in a vacuum and are affected by the economic systems that they are a part of. The same economic conditions that influence traditional market investors are those that affect the market for digital currencies.

Expectations for interest rates are one of the economic conditions that many observers watch closely. If borrowing is more expensive, investors tend to liquidate more volatile assets. The expectation for lower interest rates or economic stability tends to lead to more demand for higher-risk investments.

Persistent inflation and shifting economic expectations influence the behavior of central banks. This, to an extent, is the same as the behaviors of traditional equities. Digital currencies are affected by economic inflation as well.

Uncertain economic conditions create the need for investors to reassess their risk appetite and adjust their portfolios. Geopolitical and economic tensions typically lead to uneven demand across differing asset classes. Digital currencies typically experience outflows and/or inflows during these periods.

Movements in major currencies can lead to changes in the behavior of digital currencies. The same is true for changing international investments. These conditions influence digital currencies in the same way as they influence Dogecoin. These digital currencies move in the same direction more frequently since they are typically correlated. Dogecoin and digital currencies are responsive to the same stimuli more frequently than they are to specific digital currency project-related news.

Why investors are watching Dogecoin more closely

There are multiple reasons for the renewed interest in Dogecoin. Improved market conditions, coupled with strong liquidity and increased trading, have lured many more participants into the market.

As trading speeds up, the demand for transaction price information also rises. The more transparent a market is, the easier it is to track the price, volume and market cap. Information published on Binance is not only updated in real time; it includes data on past trades, allowing the trader to comprehensively compare market conditions.

Dogecoin has a rich trading history. The lengthy data history is an advantage for traders. In the past, trading Dogecoin was marked by extreme price volatility. Use of the data history is encouraged to make value assessments, but the history of Dogecoin trading cycles is more descriptive than prescriptive.

In the larger picture, Dogecoin continues to draw customer interest. Compared to many other digital currencies, Dogecoin is widely known, actively trading and adequately liquid on all major exchanges. These features alone draw customer interest.

There is always a degree of uncertainty for an investor. Due to recent global events, the cryptocurrency trading volumes oscillate between low and high. In this context, many traders have adopted a more cautious and defensive trading style.

Considering more than just recent market activity

Recent activity surrounding Dogecoin is partly a result of stronger market activity, more people trading, more people interested in trading, and participating in the markets. Unlike the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, which are empty, Dogecoin has established networks, so it has been able to withstand different cycles in cryptocurrency. Dogecoin has been able to withstand liquidity cycles despite being the top meme-based cryptocurrency.

Price movements may be influenced in the future by the many interacting events that occur in a market. Technical signals, trade volume, the economy, and sentiment toward the entire cryptocurrency market will likely play a role in how this market behaves in the weeks to come. The emphasis for investors at this time is on gathering information through reliable and trustworthy market data instead of falling victim to price manipulations, volatility, and social media hysteria.

Dogecoin is a trading asset in very high demand, and the price trend reflects the market. If the current activity is positive, it will retain the sentiment. If negative, it will shift more in line with the market conditions.

The post Why Dogecoin Is Back in the Spotlight as Crypto Markets Shift appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• QNC stock jumped 17.02% after Quantum eMotion announced the Plurilock deal.
• Quantum eMotion plans to acquire all outstanding shares of Plurilock Security.
• Plurilock adds cybersecurity revenue, customers, procurement channels and services.
• The deal could expand QeM’s reach across government and regulated security markets.
• QeM continues advancing eCore-Q and SecureKey through NIST and FIPS testing.

Quantum eMotion stock surged 17.02% to $2.20 after the company announced its planned acquisition of Plurilock Security. QNC shares then added 0.91% to $2.22 during after-hours trading. The deal would expand Quantum eMotion from quantum-security development into a broader commercial cybersecurity business.

Quantum eMotion Corp., QNC

Quantum eMotion Moves to Acquire Plurilock

Quantum eMotion signed a definitive agreement on September 28 to acquire all outstanding shares of Plurilock Security. The companies plan to complete the transaction through a court-approved arrangement under British Columbia corporate law. Quantum eMotion may complete the acquisition directly or through a wholly owned subsidiary.

The transaction would give Quantum eMotion access to Plurilock’s established cybersecurity operations, customer network, and sales infrastructure. Plurilock also brings government and enterprise relationships across regulated and security-sensitive markets. Its business includes cybersecurity services, identity technology, risk analysis, and AI-focused security tools.

Quantum eMotion expects the combination to accelerate commercial deployment of its quantum-secure technologies. Plurilock’s existing sales channels could support pilots and cross-selling across its customer base. The combined company plans to target accounts where quantum-security products meet defined procurement and security needs.

Deal Expands Commercial Cybersecurity Reach

Plurilock adds more than 25 years of operating history to Quantum eMotion’s developing cybersecurity platform. Its procurement relationships cover customers across Canada, the United States, NATO markets, and other regulated sectors. These channels could support wider adoption of Quantum eMotion products after integration.

Quantum eMotion also expects to combine Plurilock’s identity tools with its cryptographic and quantum-security technologies. Potential uses include access control, key administration, signing authorization, and certificate management. The companies also see opportunities involving dynamic key rotation and automated security controls.

Both companies plan to form a joint integration team before completing the transaction. The team will focus on customer retention, staff continuity, contract preservation, and coordinated commercial planning. It will also prepare a 100-day plan for priority accounts, pilots, integration, and cross-selling opportunities.

Quantum Security Validation Supports Expansion

Quantum eMotion continues advancing several technologies through U.S. cybersecurity testing and validation programs. Its eCore-Q quantum entropy technology entered an independent assessment supported by Lightship Security. The submission targets validation under the NIST Special Publication 800-90B framework.

The SecureKey Cryptographic Module received an Implementation Under Test designation under the FIPS 140-3 process. These standards remain important across government, defense, infrastructure, and other regulated cybersecurity markets. However, submissions and testing do not guarantee final validation or fixed completion dates.

The proposed Plurilock acquisition could provide commercial infrastructure while Quantum eMotion advances those technical programs. Plurilock would contribute customer access, delivery capabilities, cybersecurity expertise, and procurement channels. Together, the companies aim to build a broader platform spanning quantum security, identity, AI-driven defense, and cybersecurity services.

The post Quantum eMotion (QNC) Stock: Plurilock Deal Sparks 17% Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AMD agrees to buy World Labs in an all-stock deal valued near $8.2 billion.
• The acquisition adds spatial intelligence and robotics research to AMD’s AI push.
• Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and its chief scientist.
• The all-stock structure limits cash use but could dilute existing shareholders.
• The deal expands AMD’s AI reach while adding integration and execution risks.

AMD (AMD) stock closed at $607.87, down 3.61%, after a sharp mid-morning selloff erased earlier gains. The decline followed AMD’s agreement to acquire artificial intelligence research company World Labs for about $8.2 billion. The deal expands AMD’s AI strategy while adding advanced spatial-intelligence research capabilities to its technology portfolio.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

AMD Expands AI Strategy With World Labs

AMD agreed to acquire World Labs through an all-stock transaction expected to close by the end of 2026. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and standard closing requirements. AMD plans to integrate World Labs’ research expertise across its expanding hardware, software, and computing systems.

World Labs develops advanced models that create and simulate interactive three-dimensional environments from several forms of digital input. Its technology processes text, images, and video while supporting robotic training and simulation applications.  AMD gains direct access to research focused on emerging workloads that require increasingly specialized computing infrastructure.

The acquisition also strengthens AMD’s ability to connect model development with the design of future computing platforms. Modern AI applications increasingly include reasoning, robotics, simulation, and systems that interact with physical environments. As a result, AMD expects World Labs’ research to influence future hardware and software development.

Fei-Fei Li Takes Senior AMD Role

World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li will join AMD after the transaction closes successfully. AMD appointed Li as executive vice president and chief scientist under the planned structure. She will report directly to AMD Chair and Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su.

Li has played a major role in computer vision and modern artificial intelligence research. She currently leads World Labs, which operates from San Francisco and focuses heavily on spatial-intelligence technology. The company’s team will continue developing AI models after joining AMD under the acquisition agreement.

AMD gains researchers and model specialists who can provide direct insight into changing AI computing requirements. Their work could help AMD align processors and software with new generations of advanced models. The combination also supports AMD’s broader strategy of building infrastructure around an open technology ecosystem.

World Labs Deal Brings Investor Trade-Offs

The $8.2 billion all-stock structure limits immediate cash pressure but increases AMD’s share count after closing. That structure may create dilution for existing shareholders, depending on the final number of shares issued. However, AMD gains a research platform that could support broader long-term AI revenue opportunities.

The deal also increases AMD’s exposure to fast-growing areas such as robotics, simulation, and spatial computing. These markets could expand demand for processors, accelerators, software, and integrated computing systems. Therefore, the acquisition could strengthen AMD’s position across emerging AI workloads beyond traditional data-center applications.

Still, the transaction brings execution and integration risks alongside its strategic benefits. AMD must combine research teams while converting World Labs’ work into commercially useful products and platforms. Regulatory approvals and the timing of future AI demand will also influence the deal’s eventual financial impact.

The post AMD (AMD) Stock: Drops as $8.2B World Labs Deal Targets AI Growth appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Century Communities stock trades at $61.96, down 1.11% during the latest session.
• Martins Glen will officially open in Antioch, Tennessee, on October 3, 2026.
• Five home plans will offer three to five bedrooms and up to 2,800 square feet.
• New Martins Glen homes will start in the low $400s near downtown Nashville.
• Planned community features include a playground, walking trail, and smart homes.

Century Communities stock traded at $61.96, down 1.11%, as the builder prepared another expansion near Nashville. The company will open Martins Glen in Antioch, Tennessee, on October 3, 2026. The project adds five single-family home designs within 18 miles of downtown Nashville.

Century Communities, Inc., CCS

Martins Glen Adds Five New Home Designs

Century Communities will introduce five two-story floor plans covering several household sizes and different living requirements. The homes will provide three to five bedrooms and range from 1,942 to 2,800 square feet. Prices will begin in the low $400s, giving the development a defined entry point within the Nashville market.

Each floor plan includes a loft, while several designs add extra rooms that support flexible household use. Select homes include private studies, covered patios, main-floor primary suites, media rooms, and electric fireplaces. Century Communities will also include its Century Home Connect smart-home package as a standard feature.

The company will debut its decorated Meadowlark model during the October 3 grand opening event. Potential homebuyers can tour the model and review available layouts across the new community. A limited number of wooded homesites will also form part of the Martins Glen development.

Tennessee Expansion Targets Nashville Area Demand

Martins Glen sits near major retail, recreation, and transportation routes serving the broader Nashville region. The development offers access to Tanger Outlets Nashville and major roads connecting Antioch with surrounding areas. Four Corners Marina on Percy Priest Lake also sits within a short drive from the community.

The site provides another option for households seeking suburban housing while retaining access to downtown Nashville. Downtown Nashville lies about 18 miles away, supporting access to major employment and entertainment districts. Century Communities also plans a playground and walking trail as part of the neighborhood amenities.

Century Communities operates as a national homebuilder and sells homes through traditional and online purchasing channels. Its Tennessee project expands the company’s housing inventory within one of the region’s major metropolitan markets. The Martins Glen launch also broadens its local portfolio with larger floor plans and several flexible interior options.

The project arrives as affordability and available housing supply remain important factors across growing metropolitan markets. Starting prices in the low $400s position Martins Glen within a defined segment of Nashville-area new construction. Larger layouts give Century Communities room to serve households seeking more bedrooms and adaptable living spaces.

The October opening gives Century Communities another opportunity to expand its presence around Nashville through new housing inventory. Martins Glen combines suburban access, multiple layouts, planned amenities, and proximity to major roads and recreation. The project now adds another Tennessee community to Century Communities’ broader national development pipeline.

The post Century Communities, Inc. (CCS) Stock: New Tennessee Project Targets Nashville Demand appeared first on Blockonomi.

Charles Hoskinson has argued that Cardano’s Midnight network will eventually eclipse Zcash, citing developments including private agents, selective disclosure, and a DeFi kernel designed to work across major chains.

His claim comes as Zcash trades far above its level from a year ago, while Midnight’s NIGHT token remains nearly 78% below its all-time high.

Midnight’s Privacy and DeFi Design

In a September 28 post on X, Hoskinson quoted ratings provider Weiss Crypto, which had earlier suggested that NIGHT has a good chance of becoming “one of the best plays of the next 24 months.” He contended that Midnight will be “bigger than Zcash,” then laid out what the privacy-focused blockchain developed by Input Output, the same team behind Cardano, has got going for it.

“Selective disclosure, Private Agents, abstraction with a DeFi Kernel for all major chains,” wrote the developer.

He also mentioned three privacy techniques the network was working on, including zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, and multi-party computations, and linked Midnight’s planned architecture to Cardano’s 24/7 network uptime and the Leios upgrade.

The market data currently shows a wide gap between the two assets. NIGHT was trading near $0.027 at the time of writing, up over 2% in the last 24 hours and more than 9% in the past week. It also gained close to 30% across a fortnight and well over 36% in 30 days.

Zcash, meanwhile, was trading at around $1,600, an almost 7% dip in 24 hours, although it was up over 2% across seven days and nearly 36% over two weeks. The privacy coin’s one-month run was also better than NIGHT’s, after it gained 93% in that period, while remaining 2,660% higher than where it was a year ago.

Midnight is sitting about 77.5% below its record of close to $0.12 from December 9, 2025, while ZEC is about 51% under its own ATH of $3,191.

Looking at trading volume, it is about $14 million for NIGHT, an increase of 43% from one day ago, against roughly $1 billion for ZEC, which represents a 24% drop from what changed hands yesterday.

Mixed Fortunes for NIGHT and ZEC

NIGHT fell more than 43% on July 21 to record a low near $0.016 after 290 million tokens were dumped in the market following a withdrawal from a Wanchain bridge contract, with the Midnight Foundation stating that the network was not hacked.

On its part, Zcash topped $1,600 last week for the first time since 2016, then slid as the wider market fell, with analyst Crypto Patel arguing that a cup-and-handle pattern suggests the $1,600 to $2,000 range could be a local top, with a drop below $500 possible within one to three years.

The post Cardano’s NIGHT Will Be Bigger Than Zcash: Charles Hoskinson appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Unlike leading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP), HYPE — the native token of the popular decentralized exchange — has had quite a successful year, rallying by over 100% during that period.

Earlier this month, it hit a new all-time high of almost $100, but bears stepped in, and the asset is now worth roughly $90 (per CoinGecko). Meanwhile, recent whale activity suggests a further correction may be on the way.

Dumping HYPE

According to analytics platform Lookonchain, some large investors have started offloading their HYPE bags. One of those, known as 0xc745, deposited over $16 million worth of the cryptocurrency into OKX and Bybit. It is not guaranteed that this market participant has sold their position, yet such transfers are often interpreted as the step before that action.

Lookonchain also revealed that a wallet linked to Hypersphere Ventures dumped 62,869 HYPE (worth roughly $5.78 million) that were purchased a month ago, making a $2.13 million profit. Earlier this month, another whale deposited nearly $50 million in the cryptocurrency to Kraken.

For its part, X account BSCN recently disclosed that Multicoin has sent 4.23 million HYPE worth almost $300 million to Coinbase since the end of July.

“Presumably, the transfers were made with the intention of selling, though that is not confirmed,” the team explained.

This activity is widely seen as bearish for the price for two main reasons. First, offloading increases the amount of HYPE coins available on the market, which, combined with non-increasing demand, should lead to a price pullback.

Second, whales are regarded as experienced investors who rarely rely on instinct and instead make decisions based on information most market participants may not have. That said, their mass selling could spark panic across the space and prompt smaller players to cash out too.

X user Sjuul | AltCryptoGems noted HYPE’s pullback from its all-time high, hinting that a further plunge into the mid-70s is a plausible scenario. At the same time, he views that as “a good opportunity to hunt for longs,” arguing that the asset remains one of the strongest coins and a “must-have” in any crypto portfolio.

The Bullish Element

Contrary to the whales’ activity, recent HYPE exchange netflow suggests the price may be gearing up for another leg up.

Over the past several days, outflows have significantly outpaced inflows, meaning that investors have abandoned centralized platforms in favor of self-custody solutions. This, in turn, reduces immediate selling pressure and might pave the way for future upside.

The post Hyperliquid (HYPE) Drops 5% – Could Whales Trigger an Even Bigger Sell-Off? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Chicago, United States, September 28th, 2026]

AlgoQuant will deploy Liquid Mercury’s institutional-grade trading technology to scale its multi-strategy investment platform and enhance execution capabilities across global digital asset markets.

Liquid Mercury, a leading technology provider for digital asset marketplaces and crypto trading, announced today that it has been engaged by AlgoQuant Asset Management, an investment manager focused on solving inefficiencies in fast-evolving markets, to provide trading technology and infrastructure services.

The engagement will enable AlgoQuant to leverage Liquid Mercury’s institutional-grade trading technology and infrastructure to enhance its multi-strategy investment platform. AlgoQuant will gain access to deep liquidity, advanced execution capabilities, and professional-grade trading tools that support the firm’s commitment to quantitative excellence, risk integrity, and operational resilience.

Liquid Mercury’s battle-tested platform combined with AlgoQuant’s sophisticated quantitative strategies provides a powerful foundation for executing complex digital asset trades across global markets. This technology integration allows AlgoQuant to maintain 24/7 trading operations while scaling talent, capital, and technology without compromising precision.

With a team spanning key global financial and digital asset markets, AlgoQuant operates as a multi-strategy investment platform designed to perform across diverse market environments. Through Liquid Mercury’s platform, AlgoQuant will benefit from access to top-tier liquidity providers, low-latency infrastructure, and comprehensive middle and back-office tools designed to meet the demands of institutional asset managers operating in digital asset markets.

“AlgoQuant came to us with very specific infrastructure requirements that are unique to their sophisticated quantitative strategies,” stated Liquid Mercury CEO, Tony Saliba. “What sets Liquid Mercury apart is our ability to shape our tech stack to meet each client’s distinct needs. This level of customization isn’t something firms can always find off the shelf, but our battle-tested platform was built with the flexibility to adapt while maintaining institutional-grade standards. We’re honored to provide the tailored technology infrastructure that will support AlgoQuant as it continues to scale its investment platform.”

“Liquid Mercury has been an excellent technology partner for AlgoQuant Asset Management,” said Alexander Goncharov, President of AlgoQuant Asset Management. “We are very pleased with their sophisticated technology stack, collaborative approach, and willingness to tailor the platform to our specific needs. Their infrastructure delivers the speed, reliability, and precision required in today’s digital asset markets while integrating seamlessly with our proprietary systems and workflows.”

About AlgoQuant Asset Management

AlgoQuant is an investment manager with a clear mission: to solve inefficiencies in fast-evolving markets. From day one, the firm has been focused on building a platform that can scale talent, capital, and technology without compromising precision. At the heart of AlgoQuant’s model is a commitment to quantitative excellence, risk integrity, and operational resilience.

AlgoQuant operates as a multi-strategy investment platform with global reach, featuring team members and trading teams based in key global financial and digital asset markets. The firm’s structure supports 24/7 execution, oversight, and engagement with global allocators.

Further information can be found at www.aq.io

About Liquid Mercury

Liquid Mercury powers professional crypto trading and digital asset marketplaces. Founded by legendary trader Tony Saliba, who was featured in Jack Schwager’s “Market Wizards,” Liquid Mercury is the #1 choice for sophisticated buy-side and institutional sell-side trading professionals moving into crypto.

Mercury Pro is an institutional-grade trading platform designed specifically for professional traders navigating crypto derivatives and spot markets. The platform offers sophisticated trade execution tools including DMA routing, staging, execution algorithms, and anonymous multi-dealer RFQ to source block liquidity. Traders can manage all orders and trade data in a single platform with real-time views of balances and account positions.

Key capabilities include access to crypto derivatives at leading onshore and offshore exchanges, institutional-sized pricing with top OTC liquidity providers, and a wide range of spot products across leading exchanges. The platform supports both single-leg and multi-leg orders in net price structures, with low-latency infrastructure built for high-frequency and algorithmic trading strategies.

Liquid Mercury integrates with world-class custodians including Fireblocks, Gemini, and BitGo, and provides comprehensive APIs (FIX, WebSocket, and REST) for automated trading and workflow customization. Built by professionals for professionals, Liquid Mercury combines battle-tested trading technology with deep liquidity access and best-in-class workflow automation.

For more information about Liquid Mercury and the $MERC token, users can visit www.liquidmercury.com or merc.liquidmercury.com.

Disclaimer

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or fund interests in any jurisdiction. Any offer or solicitation of interests in any fund managed by AlgoQuant Asset Management Corp will be made only by definitive offering documents, and only to eligible investors in accordance with applicable law. No statement in this press release is, or should be construed as, a representation as to the past or future performance of any fund or strategy managed by AlgoQuant.

The post AlgoQuant Asset Management Selects Liquid Mercury to Enhance Digital Asset Trading Infrastructure appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – New York, NY, September 28th, 2026]

BNB Chain has appointed Thomas Chen as Chief Business Officer, a new leadership role focused on revenue strategy, institutional partnerships, and long-term value accrual for the BNB Chain ecosystem.

The appointment comes as traditional finance moves onchain in earnest. Banks, asset managers, and payment processors have gone well beyond pilots this year, issuing tokenised deposits and money market funds, building 24/7 settlement rails, and routing institutional liquidity through public blockchains. Stablecoins settled $7.2 trillion in February 2026, surpassing the U.S. ACH network, the backbone of American payments, for the first time.

BNB Chain is already one of the main venues for this activity. It is the second-largest blockchain for real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation, with over $5.6 billion in TVL, and leads all networks with 15 million monthly active stablecoin addresses. Chen brings deep TradFi experience across custody, market structure, and institutional sales. He will apply that expertise directly to BNB Chain’s focus on bringing more stablecoin issuers, RWA platforms, and institutional capital onto the network.

His remit covers:

• Institutional and capital markets: asset managers, banks, custodians and real-world asset issuers, together with the confidentiality and compliance infrastructure regulated institutions require before they transact onchain
• Stablecoins and settlement: issuer partnerships, cross-border payment rails, and agentic payment flows, making BNB Chain the default venue for dollar settlement.
• Trading and liquidity: market makers, exchanges and trading venues, deepening market quality and onchain volume.
• Ecosystem and distribution: protocols, wallets and market infrastructure, connecting builders to the largest distribution surface in crypto.

Thomas Chen, Chief Business Officer at BNB Chain, said: “BNB Chain has the largest user base in crypto, the deepest liquidity in the industry behind it, and a once-in-a-cycle window as real-world assets and AI-agent activity move onchain. My focus is making sure that activity settles here – more volume, deeper markets, and the institutional infrastructure serious capital require before it moves onchain.”

Chen joins from Function, a Bitcoin yield protocol that scaled to $1.6B TVL, where he served as CEO. Before that he was Managing Director and Global Head of Sales at BitGo, where he grew assets under custody to over $100B and helped set its course to IPO. His career spans 15 years, where he has spent more than 7 years building commercial teams across digital asset infrastructure, covering institutions in both traditional finance and DeFi.

About BNB Chain

BNB Chain is one of the largest and most active blockchain ecosystems in the world. Its multi-chain architecture spans BNB Smart Chain (BSC), opBNB, and BNB Greenfield, giving developers the flexibility to choose the environment best suited to their application. With high throughput, low transaction costs, and full EVM compatibility, BNB Chain is built for high-speed trading, AI agents, privacy, and instant payments. It is the blockchain with superior distribution and deep liquidity, built for global markets and the next billion users. For more information, users can visit www.bnbchain.org.

The post BNB Chain Appoints Thomas Chen as Chief Business Officer appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto analyst ChartNerd argued in a YouTube video posted on September 28 that XRP could climb to $1.80-$1.90 if it clears resistance on its weekly and monthly charts.

The call depends on a level the asset has failed to break for six weeks, and the analyst warned that a rejection there could bring a deeper pullback first.

XRP Faces Resistance on Weekly and Monthly Charts

In a video posted on September 28, ChartNerd focused on XRP’s Gaussian Channel, a technical indicator built around regression bands that can track longer-term price trends.

The immediate test is the 50-week exponential moving average, currently around $1.52. XRP has failed to break that level for six weeks and was trading near $1.47 when the analysis was published. The monthly Gaussian Channel also adds another layer of resistance, with its upper regression band around $1.50.

ChartNerd’s scenario depends on XRP closing above these levels. According to him, a sustained move through the upper band could put $1.80 and $1.90 in reach, while a failure could produce a deeper retracement and a higher low later in the year, although he didn’t present any of the outcomes as certain.

XRP was down 3.5% in 24 hours but up by almost the same percentage in the last seven days. Its 24-hour range was roughly $1.47 to $1.54, while trading volume rose by more than 20% to about $3.23 billion. However, the asset is still nearly 60% below its $3.65 all-time high.

Meanwhile, as CryptoPotato reported previously, XRP exchange-traded funds recorded $75.89 million in net inflows last week, with the products extending their streak of weekly inflows to 11 weeks, taking cumulative inflows to about $1.79 billion.

That flow data provides a different backdrop from the chart structure, as it shows investors are still adding money to spot XRP funds even as the token remains below the levels identified as resistance.

What History Says

ChartNerd’s analysis leaned on XRP’s long history inside the Gaussian Channel. Past cycle bottoms often moved beneath the middle regression band before larger recoveries. For example, a bottom in June 2022 was followed by a 90% rise to the same lower band, where the Ripple token topped and pulled back before a later breakout. But the analyst cautioned that XRP does not have to repeat those patterns.

The monthly midline is around $0.94 to $0.95, a level the 2015, 2017, 2020 and June 2022 lows all tagged or dipped beneath, while the three-month channel’s upper regression band is near $0.80 and is yet to be tested.

But as things stand, the technical case rests on the $1.50 to $1.52 area, with a sustained close above it, in the analyst’s opinion, being able to change the chart structure he described. Failure to do so will leave the deeper retracement scenario on the table.

The post XRP Eyes $1.80 to $1.90 If It Clears 50-Week EMA: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.