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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Rests Near $80,500 as Midterms, Fed Decision Loom

Bitcoin price traded near $80,500 most of Tuesday, holding above the $80,000 level that has become the market’s line in the sand. Prices ranged between roughly $79,400 and $80,800 over the day, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data, and the asset was up about 0.3% over the prior 24 hours by mid-afternoon Eastern time.

The steadiness follows a rough stretch. Bitcoin price fell below $80,000 on Monday as investors cut risk exposure, weighed down by concerns about AI-sector valuations and higher oil prices. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have also been shedding money. Still, the selling hasn’t turned into panic. Bitcoin price has mostly stayed in a band between about $79,000 and $81,000 this week.

The longer view is harder on anyone who bought near the top. Bitcoin’s all-time high sits near $126,000, set in October 2025, and the price is roughly 30% below where it was a year ago.

The Federal Reserve’s policy meeting runs October 27 and 28, with the decision due Wednesday. The central bank has held its target range at 3.75% to 4% after raising it in September, and officials have signaled another increase may be needed by year-end. 

Market odds leaned toward a hold the last time they were clearly reported in early October, but those numbers are stale and likely have moved. Traders will watch Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference for hints about a December hike.

Bitcoin price logic amidst the midterms

The logic for Bitcoin is simple. Higher rates drain liquidity from speculative assets, so a hawkish surprise would likely push the price back toward $80,000 or below. 

A hold, or a softer tone, could give buyers room to push toward the $88,000 range seen earlier this fall. The November 3 midterm elections add another layer. Prediction markets have favored Democrats winning both chambers of Congress, according to one Polymarket reading cited in recent coverage. 

For crypto, the most immediate policy question is the pending market structure bill, and lawmakers’ votes on it could shape how the industry approaches the races. Bitcoin and other risk assets have tended to rally in the 12 months after past midterm cycles. 

TD Cowen analysts have warned the results could stall the CLARITY Act for two years. Prediction markets gave Democrats a 90% chance of winning the House and 62% of winning the Senate, a scenario TD Cowen called the most negative for bitcoin. 

A split Congress, with Republicans holding the Senate, was seen as better, while a Republican sweep was viewed as the best path for crypto. The bill had stalled after a failed Senate cloture vote in September, with ethics provisions and stablecoin yield still dividing lawmakers.

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is roughly $80,600.

This post Bitcoin Price Rests Near $80,500 as Midterms, Fed Decision Loom first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

VanEck Launches All-in-One Wealth Builder ETF With Bitcoin Exposure

VanEck launched the Wealth Builder ETF today, trading on the NYSE under the ticker WBMO. The actively managed fund packages the firm’s Wealth Builder model portfolios, which advisers have used through third-party platforms, into one product anyone with a brokerage account can buy. 

VanEck, which oversees about $244 billion in assets, selects the holdings, sets the weights and rebalances the portfolio.

VanEck describes the product as a way to “gain exposure to a broad mix of investments across stocks, bonds, gold, and bitcoin with a single ETF purchase.” The fund holds global stocks, bonds, gold and other real assets. 

Its bitcoin exposure is indirect. WBMO owns no bitcoin. A wholly owned Cayman Islands subsidiary holds certain investments and gains digital asset exposure through exchange-traded products, which are funds that hold bitcoin or track it. 

The subsidiary is generally capped at 25% of total assets at each quarter-end, but that limit covers several asset categories. The prospectus sets no specific bitcoin target. Investors do not need a wallet, seed phrase or exchange account to hold the bitcoin slice. They also cannot control the bitcoin position directly.

Details of VanEck’s fund

The fund’s gross expense ratio is 0.33%. A 0.07% fee waiver brings the net ratio to 0.26%. The underlying bitcoin products charge their own fees.

The allocation also limits the swings. If bitcoin rises sharply, WBMO captures only part of the gain. If it falls, bonds and gold should cushion some of the loss, though not prevent it.

VanEck warned in its announcement that digital asset ETPs can be extremely volatile and that some are not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, which means they lack certain investor protections.

The firm’s other crypto-linked fund, NODE, raised its bitcoin ETP exposure from about 7% at the end of June to 16.8% at the end of September. NODE holds blockchain companies rather than WBMO’s mix, but it shows how VanEck is using crypto in its portfolios.

Earlier this fall, VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research, Matthew Sigel, said the Bitcoin community recognized the risks quantum computing posed to Bitcoin’s cryptography. 

“It’s a risk,” Sigel said at the time. “But the community has recognized the scope of the issue. There’s a lot of talent that’s now come together with a framework of how to upgrade the system…The upgrades don’t happen as fast because there’s no CEO who can tell the devs, ‘hey, do it now.’ There’s a governance process — it takes more time, it’s a little bit messier, but there are technological paths for quantum resistance, and I think you’ll see more of that over the next couple of years.”

Major companies, including Coinbase and Blockstream, had begun developing quantum-resistant security measures to prepare for future threats. 

A Bitcoin Security Consortium, including BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Block, had also been formed to fund open-source security initiatives, including proposals such as BIP-360.

This post VanEck Launches All-in-One Wealth Builder ETF With Bitcoin Exposure first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

27-Year-Old Missouri Man Admits Role in Failed Bitcoin Kidnapping Plot

A St. Louis man has admitted his part in a violent scheme to steal bitcoin from a Connecticut family. Martel Williams, 27, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Hartford to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, commonly called Hobbs Act robbery. 

The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan announced the plea.

The plot began in August 2024. Prosecutors say the people coordinating the attack wanted bitcoin belonging to a man who had taken part in a theft worth hundreds of millions of dollars. To get it, they recruited Williams and two associates from St. Louis. 

The crew was supposed to force its way into the target’s home, threaten him, and demand that he move the cryptocurrency into accounts the conspirators controlled.

Williams and others traveled to Connecticut between August 21 and August 24, 2024. They rented vehicles and gathered supplies, including air rifles, walkie-talkies, and a laptop computer. For two days, they stalked the target and his parents, waiting for an opening to get inside the house.

Cameras, frustration, and a failed bitcoin break-in

The opening never came. Williams and his associates feared they had been captured on home security cameras. They also grew frustrated with the plan and with a lack of communication from their coordinators. They left Connecticut without carrying out the job.

Shortly afterward, a second crew of six men from Florida arrived to carry out the scheme again. On August 25, 2024, Danbury police arrested those six men after a violent carjacking. The men beat and kidnapped two people inside the vehicle. Those two victims were the parents of the target.

Local outlets have tied the target to a bitcoin theft in the range of $230 million to $245 million, though the exact figure varies from report to report. The federal case itself centers on the attempted robbery, not the original theft.

Federal agents arrested Williams on July 17, 2026. He remains free pending sentencing, and no sentencing date has been set. The FBI New Haven Violent Crimes Task Force, FBI Los Angeles, FBI St. Louis, and the Danbury Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Karen L. Peck and Stephanie T. Levick prosecuted it.

Other defendants in the Danbury case have also pleaded guilty, according to local reporting. 

Poetic bitcoin justice

Earlier this month, a scammer who had stolen about 60 bitcoin (roughly $4.8 million) through a fake-review task scam lost it all when thieves emptied three Ledger addresses where the scammer had moved the proceeds on October 9.

Blockchain analysts at Chainalysis said the transfers went into one wallet reported as stolen, while the wider Ledger incident, in which a criminal group allegedly implanted seed-phrase-reading devices sold through Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis, may have drained about $86 million. Ledger said it was working with law enforcement and has confirmed no other vendors were targeted, following a July attack on Coldcard that cost users close to $120 million through a firmware bug.

This post 27-Year-Old Missouri Man Admits Role in Failed Bitcoin Kidnapping Plot first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Again Probes Polymarket Over Whether It Let Americans Trade

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether Polymarket broke a 2022 enforcement settlement, according to Reuters reporting earlier today. The probe revives an inquiry the agency closed in 2025 without filing charges. For a platform that has tried to fit prediction markets inside US law, the question strikes at its core.

Polymarket settled with the CFTC in January 2022 and paid a $1.4 million penalty for offering event-based binary options without registration. The company agreed to block American users from its offshore exchange. Geofencing tools followed, but regulators and critics pointed to traders who reached the site through VPNs. The platform has also courted crypto natives, adding bitcoin deposits in October 2025 as part of a broader push to fund accounts with digital assets. 

According to the sources, investigators are examining three areas: the adequacy of Polymarket’s location controls, its advertising inside the United States, and the onboarding and customer protections on its US platform, which launched late last year. 

The company is headquartered in New York and runs its offshore exchange through a Panama-registered entity. A probe is an inquiry, not a finding, and many investigations end without enforcement. 

Polymarket’s mounting regulatory scrutiny

The inquiry sits inside a wider effort. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Polymarket paid individuals to produce videos of fictitious winning bets, and senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis urged the agency to open a probe. Bloomberg reported that investigators were examining the company’s social media activity.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has framed prediction markets as tools for hedging and information discovery, and he has argued that federal regulators, not states, should oversee them. Enforcement director David Miller has pledged tough policing of the sector.

Enforcement pressure has a test case. In April, prosecutors charged a US soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, with making $400,000 from insider bets on the offshore platform. The indictment says he used a VPN and an “exit mode” that appeared to sit in a foreign country. Van Dyke has denied the charges, and Polymarket says it referred the matter to authorities.

Scale raises the stakes. Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the NYSE, agreed in October 2025 to invest roughly $2 billion, and Bloomberg counted founder Shayne Coplan, 27, among the youngest self-made billionaires. The bigger the platform, the more its geographic walls matter.

Earlier this year, Polymarket’s five-minute Bitcoin up/down contract was exploited by a small group of traders who pushed Binance’s price in the final seconds before each close, according to a study. Just 821 wallets, about one in 300 traders, took $8.2 million in the pushed cycles, and 93% of the losses fell on retail bettors. 

The authors of the study found no manipulation in the fifteen-minute contract, since a longer window dilutes a fixed push, a lesson that matters now that Nasdaq and Cboe have filed to list similar binary contracts on equity indices.

This post CFTC Again Probes Polymarket Over Whether It Let Americans Trade first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Next Week’s Midterms Could Stall the CLARITY Act and Test Crypto’s Political Clout: TD Cowen 

Washington’s crypto agenda hinges on next week’s midterm elections, according to a new policy note from TD Cowen, shared with Bitcoin Magazine. 

Analyst Jaret Seiberg warned in the note that the probable results could make it difficult for Congress to pass the CLARITY Act over the next two years. The bill would set the rules for bitcoin and other digital assets, and the industry has spent $176 million on more than 100 races to shape the outcome. Here are a couple of the results:

A Democratic sweep is the most probable outcome

Prediction markets cited in the report give Democrats a 90% chance of winning the House and a 62% chance of winning the Senate. TD Cowen considers this the most negative scenario for bitcoin and the broader crypto sector. Under it, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would become Senate Banking Committee chair. Seiberg describes her as a crypto skeptic who has led opposition to the CLARITY Act, and he expects her to conduct tough oversight of federal regulators.

Warren cannot stop regulators from adopting policies that favor the industry. Seiberg expects President Trump to remain favorable toward crypto, so he would veto any bill that limits his regulators’ authority. Democrats would lack the votes to override him. As a result, policy changes are expected to focus on tokenization, perpetual futures, and stablecoins.

A split Congress with Republicans holding the Senate

The second scenario keeps Democrats in control of the House while key Senate races stay close enough to break for Republicans. Sen. Tim Scott would keep his Banking Committee gavel. TD Cowen views this outcome as a better result for bitcoin, because Rep. Maxine Waters could trade support for parts of the market structure bill in exchange for investor protections and action on her other priorities. 

Adverse legislation would be blocked from reaching the president’s desk.

A Republican sweep is the least likely but best outcome for crypto

Kalshi gives Republicans a 10% chance to keep the House and a 35% chance to keep the Senate. TD Cowen calls this the best path for crypto policy, though the margins matter. A wider Senate majority would improve the odds that leaders advance the CLARITY Act in 2027 or 2028, and they could attempt a revival during the lame-duck session. 

A narrow majority, by contrast, would leave the bill stalled, as Democrats keep pushing ethics provisions that the president opposes. When the Senate blocked the bill, Bitcoin-related stocks tumbled.

For background, the CLARITY Act would create federal rules for digital assets. The House passed its version in July 2025 by a 294-134 vote. The Senate Banking Committee approved its own version in May 2026 by a 15-9 vote, with two Democrats joining Republicans.

On the Senate floor, a cloture vote failed 49-50 on September 15. Democrats want ethics language that would bar senior officials, including the president, from profiting from crypto ventures. Republicans and industry groups resist those limits. Stablecoin yield is another dispute. Each side says the other is blocking progress, and the bill is stuck.

This post Next Week’s Midterms Could Stall the CLARITY Act and Test Crypto’s Political Clout: TD Cowen  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Zcash faces competing proposals to scrap or extend developer subsidies as growing investor interest swells the privacy network's funding reserves. The debate intensified after Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe proposed ending automatic payments to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG), arguing that the program already controls enough resources to finance years of development without additional subsidies. His proposal…

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Morpho trades at $2.20, around 24.5 percent below its twelve-month high of $2.91 from 24 August 2026 and about 114 percent above the twelve-month low of $1.03 marked on 6 February 2026. The token of one of the largest lending protocols in decentralised finance has given back a fifth of its value in a month, and it now sits almost exactly on the line that separates a long correction from a broken trend. Is Morpho a good buy at these prices?

cryptoticker.io compiled the figures in this analysis on 28 October 2026 from the daily closing prices published by CoinMarketCap. The moving averages, the relative strength index and the distances to the twelve-month extremes are our own calculations on that series.

Morpho price analysis: where the token stands today

The current price of $2.20 puts Morpho just above its 200-day average of $2.12, a gap of roughly three percent. Above that sits the 50-day average at $2.38, which the token lost in early October and has not recovered since. Between those two lines lies the zone the price has been working in for several weeks, and it is narrow: a move of eight percent in either direction decides which of the two averages the market respects.

The levels are easy to name. The twelve-month low of $1.03 has not been tested since February and is too far away to matter for a short-term decision. The level that does matter is the 200-day average at $2.12, which has held on every pullback since July. Resistance is the 50-day average at $2.38, and above it the August peak at $2.91.

Zoom out and the picture changes character. Morpho is down 9.0 percent over seven days and 19.8 percent over 30, yet up 11.6 percent over 90 days and 7.0 percent over twelve months. A market capitalisation of $1.17 billion places it at rank 57. The drawdown is real, but it has not undone the year.

Is the Morpho downtrend broken or only interrupted?

A downtrend is a sequence of lower highs and lower lows. Morpho has produced the first part since late August: the peak at $2.91 was followed by progressively weaker rebounds, each of them capped below the previous one. The second part is missing. The September and October lows came in above the summer lows, and the price has not spent a single daily close below the 200-day average at $2.12 during this leg.

That makes the move a correction within a rising structure rather than a reversal, for now. The distinction matters: in a correction the long-term average is the line buyers defend, in a reversal it becomes the ceiling sellers use. Morpho sits on the first side of it, with little room to spare.

The condition under which this reading is wrong is specific: two consecutive weekly closes below $2.12 would turn the 200-day average from support into resistance and put the February area back into play. Until then the trend is interrupted; after that, the case built below no longer holds.

What RSI and moving averages mean for a Morpho entry

The 14-day relative strength index stands at 37.4. That is in the lower third of its range without being oversold, which conventionally starts at 30. For an entry, this is the least comfortable reading of the three: a reading below 30 would signal an exhausted sell-off, a reading above 50 would signal returning momentum. At 37.4, the market is simply tired.

The two averages tell the same story from a different angle. The price above the 200-day line at $2.12 keeps the long-term structure intact; the price below the 50-day line at $2.38 says the medium-term momentum belongs to the sellers. Crossovers matter here. The 50-day average has been falling since the start of October, and if it keeps falling at its current pace it will meet the 200-day average in the coming weeks. Such a crossing is widely watched and tends to attract systematic selling, whatever one thinks of its predictive value.

For an entry that argues for patience. Buying into a falling medium-term average while the long-term line holds is a bet that the correction ends before the two cross, which makes it a bet on timing rather than on valuation.

What trading volume reveals about demand for Morpho

Morpho turned over $17.5 million in the past 24 hours. Measured against a market capitalisation of $1.17 billion, that is a daily turnover of roughly 1.5 percent. The 30-day average sits higher at $26.0 million, so current activity is running about a third below the recent norm.

This is the most informative number in the whole analysis, and it cuts both ways. Volume did not spike during the 19.8 percent decline of the past month. Forced selling, liquidation cascades and capitulation all leave the same fingerprint: a sharp rise in turnover at the lows. Morpho shows none of it. The decline looks like buyers stepping back rather than holders rushing out, which is the gentler of the two explanations.

The flip side is liquidity. A token that trades 1.5 percent of its capitalisation per day is thin by large-cap standards, where three to five percent is routine. Thin books widen spreads and amplify moves in both directions, so anyone sizing a position should assume the exit costs more than the entry.

Market sentiment offers no help either way. The Fear and Greed Index stands at 45, squarely neutral, so the Morpho decline is not simply the market's mood in miniature.

The structural factors that speak for Morpho

Morpho is a lending protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that also runs on Base. It matches lenders and borrowers in isolated markets, each of which fixes a collateral pair, a liquidation loan-to-value threshold and a price oracle at creation. The full architecture is set out in the project documentation.

Three properties matter for the valuation. The markets are separated, so trouble in one exotic market does not spread. The core contracts are designed to be immutable, which rules out later changes to the terms a lender agreed to. And market selection is delegated to curators who bundle deposits into vaults for a share of the interest.

The supply mechanics are clearly defined. Of a total of one billion tokens, around 534.3 million circulate, roughly 53 percent. MORPHO governs how the protocol is used, so its value rests on the protocol's relevance.

On the usage side, Morpho is tied to Ethereum, where the bulk of its collateralised loans sit. The next protocol steps are set out in the Ethereum roadmap; cheaper transactions lower the cost of a leveraged lending position directly.

On regulation, a decentralised lending protocol in the EU does not fall under the same rules as a centralised exchange. The obligations under MiCA land first with the venue you buy through, and our overview of regulated crypto exchanges shows which are authorised. Whether such protocols will carry obligations of their own is open, and that is an assumption.

What argues for buying Morpho at current prices

Three points carry weight here. First, the long-term structure is intact. At $2.20 the price holds above the 200-day average of $2.12, a line that has absorbed every pullback since July, and the twelve-month balance is still positive at 7.0 percent despite a month that took a fifth off the price.

Second, the decline came without a volume spike. Turnover of $17.5 million during the drop, below the $26.0 million 30-day average, points to absent buyers rather than departing holders. Such corrections tend to resolve faster than those driven by forced liquidation.

Third, the distance to the twelve-month high is substantial. At 24.5 percent below $2.91, a buyer today pays considerably less than in August for the same protocol, and a capitalisation of $1.17 billion is small enough that better protocol usage can still move the price.

What argues against buying Morpho at current prices

Three points cut the other way, and they are not minor. First, the supply overhang. The 47 percent of the total supply that is not yet circulating becomes available over time, and every one of those releases meets a market that turns over 1.5 percent of its capitalisation per day. Thin liquidity and a scheduled increase in supply are an awkward combination, and this is the single most concrete risk in the position.

Second, the medium-term momentum is against the buyer. The price sits below the falling 50-day average of $2.38, the RSI at 37.4 shows no sign of a turn, and the two moving averages are converging in a way that typically draws systematic selling if they cross. None of that predicts the next move, but all of it means an entry today is fighting the prevailing direction.

Third, the token has no direct claim on protocol revenue. MORPHO is a governance token, so its price depends on the protocol's standing rather than on a modellable cash flow. Lending volumes can grow while the token lags, and that gap has opened before in this sector.

How to buy Morpho at current prices

MORPHO is listed on several large venues. For most investors the practical choice is a regulated provider that accepts bank transfers in their own currency. Our reviews of Kraken and Bitpanda set out fees, deposit routes and limits in detail.

Two cost items decide what an entry actually costs. The trading fee at most venues runs between 0.1 and 1.5 percent per order, and on top comes the bid-ask spread, which at 1.5 percent daily turnover is wider than for Bitcoin. In a book this thin, a limit order usually saves more than switching provider does.

On custody: anyone holding Morpho longer than a trade should not leave the tokens on an exchange account. A hardware wallet keeps the keys offline, and our hardware wallet comparison covers the current devices. Governance participation requires your own wallet in any case.

On tax, the rules differ by country and change more often than the protocol does. Holding periods and allowances vary widely, and anyone lending tokens should check the treatment before opening the position.

So is Morpho a good buy at current prices?

In the short term the evidence is thin. The price at $2.20 is trapped between a 200-day average of $2.12 that it needs and a falling 50-day average of $2.38 that caps every rebound. An RSI of 37.4 offers neither an exhaustion signal nor momentum, and daily turnover of $17.5 million against a $26.0 million average shows no returning interest. Nothing in that configuration makes a convincing case for buying this week rather than next month.

Over a longer horizon the question is different: does Morpho's lending volume grow faster than its supply unlocks? If it does, a capitalisation of $1.17 billion at rank 57 leaves room, and an entry 24.5 percent below the August high of $2.91 will look reasonable. If it does not, the supply schedule sets the price.

The assumption behind the constructive reading is testable, which is the point of naming it. It is refuted by two consecutive weekly closes below the 200-day average at $2.12, by a sustained fall in turnover below the current $17.5 million while supply unlocks continue, or by a drop in protocol deposits over a full quarter. Any one of those would remove the ground this reading stands on. None of this is investment advice.

Buying Morpho: What to take away

1. Check where the price stands relative to the 200-day average at $2.12 before anything else. Above it, the correction reading holds; below it for two weekly closes, the structure has changed. Our crypto exchange comparison shows where the token can be bought once that question is settled.
2. Size the position for the liquidity, not for the conviction. At 1.5 percent daily turnover the exit costs more than the entry, and a limit order is worth more than a provider switch. The overview of regulated exchanges lists the authorised venues.
3. Move tokens you intend to hold off the exchange. Governance participation requires your own wallet anyway, and our hardware wallet comparison covers the devices that keep the keys offline.

Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no influence on the price analysis or on the assessment of the chart situation; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.

(Last updated: 28 October 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and terms change; check them with the provider yourself before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high price swings, and a total loss is possible.)

Bitcoin Cash costs $294.31 on Wednesday morning, or 264.53 euros. The coin sits 4.4 percent above its level of 24 hours ago and 3.9 percent above its level of a week ago, according to CoinGecko in the night before October 28 at around 2am. That is a rarity this week: Bitcoin has given up 2.7 percent over the same period, Ether 4.3 percent. Anyone wanting the medium-term picture will find our running assessment in the Bitcoin Cash price prediction.

More interesting than the price this week, though, is where Bitcoin Cash is actually traded. Since October 19 there has been a futures contract at the CME in Chicago, so at a regulated US futures exchange. A count of the publicly visible futures markets shows, however, that this contract does not appear in the statistics most investors rely on. There, 81 Bitcoin Cash markets are listed, and every single one of them is a perpetual, meaning a contract with no expiry date.

Bitcoin Cash holds $294 and closes the week as one of the few top-25 assets in the green

The weekly high is $295.76, reached in the night before Wednesday, and the weekly low $269.97 on Saturday evening. The current price is therefore 0.8 percent below the weekly high and 8.7 percent above the weekly low. Over two weeks there is a gain of 7.4 percent, over 30 days a loss of 11.4 percent. Market capitalization is $5.92 billion, which puts Bitcoin Cash in 21st place among all cryptocurrencies. In circulation are 20.11 million of a maximum 21 million BCH.

Daily turnover on the spot market is $213.8 million. That figure is worth a second look, because it is small compared with the futures markets. Open futures positions on Bitcoin Cash alone add up to more than a billion dollars, and turnover there runs at $825.3 million in 24 hours. For every dollar of spot turnover there are therefore almost four dollars of futures turnover. For price formation that means what happens in the chart arises to a considerable degree where trading is leveraged, not where coins change hands.

81 contracts, 63 exchanges, not one expiry date: the count of October 28

For this article we counted the publicly visible futures markets. The basis is CoinGecko's derivatives data, and 28,099 contracts across all cryptocurrencies were examined. Of those, 81 relate to Bitcoin Cash, spread across 63 trading venues. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 28, 2026.

The result in figures: open positions across these 81 markets add up to $1.066 billion. Turnover over the past 24 hours is $825.3 million. And the finding that brought us to this article: all 81 contracts are perpetuals. Not one dated future is included in this list.

That is remarkable because it makes the regulated part of the market invisible. The CME trades Bitcoin Cash in two sizes, a standard contract over 250 BCH and a micro contract over 25 BCH. Both have an expiry date. In the overview an investor finds when searching for open interest on Bitcoin Cash, they do not show up.

What separates a perpetual from a dated future

A future is a contract to buy or sell an asset at a fixed date in the future. That date is the expiry, and settlement happens on it. A perpetual future, perpetual for short, is a futures contract with no expiry date: the position runs on as long as it is collateralized, and ends only when it is closed or liquidated.

To stop the price of such a contract drifting away from the spot price, there is the funding rate. This is a payment that flows at fixed intervals between holders of long and short positions. If the contract trades above spot, longs pay shorts; in the opposite case the other way round. For you as a holder that is a running fee or income with nothing to do with price movement.

This difference is no technical detail for European investors. Under European supervisory practice, perpetuals fall into the area of contracts for difference, and there leverage caps apply to retail clients that sit far below what international platforms offer. We have described the classification of perpetuals under the CFD rules in detail. To compare the products, the authorized platforms are in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.

Why the CME future of October 19 is missing from the statistics

The CME announced the launch of the Bitcoin Cash contracts on September 22 and carried it out on October 19. The first block trades in both contracts went through the trading houses FalconX and GSR, according to market reports. With that step the exchange lists eleven contracts on individual cryptocurrencies, up from nine. How the price behaved beforehand we described at the CME launch on October 19.

That the contract does not appear in the usual overviews has a plain reason: those overviews collect the data of crypto exchanges. The CME is not one of them, because it is a futures exchange for commodities, interest rates and currencies. The CME's figures sit in its own publications. For you a practical rule follows: an open interest figure on Bitcoin Cash that you read somewhere very probably describes only the unregulated part of the market.

This is no marginal issue. If you read a figure such as the $1.066 billion cited here as a measure of the entire futures market, you are not overstating the share of highly leveraged speculation; you are understating the share of regulated trading. Reading both together is the cleaner route.

A single platform carries half of the open interest

The distribution of the $1.066 billion across the 63 trading venues is uneven. The largest venue, the exchange Tapbit, accounts for $538.4 million and thus 50.5 percent of the total. The second largest is Binance with $98.0 million, or 9.2 percent. The three largest venues together carry 65.1 percent. Subtract the largest venue and $527.3 million is left for all the remaining 62 venues combined.

What that means is worth a sober look. A metric that comes half from a single trading venue does not measure the mood of the overall market; to a considerable degree it measures the positioning of that one venue's customers. If something shifts there, the overall figure shifts, without anything having changed at the other 62 venues. We observed the same distortion with Monero in October, where a single exchange carried the bulk of the reported sum.

No statement about the quality or reliability of individual platforms is bound up with this. The figures describe where open positions are reported, not how well a provider works.

Funding rate: in 60 of 81 markets the longs pay

At the time of the count, the funding rates of the 81 markets are positive in 60 cases, negative in 15, and the rest stand at zero. The median value is plus 0.0061 percent per settlement period. Positive means whoever bets on rising prices pays the other side.

That fits the price picture of this week. Bitcoin Cash has risen, the majority of leveraged positions point upwards, and that majority is paying for its stance. The amounts sound small but they add up: with settlement every eight hours, 0.0061 percent comes to roughly two percent over a year that a long position has to earn before it is even in profit. For short holding periods that is negligible; for a position left open for weeks it is not.

The range is wide. The lowest value is minus 0.1 percent, the highest plus 0.0229 percent. Anyone comparing several platforms will indeed find differences that decide the cost of holding.

Leverage and liquidation: what happens to your position without an expiry date

A contract with no expiry date spares you a decision that a future forces on you. With a dated contract the day of settlement comes, whether it suits you or not. With a perpetual that day does not exist, and so in practice the position often ends by the other route: through liquidation.

Liquidation means the platform closes your position by force because the collateral posted no longer suffices. How far the price has to run for that depends on the leverage. At tenfold leverage a move of about ten percent against you is enough, at twentyfold about five percent. For context: the range between the weekly high and the weekly low for Bitcoin Cash over the past seven days was 9.6 percent. One week of normal swings would therefore already have cost a tenfold leveraged position.

In practice that means: note the liquidation price of your open positions before you do anything else, and compare it with the weekly low of $269.97. If it sits above that, the past week would have been enough. Check as well which funding rate your platform settles and at what interval, because those costs run on regardless of the price.

The buying route: MiCA authorization, holding period and custody

If you want to hold Bitcoin Cash rather than leverage it, three points decide. First the trading venue: since MiCA, providers addressing retail clients in the EU must hold an authorization as a crypto-asset service provider. Which platforms carry that authorization and what trading there costs is in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

Second, tax. Under current law in Germany, gains from selling crypto assets stay tax-free if more than a year lies between purchase and sale. The exemption threshold for gains within that period is 1,000 euros. Important for futures trading: this holding period applies to the coins themselves. Gains from perpetuals and other contracts for difference do not fall under it and are treated differently for tax. Anyone doing both keeps the positions separate and documents them cleanly, which is what the tax tools and portfolio trackers are for.

Third, custody. Coins sitting on an exchange belong to you economically but lie at the provider's disposal. For holdings you want to keep longer, self-custody is the safer route, and the choice of devices is in the hardware wallet comparison.

Levels above and below

On the upside the weekly high of $295.76 is the next level to watch, and just above it the round $300 mark. Above that begins the area where the price traded before the setback in early October. On the downside the weekly low of $269.97 is the first level, and below it the round $250 mark.

These are observation points and not price targets. The levels say nothing about where the price is heading, only where something was decided over the past week. The distance between the two is around 9.6 percent, and that range is what you should reckon with when choosing leverage.

What is coming over the next weeks

One date is open: on September 11, Grayscale filed an updated registration with the US securities regulator to convert the existing Bitcoin Cash Trust into a spot ETF on NYSE Arca. No decision date is named in the public documents, and no decision has been taken so far. What a conversion would mean for investors we set out at the Grayscale ETF filing.

For the futures market: the CME publishes its turnover and open positions on an ongoing basis in its own reports. Anyone wanting to know how strongly regulated trading in Bitcoin Cash is actually taken up will find the figures there and not in the crypto exchange overviews.

Bitcoin Cash: the CME future is missing from every open interest figure

The position in one sentence: in the publicly visible overviews, futures trading in Bitcoin Cash runs entirely through contracts with no expiry date, half of the reported sum hangs on a single trading venue, and the contract regulated since October 19 does not appear in those figures. Three steps follow from that:

1. Check open leveraged positions against the weekly low. Compare the liquidation price of every open position with $269.97 and add the funding costs for your planned holding period. Which platforms are authorized for retail clients in the EU and what leverage they offer is in the perp DEX comparison.
2. Read open interest figures with their source from now on. Ask of every figure which trading venues it contains. If the CME is missing, it describes the unregulated part. For a spot purchase without leverage, an authorized exchange from our exchange overview is enough.
3. Keep holdings and speculation apart. Keep the coins you want to hold longer separate from leveraged positions, and hold them in your own custody. The devices for that are in the hardware wallet comparison.

The primary sources for this article: the CME Group announcement of September 22, 2026 and the report on the trading launch of October 19.

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

Anyone holding tokenized gold through a European exchange is losing that position right now: Coinbase is ending support for 14 tokens for retail customers in the European Economic Area, and alongside the familiar dollar stablecoins that list also carries PAXG. The cut-off date is October 30. Whatever is left in the account after that, the exchange converts into USDC on its own initiative, so into a dollar token. A claim on gold turns into a claim on dollars, and the holder does nothing to bring it about.

The reason sits in the rulebook rather than at the exchange. Under the EU's MiCA regulation, gold tokens fall into a category of their own, and to this day not one issuer holds an authorization in that category. This article sets out what PAX Gold actually is, why a gold bar becomes a regulatory problem case, which routes remain open to investors in Germany, and what the forced swap means for tax.

What PAX Gold is: one token for one troy ounce in a London vault

PAX Gold, PAXG for short, is a token on the Ethereum blockchain that represents one troy ounce of physical gold per unit. The troy ounce is the trading measure of the gold market and equals 31.1035 grams of pure gold. On its own product page, the issuer Paxos states that each token stands for one troy ounce of a gold bar meeting the London Good Delivery standard, stored in vaults of the London Bullion Market Association. On that account, anyone holding PAXG has ownership rights in the underlying gold, held in custody by Paxos Trust Company.

London Good Delivery is a written specification and not a marketing phrase. The standard sets fineness, weight range and provenance records for a bar so precisely that wholesalers accept it without testing it themselves. Paxos cites monthly attestation reports for the allocated gold and says it charges no storage fees. The company itself is a US trust company supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The practical appeal lies in divisibility. A bar under the LBMA standard weighs around 400 troy ounces and therefore costs more than a million euros, while a token can be transferred in fractions. The price tracks gold: on Tuesday morning PAXG stood at $4,063 or 3,652 euros per token, a good 1 percent above the previous day.

October 30: Coinbase converts 14 tokens into USDC

Coinbase has told its customers in the European Economic Area that 14 assets will no longer be supported in the retail business. According to consistent reports, the affected assets are USDT, PYUSD, USD1, DAI, PAX, GUSD, GYEN, BUST, UST, RAI, PAXG, MUSD, USDS and TGBP. Buying, selling and swapping these assets is already blocked on the European platform. Until the cut-off date, only withdrawal to an external wallet remains open.

Whoever does nothing by then keeps the value but not the asset: remaining balances are converted into USDC or another supported asset at the market rates applying at that point. For deposits that arrive after the deadline, the exchange explicitly promises no credit and no recovery. That last line is the most important part of the whole process, because it also catches anyone who sends tokens to an old deposit address out of habit.

This is not a one-off at a single exchange. The same movement has been running through the European market for months, and we described the forced conversion at Coinbase back in early October, with the focus then on USDT and DAI. That PAXG, a gold token, also sits on the list follows a logic of its own, and that logic is in the regulation.

Why a gold bar becomes an asset-referenced token under MiCA

MiCA splits crypto assets into groups, and strict special rules apply to two of them. The first are e-money tokens, which reference a single official currency, such as a euro or dollar token. The second are asset-referenced tokens, known in the jargon as ART: tokens whose value rests on a reference other than a single currency. Gold is exactly such a reference.

That places every gold token in the ART category, where the obligations are heavy. In its specialist article on the regulation, German regulator BaFin sets out the outline of the framework it has applied to German issuers since 2024. An ART issuer needs an authorization from its national supervisor or must itself be an authorized credit institution. On top of that come an officially approved white paper, own funds requirements, a separately held reserve and a permanent redemption right for holders.

That severity is deliberate. The ART rules grew out of a concern that private tokens might come to sit alongside the euro as a means of payment on a large scale. The regulation therefore provides an additional tier for particularly large ARTs, with higher capital and liquidity requirements, and the European Central Bank can designate any ART it considers sensitive for monetary policy. Within that framework a tokenized gold bar is legally the same thing as a currency-basket token, even though hardly anyone uses it to pay.

The ART category has been open since June 2024 and is still empty

The rules for asset-referenced tokens have applied since June 30, 2024. Two years on, research by the trade outlet crypto.news finds not one authorized issuer in the category. The figure is zero and not merely low: no gold token, no basket token, no commodity token of any kind. The most detailed crypto regulation in the world thus has a drawer it built for gold itself, and that drawer is unoccupied.

The market for it, meanwhile, is anything but small. The two leading products, PAX Gold and Tether Gold, together carried around $5.1 billion on Tuesday morning. The trade outlet put an slightly earlier reading at just under $4.4 billion, and the gap is explained by the higher gold price. Converting market capitalization back into troy ounces, the two tokens stand on just under 39 tonnes of gold, of which about 13.9 tonnes sit at PAX Gold and around 25.2 tonnes at Tether Gold. Both products lie outside the formal EU framework, and both are held by Europeans.

Brussels is now debating the gap itself. The Commission is examining whether MiCA should extend to tokenized real-world assets, DeFi and staking, which also puts the empty ART category back in question: either the requirements become workable, or the category disappears. Until then the position stands as it is.

Paxos is licensed in Finland, PAX Gold is not

Here lies the mix-up that blocks the view for many holders. Paxos is indeed authorized in the European Union: the group runs an entity supervised in Finland and uses it to bring the dollar token USDG to the European market as an e-money token. That licence covers precisely what it was granted for. A dollar e-money token and an asset-referenced gold token are two different products under MiCA, with two different procedures.

For PAX Gold that means the issuer is reachable in Europe while the product still holds no authorization in the European framework. An authorized exchange in the EU may therefore not keep a non-compliant token permanently tradable, and that duty is exactly what Coinbase is now implementing. To check which permission a trading venue works under in Europe, the classification is in our comparison of exchanges with MiCA authorization.

Holding PAXG is not prohibited by any of this. The regulation addresses issuers and service providers, not private individuals with a wallet of their own. A holder in Germany may own PAXG, transfer it and swap it on decentralized trading venues. What falls away is the convenient route through the regulated exchange.

Tether Gold compared: XAUT carries 25 tonnes, PAX Gold just under 14

The second large provider is Tether Gold, ticker XAUT, likewise a token on one troy ounce. By supply XAUT is the bigger product: around 809,000 tokens against roughly 446,000 at PAX Gold. On price the two sit almost level, separated by a good $8 on Tuesday morning. We already described XAUT in April 2025 as a hedge against trade conflicts; the regulatory position has tightened markedly since.

In regulatory terms both sit in the same boat, because both are ARTs without authorization. For holders in Germany they differ mainly in access and in proof. PAX Gold offers a lookup that shows the serial number, weight and vault of the allocated bar via a wallet address. According to the provider, that lookup works only for tokens in an Ethereum or Solana wallet, not for balances at an exchange or another custodian.

That leads to a point which gets lost in the notices about the deadline: whoever leaves tokenized gold sitting on an exchange holds an entry in that exchange's system. Only in a wallet of your own does the entry become a token whose backing can be checked individually.

Redemption and access: what holders keep without a regulated exchange

One point separates the token from an entry on an exchange account, and it is rarely named in the debate about deadlines: the redemption promise. For PAX Gold, Paxos cites redemption against dollars at the prevailing gold market price, at any time. Institutional users can additionally redeem against LBMA-accredited Good Delivery bars or against so-called unallocated Loco London gold, meaning gold on a clearing account of the London market. That claim is addressed to the holder of the token. Whoever leaves a balance at an exchange holds a claim against that exchange.

The route to buying remains open. If the regulated venue falls away, decentralized trading venues on the Ethereum blockchain remain available in the EU. There the user carries two costs that disappear into the price at an exchange: the network fee for every transfer and the price deviation when the order book is thin. Both can be read off before the swap, and both weigh more heavily on small amounts than on large ones.

In short, this leaves a trade-off with no comfortable answer. The advantage of a gold token lies in divisibility down to fractions of a troy ounce and in transferability at any hour, with no securities account and no safe deposit box. The price for that is the missing investor protection: for a digital asset without ART authorization, the regulation's duties on reserve, white paper and redemption do not bite, and there is no European supervisor a holder could turn to in a dispute. Anyone who values the convenience of the exchange is better served by physical gold or a gold security; anyone who needs the divisibility of the token takes on custody themselves.

The forced swap counts as a disposal for tax

For tax purposes the automatic conversion is not a neutral event. When PAXG is converted into USDC, the holder gives up one crypto asset and receives another. The tax office sees a disposal in that, even though nobody consciously sold. If the purchase is less than a year old, a gain becomes taxable under the rules for private disposals; if it is older, the one-year period applies. For the new USDC the clock starts again.

The deadline logic is what matters. Whoever withdraws tokens to their own wallet beforehand is only moving them, and a transfer between your own addresses is not a sale. Whoever leaves them sitting permits a tax-relevant swap at a price they do not set. Which records such a forced swap calls for, we set out in our piece on the tax consequences of the stablecoin forced swap.

The reform of the holding period changes nothing in this logic for now, but it stands behind every decision this year. As long as the one-year rule applies, the acquisition date of each individual holding is worth a look, and that calls for clean records from the time before the conversion.

Gold ETCs, bars and coins: the routes without a blockchain

For the wish to hold gold in a portfolio, Germany offers routes that MiCA does not touch at all. The most direct is physical investment gold as a bar or coin: the purchase is exempt from VAT, the gain is tax-free after a one-year holding period, and no custodian is needed. Against that stand the spread, shipping and, where applicable, safe deposit rent, and divisibility ends at the smallest denomination.

The second route is exchange-traded gold securities, such as the gold ETCs common in Germany that carry a delivery claim. Their tax treatment is contested: several tax portals rely on rulings of the Federal Fiscal Court under which an ETC with an exercisable delivery claim is treated like physical gold and stays tax-free after one year, while other accounts assume withholding tax regardless of holding period. The judgment years cited differ between sources, and only a tax adviser can give binding advice here.

The third route remains the token, but then in self-custody. Technically PAXG is an ordinary token on the Ethereum blockchain and can be transferred to any wallet that supports the standard. An app serves for storage as well as a dedicated device does. Worth bearing in mind are the network fees on transfer and the question of which trading venue a later sale should run through.

What January adds: the ESMA deadline for non-compliant tokens

This week's date belongs to a single provider. Behind it stands a date that applies to the whole European market. European securities regulator ESMA published a statement in early October under which authorized platforms should end services around non-compliant tokens as quickly as possible and within three months at the latest. That yields January 8, 2027 as the outer edge. The details are in our piece on the ESMA deadline for the USDT exit.

An ESMA statement does not apply directly as a legal norm. The text binds the national supervisors, and in Germany BaFin has to enforce it. In practice the trading venues follow it, and the order of the shutdowns follows the pace of the individual houses. For holders of gold tokens that means further deadlines of this kind are more likely than a return of the tokens to regulated trading, as long as the ART category stays empty.

How the Commission handles the gap remains open. Were a workable authorization for commodity tokens to arrive, gold tokens could return to Europe on regulated terms. There is no date for that, and until then tokenized gold in the EU remains a product you can hold but can barely trade on authorized platforms.

Tokenized gold: without ART authorization only your own wallet is left

The position fits into one sentence: the gold behind the tokens still sits in London vaults, while the route to it through a European exchange is closing. Three steps make sense now.

1. Review balances before the cut-off date. Check in every account whether one of the 14 assets is sitting there, and withdraw it to an address you control yourself. Which device serves for that is shown by the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Record acquisition data. Note the purchase date, quantity and price for every holding before an automatic swap blurs the trail. The suitable tools are in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
3. Settle the future trading route. Before the next purchase, decide which venue a sale should run through, and which permission that venue holds in Europe. The classification comes from the comparison of exchanges with MiCA authorization.

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

The second-largest dollar token in crypto has shrunk by $4.08 billion over the past 30 days. That is how much USDC holders returned to the issuer without an equal amount of new tokens being minted. No other stablecoin lost as much supply over the same period.

This is not a price move. A stablecoin pegged to the dollar still trades at a dollar; USDC stood at $0.9994 on October 27, 2026. What has changed is the number of tokens that exist at all. And for the crypto market that number is a metric in its own right, because it shows how much capital is sitting in dollar form without having left the ecosystem.

Stablecoin supply: $290 billion across the 14 largest dollar tokens

For this article we went through the circulating supply of every stablecoin tracked by DefiLlama, 425 tokens in total, and then looked at the 14 that weigh in above $1 billion. Together those 14 come to $290.19 billion. Across all 425 tokens the figure is $305.10 billion. cryptoticker.io compiled this data itself on October 27, 2026.

Circulating supply is the number of tokens an issuer has put out and not yet taken back in. It rises when someone deposits dollars and receives new tokens in return, and it falls when someone hands tokens back and receives dollars. To compare the individual tokens side by side, see the list of providers in our stablecoin comparison.

Within those 14 tokens the month split in two directions. Seven shrank, seven grew. The declines added up to $7.04 billion.

USDC loses $4.08 billion: the single largest decline

Of that $7.04 billion, $4.08 billion came from USDC alone. That is 58 percent of the entire decline, caused by one token. USDC now stands at $71.30 billion in circulating supply. Another $917 million in redemptions came on top over the past week, so the trend has not turned recently.

Tether, by far the largest stablecoin, also gave ground over the same period, though far less sharply: $1.79 billion against a circulating supply of $181.78 billion. In percentage terms the gap is clear. USDT lost about one percent of its size, USDC a good five percent.

Further declines came at USDe with $383 million, at USD1 with $493 million, and on a smaller scale at DAI, USDG and USDGO.

What a stablecoin redemption actually does

A redemption is the exchange of a token for real money at the issuer. The token is destroyed in the process, circulating supply falls, and the issuer transfers the equivalent value out of its reserves. That is the decisive difference from a sale on an exchange: sell your tokens to another buyer and the circulating supply is unchanged, because the tokens have only changed hands.

A falling supply therefore does not mean that large numbers of investors have sold. It means that, on balance, money has left the detour through the token and is sitting in bank accounts again, parked in government bonds, or has flowed into other assets.

Seven tokens shrink, seven grow: where the money is going

The other half of the data is just as revealing. While the large, established tokens gave up supply, several younger and smaller ones gained. PYUSD grew by $191 million, USDS by $183 million, RLUSD by $108 million and BUIDL by $71 million.

Measured against USDC these are small sums, but the direction is consistent: the movement runs from the two incumbents towards tokens issued by payment companies, by banks or by fund managers. BUIDL, for instance, tracks a money market fund and is therefore not one of the classic payment stablecoins.

The US interest ban on stablecoins and the January 18, 2027 deadline

Over the same period the legal position on yield has changed. The US law for payment stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, bars a licensed issuer from paying a token holder interest or a return for merely holding the token. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond sets out the rule in its overview of the GENIUS Act. Whether the redemptions of the past 30 days are connected to it cannot be read off the supply figures alone.

For a holder, that means the interest the issuer earns on its reserves stays with the issuer. Park your money in a payment stablecoin and you receive nothing from the issuer for it. When the rule bites in US supervisory practice and which transition periods apply, we set out in our article on the US rule on stablecoin interest from January 18, 2027.

To earn a yield, you therefore have to look outside the token itself, through staking and lending products with their own risks attached. Which platforms qualify and what they cost is set out in our comparison of staking platforms. There is no return there without a matching risk: lend out tokens and you carry the counterparty's default risk.

Supply as buying power: what the figure says about the crypto market

Stablecoins are the crypto market's means of payment. Almost every trading pair on a large exchange is quoted in a dollar token, and switching from one coin into another usually runs through a stablecoin. The combined supply of all stablecoins therefore describes how much immediately deployable capital is sitting in the market.

The mechanism behind it is plain. When supply falls, less money is on hand in the form that can buy without the detour through a bank. Every new purchase then has to come either out of existing holdings or bring fresh money in from outside, and fresh money needs a deposit that can take days. That changes nothing about the direction of a price, but it changes how quickly buying can follow.

Bitcoin stood at around $80,800 on October 27, 2026, Ether at about $2,349. Both moved little that day. The 14 large stablecoins lost $1.95 billion in supply over the same week.

The October 28 Fed decision meets a thinner dollar cushion

The US central bank meets on October 27 and 28, 2026, a date set out in the Federal Reserve's official meeting calendar. The decision therefore lands on Wednesday, and it meets a market whose stablecoin cushion has thinned over the preceding four weeks.

For investors, one point matters most here: a rate decision often moves prices within minutes. With less capital sitting ready in stablecoins, the swings can be sharper in both directions, because less counter-offer is immediately available. That says nothing about the direction of a move, but it does say something about its possible width.

USDC in the EU: the redemption right and the MiCA classification

In the European Union a dollar stablecoin such as USDC falls under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short. A token of this kind counts there as an e-money token. A right hangs on that which many holders are not aware of: you can return your tokens to the issuer at par at any time, and the issuer has to pay you out at par. That right exists regardless of what an exchange happens to be paying for the token.

That USDC has been classified in the EU as a significant e-money token, and what that means for supervision, we set out on October 16, 2026 in our article on the classification of USDC as a significant e-money token. In concrete terms: check whether the provider you hold your stablecoins through is authorised in the euro area at all, and how it handles redemption.

Tax in Germany: swapping into a stablecoin counts as a sale

In Germany crypto-assets count as other assets. Swap Bitcoin or Ether into a stablecoin and that is a disposal for tax purposes, even though you have not left the crypto market. What decides the outcome is the holding period of the coins sold: after one year of holding, a gain on the sale of a privately held coin is tax-free, and within the year it falls under private disposals.

Switch into stablecoins and back several times during a turbulent week and you create a series of events that matter for tax. That is no reason to avoid it, but it is a reason to record the transactions while the data is still complete.

Custody: where your stablecoins sit and who can reach them

One point has nothing to do with supply and counts all the same right now: stablecoins in an exchange account are reliably yours only as long as the exchange remains solvent and reachable. Stablecoin issuers can also freeze individual addresses when the authorities order it. Both argue against leaving larger holdings on a trading account permanently.

There is also a simple calculation that gains weight from the interest ban: a balance that carries no interest loses real value when there is inflation. If you are parking money for a longer stretch, the sensible comparison for a stablecoin is an interest-bearing euro account rather than another token.

Stablecoin supply: only new inflows create new buying power

The number that counts over the coming weeks is not the price of any single coin, but the circulating supply of the large stablecoins. As long as it is falling, no fresh capital is following into the market. Three steps you can draw from that:

1. Check your holdings. Look at which stablecoin your balance sits in and whether the provider is authorised in the euro area. The providers and their terms are set out in our stablecoin comparison.
2. Settle how long you are parking. A stablecoin is designed for short parking between two trades. If you park for longer and want a yield, look at the terms and the risks in our comparison of staking platforms.
3. Record the transactions. Every swap into a stablecoin is a disposal in Germany. Tools that capture this as you go are listed under tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Look up the transaction count of the Solana blockchain on Tuesday evening and you find a figure far below last month's. The reason sits in the accounting rather than in the network: since the Alpenglow upgrade on October 21, validator votes no longer count as transactions. Where the price can point on a horizon of months is set out in our Solana price prediction.

What is documented: across five samples of 60 seconds each, the Solana node reported 949,461 transactions on Tuesday evening, and exactly 949,461 of them were non-vote transactions. The difference is zero. Our own assessment follows further below: the series of figures breaks at this point, the operation of the network does not.

SOL trades at $100.79 on Tuesday evening. It entered the preceding 24 hours at $100.15, the daily high stood at $101.22 and the daily low at $99.00. Over that period 330,422 SOL changed hands. The level on which everything turns remains $100.

949,461 transactions, zero votes: our own measurement on Tuesday evening

A Solana blockchain node supplies the latest performance samples on request: for 60 seconds at a time it counts how many transactions and how many non-vote transactions went into the blocks of that window. Both values stood at the same number across all five samples on Tuesday evening.

In the summer it was different. An analysis by Solana Compass for the week from September 30 to October 6 finds that around 56 percent of all transactions on the network were validator votes. Every second line in the statistics was therefore not a user sending a token but a validator confirming a block.

Counted individually, the five samples give a throughput of 3,165 transactions per second. That is the figure left over after the change, and it consists exclusively of genuine user traffic. Since the network launched, the blockchain has processed 564,047,116,949 transactions.

What Alpenglow did to the votes on October 21

Alpenglow replaced the previous consensus mechanism TowerBFT. Validator votes have since travelled directly between the validators and are bundled into certificates. Those certificates sit in the footer of a block, no longer in the transaction list.

A certificate in this context is a collected proof that enough validators have agreed to a block. For consensus it counts exactly as the individual votes did before; for a counter working through the transaction list of a block, it is invisible.

Solana's project documentation expressly tells developer teams to recalibrate their transaction and throughput displays, because the decline is a question of how counting works. The infrastructure provider Triton One additionally recommends resetting alarms that trigger on small blocks. An analysis of the transition block by Coindoo counts 649 vote transactions there and none after it.

Anyone drawing their own comparisons across October 21 therefore needs the same filter on both sides. A chart that shows all transactions before and only user transactions after shows a collapse that did not happen.

213 milliseconds per slot: the pace in our own measurement

The same five samples also capture the number of slots. A slot is the time window in which a validator may propose a block. In 300 seconds the node counted 1,407 slots, which is 4.69 slots per second, or 213 milliseconds per slot.

Before Alpenglow, slot time on the network ran at about 400 milliseconds. Blocks therefore follow one another at a markedly shorter interval, and the lower cost of the new voting mechanism is precisely the lever that made it possible.

Epoch 1069 stood at 93.27 percent on Tuesday evening. That leaves 29,080 slots on paper, so a good 1.7 hours at the measured slot time until the switch to epoch 1070. The network's inflation rate stands at 3.5841 percent, with 589,874,408 SOL in circulation out of a total supply of 636,517,483 SOL.

150 milliseconds is the target, 404 milliseconds the measurement of October 23

Alpenglow is advertised with a finality of 150 milliseconds. Finality means the time after which a transaction counts as final and can no longer be reversed. The 150 milliseconds are a target value of the mechanism, not a reading from the live network.

An external measurement on October 23 arrived at an average of 404 milliseconds. That is still a fraction of the roughly 13 seconds Ethereum needs for a block, and it sits far above the figure that stood in the announcements. For an exchange that releases deposits and withdrawals on finality, this difference makes the arithmetic.

Firedancer charges 1 SOL for every bug report

On Tuesday the Firedancer team at Jump Crypto changed its rules for security reports. Anyone wishing to report a vulnerability in the validator software burns 1 SOL for it, around $100 at Tuesday evening's price. Burning means the coin is permanently removed from circulation, not transferred to a treasury.

The fee applies even when the report turns out to be invalid, already known or outside the scope of the programme. A report without a burn is not considered for a reward at all. Firedancer is the second validator client for Solana, written at Jump Crypto. The resilience of the entire network hangs on whether a second client runs reliably.

809 reports, 127 findings: the arithmetic behind the fee

The occasion is an audit competition with $1 million in prize money. It drew 809 reports from 162 researchers, which in the end produced 127 independent security findings. Jump assumes that nearly all submissions were produced with the help of language models.

Set against the fee are markedly higher rewards. Until November 20 the programme pays double the usual rate for recognised findings, triple for vulnerabilities related to Alpenglow, and up to $300,000 for critical findings. November 20 is therefore the next deadline on the project's calendar, and it touches the price only indirectly while touching the security of the network directly.

Solana at $100.79 between two moving averages

Two lines are decisive for the price this Tuesday. According to FXStreet's calculations, the 50-day line stood at $105.99 on Monday and the 200-day line at $98.27. SOL sits between them at $100.79, closer to the lower line.

As long as the price stays above $98.27, the longer-term upward reading holds. The analysts at FXStreet place further support zones below that at $98.17 to $98.80 and at $95.55 to $96.26. Coin-Turk passes on a warning that a lasting break of the $100 level could open room down to the region around $80, roughly 20 percent lower. That is someone else's expectation, not this newsroom's calculation.

On the upside the first hurdle sits at the daily high of $101.22, the second at the 50-day line of $105.99. Between those two values lie 4.7 percent, and without fresh capital that stretch is hard to cover.

The third week of outflows from the SOL funds

Precisely that capital is missing at the moment. The exchange-traded Solana funds recorded their third consecutive week of outflows last week, $17.30 million by one count. For October as a whole the figures diverge: one tally arrives at $72.24 million, Decrypt at around $68 million, and our own analysis of October 24 counted $30.3 million across five trading days. The spread is explained by different data providers and cut-off dates.

Then there is the futures market. Open interest in Solana futures fell to $6.18 billion, from $6.34 billion the week before. Fewer open positions mean less leveraged demand, and they take some momentum out of the price in both directions.

On Wednesday the US Federal Reserve decides on rates. For Solana this date counts above all by a detour: if the decision comes out as expected, the liquidity that altcoins lacked in October stays scarce for now.

What has changed since Monday

Our analysis of Monday on the Solana price prediction theme stood at a price of $100.89, with a daily low of $99.82 and a daily high of $102.48. On Tuesday evening the price stands at $100.79, ten cents lower.

What has moved is the range. The daily low of $99.00 is 82 cents lower than on Monday, the daily high of $101.22 is $1.26 lower. The range of a trading day thus shrank from $2.66 to $2.22. Ahead of a rate decision that is a familiar pattern: the market waits instead of taking positions.

Unchanged is Monday's reading on the capital locked in Solana applications, and the staking yield still stands at 4.96 percent against inflation of 3.5841 percent. The only new element is the counting question, and it affects none of the figures from Monday's article, because the basis there was trading turnover and not the transaction count.

Staking, holding period and tax for investors in Germany

For a tax return the network's way of counting is irrelevant; the holding period is not. On private sales of crypto assets a gain stays tax free after a holding period of one year, and within the year income tax applies at the personal rate. Where the planned reform of this rule currently stands is tracked in our piece on the status of the holding period reform.

With staking a second layer is added. The ongoing rewards count as other income and are taxable in the year they accrue, once the exemption threshold is passed. Sell the SOL received that way later and a separate holding period begins for those units on the day they accrued. Draw rewards across several epochs and you therefore hold many small deadlines in your portfolio rather than one.

In practice that means checking, for your own staking, which route you run it through and what share of the reward stays with the provider. Between delegating to a validator yourself and taking an exchange's offer there are often several tenths of a percentage point in net yield. Every accrual also belongs on record with its date and price, and that work is handled by the tools in our comparison of tax tools and portfolio trackers. The guide for delegating yourself is in the article on Solana staking.

Our editorial assessment of the situation at Solana

Our assessment: the change in counting is no issue for the price, but it is one for judging the network. Three pieces of evidence support that. First, throughput of genuine user traffic remains high and unchanged at 3,165 transactions per second. Second, the measured slot time of 213 milliseconds is roughly half what it was before the upgrade. Third, finality at 404 milliseconds on October 23 sits well above the target of 150 milliseconds, so the mechanism is not yet where it is meant to be.

Against that stands the capital side. Three weeks of fund outflows and falling open interest on the futures market are no basis for a breakout above $105.99, and Wednesday's rate decision can move the situation in both directions. The technical improvement works on a horizon of months, the capital flows work on days. Mix the two time horizons and you read a signal out of the new statistics that is not in them.

Solana metrics: comparable only from October 21 onwards

Three steps for the rest of the week:

1. Reset your own data series. If you track transaction counts or throughput values, set the comparison period to October 21 or filter for non-vote transactions on both sides. Alarms that react to small blocks belong on reset. Which tools keep such series cleanly is shown by the comparison of analytics platforms.
2. Do the sums on the staking yield. At a yield of 4.96 percent against inflation of 3.5841 percent the difference stays thin, and the share a provider keeps decides what is left. The terms are set out in the comparison of staking providers.
3. Note the levels and check the route to buying. On the downside $98.27 counts, on the upside $105.99. Trade around those levels and you first need a licensed venue with suitable fees, which the comparison of crypto exchanges lists.

The evidence on the counting change is in the Alpenglow documentation of the Solana project, and the new fee rule for bug reports is described by CoinDesk.

(As of October 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Stocks on China's mainland have shed about $2.4 trillion since May as investors doubt AI companies can turn a profit, while U.S. restrictions and high U.S. interest rates add pressure.

Robinhood posted record revenue of $1.42 billion but earned $0.51 per share, short of the $0.55 expected, as bets on sports and elections grew to $173 million and crypto edged up.

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin is live on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, and heads to the Robinhood app later this year as the companies deepen ties in treasury and institutional trading.

An expanded deal with Bitso puts Anchorage Digital Bank’s custody beneath both sides of the US-Mexico remittance route.

Akamai launched a locked box for AI agents on Tuesday. It joins Palo Alto, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Okta and Zscaler in selling protection for software that now acts on its own.

Shares of Bitcoin treasury company Datavault AI (DVLT) have crashed nearly 50% after the company revealed that it has been unable to withdraw its Bitcoin from cryptocurrency exchange Biconomy for approximately four months.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has celebrated a historic milestone as the company's flagship Swell conference marks its 10th anniversary.

Bulls and bears remain locked in a standoff across the majors, with volume fading and momentum near neutral.

Bitcoin has recorded a massive $1 billion exchange exodus, with roughly 12,570 BTC leaving trading platforms on a net basis in one of the largest daily outflows this month, fueling speculation about a potential supply shock.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse appeared alongside U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at Swell 2026 in New York.

Panda Bundler, PandaBoost’s web-based token launch and trading application, brings together Pump.fun on Solana, Pons on Robinhood Chain and Uniswap on Ethereum. Teams can prepare launches, configure wallets and manage post-launch operations from one workspace, with features and funding requirements varying by venue. The first launch carries 0% Panda Bundler platform fees when activated through support before starting. The standard platform fee is 5% on sells; higher-volume users can agree a reduced rate with support.

Multi-chain, not cross-chain

The documentation describes this as multi-chain support. It is explicitly not a cross-chain bridge and not a guarantee of simultaneous execution across networks. Features, launch modes, wallet limits and funding routes vary by venue.

The differences are operational. SOL reserves, account rent and Jito tips are Solana-specific, not universal EVM requirements. An operator who carries a Solana checklist onto Robinhood Chain or Ethereum will budget for the wrong things.

Access by invite key only

Authentication is invite-key only. There is no email, username and password, Telegram-bot login or WalletConnect. The operator pastes a key into the Invite code field in the web app. The key identifies the Bundler account and grants access to its launches and managed wallets. Access is requested through PandaBoost support.

The docs treat the key as a private credential. It should never appear in a screenshot, an open chat, a repository or a shared document. Support will never need a seed phrase or private key.

One scope note: PandaBoost’s service-ordering API does not cover Panda Bundler. The Bundler is web-only.

Launch settings

In the draft workspace, Block-0 Mode prepares the configured creation and initial-buy transactions as a coordinated launch sequence. The documentation qualifies it immediately: it is an execution setting, not a guarantee. Network conditions, launchpad behaviour, bundle inclusion, third-party trading and transaction failures can all change the result.

Other settings cover the total token-buy target, developer allocation and preset or custom allocation patterns. On Solana only, there are also Jito-tip and pacing controls. Higher tips do not guarantee inclusion or execution, and the funding requirement must be rechecked after any change to tip, delay or wallet count.

Wallets and holder distribution

A launch configuration can contain up to 200 holder wallets. The live product view is the source of truth for the allowed count and role combinations. Wallets can be:

• generated in the workspace
• imported from existing addresses
• added as empty holders with no initial allocation
• assigned operational roles: developer, MEV, worker, funding and others shown by the current mode

Allocation runs through a Token Buy % per wallet. The interface shows total allocated percentage, required network asset per wallet, role labels, generated-versus-imported status, and whether a wallet is already assigned elsewhere.

On the holder map, the documentation is plain. Allocation affects holder distribution but cannot guarantee a clean graph or hide on-chain relationships. Funding paths, transfers, timing, token accounts and later trades remain public, and third-party analytics can group them differently. “Clean Bubblemaps” is described as a configuration goal, not a concealment guarantee. PandaBoost cannot guarantee how Bubblemaps or other analytics group a launch.

Sniper Guard and automation

Sniper Guard monitors external buys and runs a configured response when the accumulated external amount crosses a threshold. Its controls are:

• an enable toggle
• Max External SOL as the threshold
• Trigger Mode, with Stop Buying or Sell Everything responses
• a whitelist of excluded addresses
• an optional duration

It is conditional automation. It does not prevent third-party transactions, guarantee an exit price or inclusion, or eliminate launch risk. Automated sells can create price impact and incur the 5% sell fee.

Auto Trade Strategies run Auto Buy and Auto Sell across selected launch wallets. There are three types:

• Replication strategies respond to a qualifying tracked trade or wallet event.
• Time-based strategies act after a delay or at repeated intervals.
• Market-cap strategies trigger at configured levels.

Several can be stacked in one plan, each with its own wallet scope, amount, trigger and end conditions. Automation can submit trades without another confirmation. It does not guarantee execution, fill price, timing, profit or protection from market movement.

Activity Generation runs configured buy-and-sell cycles across selected managed wallets. Each run is set by volume per trade, loop count, delay between cycles, funding option and sell-after-buy behaviour. A summary estimates required SOL, transaction count and duration, and those estimates shift with network conditions and failures. The documented limit: it creates public transactions and market activity. It does not make wallets unrelated, conceal control, guarantee how analytics classify them or guarantee a financial result.

Fees

The first launch carries 0% Panda Bundler platform fees. Contact support before starting to activate the first-launch offer. Network, gas, launchpad and DEX fees remain separate.

The standard Panda Bundler platform fee is 5% on sells, with no buy fee, subscription fee or launch-creation platform fee. For higher-volume activity, users can contact support to agree a reduced sell-fee rate. This is arranged individually, not an automatic discount or a published fixed tier. Confirm your rate and check the fee shown in the app before submitting.

External costs are unaffected by the first-launch offer. These include network and gas fees, priority fees, launchpad or DEX trading fees, exchange withdrawal fees and account-creation costs. Solana launches also carry SOL reserves, account rent and Jito tips.

Who it is for

Panda Bundler is an operator tool. It brings the following into one surface for teams that would otherwise coordinate them across separate tools:

• token setup, wallet allocation and funding
• launch execution
• post-launch trading through a chart, trade panel, wallet scopes and task feed
• automation and withdrawals
• wallet management, batch creation and cleanup

The value is coordination.

It does not offer, and its documentation does not claim, an undetectable launch, a sniper-free launch, a guaranteed block position, a particular chart shape or any financial outcome. Public-chain activity stays public.

The venue-specific detail is where decisions get made. PandaBoost’s Pons bundler guide for Robinhood Chain covers how that workflow differs from Solana.

The post Panda Bundler on Solana, Ethereum and Robinhood Chain: Venues, Fees and How to Start appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Chainlink is integrating HKGX-backed XGZ with CCIP through GoldZip and Midas Labs, aiming to enable cross-chain transfers for the gold-backed token.
• Further Asset Management, backed by ADQ, selected Chainlink ACE to enforce compliance rules on a tokenized asset platform starting in Abu Dhabi Global Market.
• LINK is testing 9–11 support, where CryptoTanx sees a potential double bottom; the pattern still needs a daily close above the 200-day EMA.
• CryptoTanx outlined 15–20 as conditional LINK targets if support holds and price clears the 200-day EMA, with volume helping confirm buyer demand.

Chainlink is adding institutional uses to its real-world asset infrastructure through tokenized gold and compliance tools. The Hong Kong Gold Exchange plans to bring its gold-backed XGZ token to CCIP. The integration involves GoldZip and Midas Labs and aims to enable cross-chain transfers. Further Asset Management adopted Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine for its tokenized asset platform in Abu Dhabi Global Market. 

The LINK price is testing the $9 to $11 support zone, where analyst CryptoTanx sees a possible double bottom. A daily close above the 200-day EMA could strengthen that setup. Potential targets span $15 to $20 if buying activity returns.

Chainlink Adds Gold Token and Compliance Tools to RWA Network

Chainlink identified HKGX as the world’s fourth-largest gold venue by volume. The exchange is now bringing gold-backed XGZ to CCIP. GoldZip and Midas Labs are involved in the integration. XGZ is backed by HKGX and represents gold through a blockchain token. The announcement extends Chainlink’s role in connecting traditional markets with blockchains. It also brings a commodity-backed asset to its cross-chain infrastructure.

CCIP is designed to transfer tokens and messages between supported blockchains. Integrating XGZ could allow users to move the gold-backed token across networks, broadening where it can be accessed or used. The announcement did not name supported chains, provide a launch schedule, or report live transfers. Those details will determine whether the integration has begun operating at scale or remains in development on supported networks.

Tokenized gold gives holders digital exposure to an asset linked to physical reserves. Moving such tokens between networks may make them more accessible to decentralized finance applications and other blockchain services. CCIP provides interoperability, while HKGX supplies the gold backing. The partnership therefore combines asset issuance and cross-chain infrastructure. However, the companies have not disclosed expected supply, custody arrangements, or transaction volumes for XGZ.

A separate adoption adds compliance tooling for institutional tokenization. ADQ-backed Further Asset Management selected Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine for a tokenized asset platform. ADQ is Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. ACE will enforce compliance rules within the platform, with initial adoption in Abu Dhabi Global Market. The announcement places the software inside an asset manager’s tokenization process, rather than focusing only on asset transfers between networks.

The gold-token and compliance integrations serve different functions. CCIP addresses interoperability, while ACE applies rules to tokenized assets. Together, they illustrate how Chainlink is pursuing infrastructure roles across the asset lifecycle. Still, new integrations do not automatically create immediate demand for LINK. Usage, transaction activity, and the way each product connects with the LINK token will shape any longer-term effect.

LINK Price Tests Support as Double Bottom Remains Unconfirmed

LINK was testing the $9 to $11 support zone as CryptoTanx monitored the daily 200-day exponential moving average. The analyst identified a potential double bottom, a chart pattern formed when price tests a similar low twice before recovering. The pattern remains unconfirmed. CryptoTanx is watching for a daily close above the average to confirm the potential double bottom. Failure to hold support could weaken the setup.

CryptoTanx outlined $15 to $20 as possible targets if LINK holds the support area and clears the 200-day EMA. Those levels represent a conditional technical scenario, not a guaranteed outcome. A sustained move above the average would strengthen evidence of a reversal. Trading volume could help show whether buyers are supporting the advance. CryptoTanx did not specify a breakout date or volume threshold.

For now, the key levels remain $9 to $11 support and the daily 200-day EMA. A close above the average could improve the double-bottom case, while a breakdown below support would invalidate it. The integrations add context to the broader infrastructure story. LINK’s near-term direction still depends on price confirmation and broader trading conditions.

The post Chainlink Expands RWA Tools as LINK Price Tests Key Support Zone appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• BNY now supports XRP and RLUSD on its Digital Asset Custody platform for institutional clients.
• BNY intends to let its clients mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank with Ripple. 
• Ripple and BNY are exploring a supply chain finance initiative with C2FO on the XRP Ledger. 
• RLUSD market cap is near $2.5 billion, and XRPL has processed over 4.6 billion transactions. 

BNY Ripple ties have grown deeper after the bank added XRP and RLUSD to its Digital Asset Custody platform. The companies announced the expansion on October 27, 2026.

They also plan to explore tokenized trade finance on the XRP Ledger. The update builds on BNY’s existing role as primary reserve custodian for Ripple’s stablecoin.

Institutional clients can now safekeep, hold, and transfer both assets within the bank’s existing servicing model.

BNY Ripple Collaboration Adds XRP Custody

BNY announced the update in a post on X. The BNY Ripple collaboration now covers XRP within digital asset custody. The post also pointed to new institutional use cases, including tokenized trade finance. Ripple confirmed the details in a separate press release.

BNY already serves as primary reserve custodian for RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin. It also holds a custody relationship with Ripple Prime. With this step, BNY now supports XRP and RLUSD on its Digital Asset Custody platform.

Carolyn Weinberg, BNY’s Chief Innovation and Market Transformation Officer, commented on the goal. She said the collaboration aims to shape “a more continuous, efficient and resilient financial system.”

Future infrastructure, she said, will rely on “architected bridges between traditional scaled systems and always-on blockchain technology.”

BNY also plans to broaden support for tokenized assets on the XRPL. It will work with Ripple to let clients mint and redeem RLUSD directly.

Ripple President Monica Long said the industry is moving past the initial issuance of assets onchain. In her words, “it’s all about making these tokenized assets usable for payments and collateral across financial markets.” She said the work with BNY connects key components of financial infrastructure on the XRP Ledger.

Tokenized Trade Finance Plans on the XRP Ledger

The BNY Ripple partnership also aims to advance tokenized trade finance on the XRPL, subject to client requirements.

Tokenized trade finance uses blockchain technology to digitally represent existing assets, such as receivables. The aim is to broaden investor access and simplify how those assets are managed and distributed.

As a first step, the two firms are exploring a supply chain finance initiative with C2FO. C2FO is a global platform for working capital. The effort focuses on expanding investor access to the asset class.

C2FO’s Ragui Selwanes said the company has spent years giving businesses more control over working capital. He said the next opportunity is making its financial infrastructure “as efficient and connected” as the customer experience.

He added that XRPL could “broaden access to capital while preserving the relationships and experience our customers already trust.”

RLUSD has grown to about $2.5 billion in market capitalization. It is designed for institutional use and supports payments, trading, and tokenized finance.

The XRPL has processed more than 4.6 billion transactions since launch. Settlement on the ledger takes roughly three to five seconds.

The post BNY Expands Ripple Collaboration to Include XRP Custody and Tokenized Trade Finance appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• RLUSD is going live on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, while a listing on Robinhood’s main trading app is expected later this year.
• Robinhood will use Ripple Treasury for internal cash operations and Ripple Prime for financing, while Bitstamp accesses RLUSD settlement for institutions.
• Ripple says RLUSD market capitalization has exceeded $2.5 billion, but USDT and USDC lead a stablecoin market valued above $300 billion.
• XRP traded near $1.31 with four-hour RSI above 55, while bearish Supertrend near $1.33 and $1.35 trendline resistance capped momentum.

Ripple and Robinhood agreed Tuesday to expand RLUSD across institutional settlement, treasury and financing operations. The partnership connects RLUSD with Robinhood’s brokerage and Bitstamp exchange. RLUSD is launching on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, while Robinhood app access is expected later this year. 

Ripple says RLUSD’s market capitalization has passed $2.5 billion, around 22 months after its December 2024 launch. XRP traded near $1.31, little changed over 24 hours. Technical indicators showed improving momentum but resistance remained overhead. The partnership adds institutional utility as stablecoin competition intensifies across payments and capital markets. No volume or exact app launch date was announced.

How RLUSD Will Support Robinhood and Bitstamp Settlement

Robinhood Crypto chief Johann Kerbrat said Robinhood and Bitstamp will gain access to RLUSD for institutional settlement. Ripple Treasury will support Robinhood’s internal operations, while Ripple Prime will provide financing. The deal brings payment, cash-management and institutional trading services together. Kerbrat called it an example of a connected global financial system, with stablecoin utility at its center.

The settlement component will use RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for institutional trades through Bitstamp. The token is also launching on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp. Its listing on Robinhood’s main app is expected later this year, separating blockchain availability from retail trading access. The announcement did not give a specific date for app availability or disclose expected settlement volumes.

Ripple Prime offers institutional trading, clearing and financing. It already provides Bitstamp with lending and margin financing across about 20 digital assets, plus spot trading access. Prime is expected to add perpetual futures on Bitstamp later this year. Ripple bought the business, then called Hidden Road, for $1.25 billion in a deal announced in April 2025. Robinhood completed its roughly $200 million Bitstamp purchase in June 2025.

Ripple Treasury manages company cash, payments, forecasts and risk. Its tools include intercompany netting, which offsets amounts owed between divisions and can reduce transfers. 

The agreement extends these services to Robinhood’s global treasury operations. The companies have not said when each feature will become operational. Robinhood has separately described its goal of building a global financial super-app for retail and institutional clients.

RLUSD Growth and XRP Technical Levels After the Deal

Ripple launched RLUSD in December 2024 and says its market capitalization now exceeds $2.5 billion. The broader stablecoin market tops $300 billion, led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. Dollar-pegged tokens can move on blockchains around the clock. Financial firms use them for payments, trading, settlement and cash management, making institutional distribution an increasingly important growth channel.

Circle is pursuing a similar institutional payments strategy. Its Circle Payments Network connects financial institutions and payment providers for cross-border transfers using USDC and other digital assets. Ripple Payments, an eight-year-old business, also moves money across borders and supports USDC, XRP and RLUSD. The Robinhood deal gives Ripple another institutional partner as stablecoin companies compete to provide financial infrastructure beyond crypto trading.

XRP traded near $1.31, roughly flat over 24 hours. Its four-hour relative strength index climbed above 55, signaling improving momentum. The Supertrend indicator remained bearish near $1.33, with descending trendline resistance around $1.35. A break above that area would put $1.38 to $1.40 in view. The technical analysis identified $1.28 as rising support for XRP.

The agreement connects institutional settlement with the XRP Ledger, but it centers on RLUSD rather than XRP purchases. Ripple and Robinhood disclosed no expected payment volumes, so the announcement alone does not quantify possible XRP demand. Robinhood app access is also still expected later this year. The immediate expansion covers institutional settlement through Bitstamp, Ripple Treasury for internal operations and Ripple Prime financing. Institutional clients account for most of Bitstamp’s trading volume, giving RLUSD an established market to serve from launch.

The post Ripple and Robinhood Expand RLUSD for Institutional Settlement appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• STX stock climbs 3.67% to $667.85, then slides 6.02% in after-hours trading.
• Seagate revenue jumps 61% to $4.23B as demand for mass-capacity storage grows.
• GAAP net income surges to $1.76B, while quarterly earnings reach $7.59 a share.
• Seagate generates $1.5B in free cash flow and cuts gross debt to just $1.6B.
• Seagate raises its quarterly dividend 3% to $0.76 after strong cash generation.

Seagate Technology (STX) reported strong fiscal first-quarter 2027 earnings, with revenue reaching $4.2 billion and profits rising sharply. The stock gained 3.67% to $667.85 during regular trading, adding $23.64 before reversing course after the closing bell. However, shares dropped 6.02% to $627.64 in after-hours trading despite the company’s stronger financial performance.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, STX

Seagate Technology Revenue Jumps 61% as Profit Margins Expand

Seagate reported revenue of $4.23 billion for the quarter ended October 2, 2026, compared with $2.63 billion last year. This represented approximately 61% annual growth, supported by stronger demand for mass-capacity data storage. Meanwhile, rising storage requirements across cloud infrastructure and data-intensive applications supported the company’s business outlook.

GAAP gross margin climbed to 57.3%, compared with 39.4% during the same quarter last year. Additionally, non-GAAP gross margin reached 57.8%, up from 40.1% a year earlier. These improvements reflected stronger profitability as Seagate expanded revenue and maintained its pricing strategy.

Operating margins also improved significantly, highlighting the company’s ability to convert higher sales into earnings. GAAP operating margin reached 48.8%, compared with 26.4% in the previous year’s quarter. Similarly, non-GAAP operating margin increased to 50.7% from 29.0%, reflecting substantial gains in operating efficiency.

Seagate Earnings Surge as Net Income Exceeds $1.7 Billion

Seagate reported GAAP net income of $1.76 billion, compared with $549 million in fiscal first-quarter 2026. Consequently, diluted GAAP earnings per share increased to $7.59 from $2.43 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per share also climbed to $7.68, compared with $2.61 in the previous year.

Meanwhile, non-GAAP net income reached $1.78 billion, compared with $583 million during the comparable quarter. The company attributed its profitability gains to stronger storage demand, disciplined supply management, and value-based pricing. Furthermore, Seagate continues developing heat-assisted magnetic recording technology to increase storage capacity and address growing customer requirements.

Seagate also generated $1.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, supporting its financial position. Free cash flow reached $1.5 billion, marking the company’s highest quarterly level for the September period. These results strengthened Seagate’s capacity to reduce debt, fund operations, and distribute capital to shareholders.

Seagate Reduces Debt and Raises Quarterly Dividend

Seagate retired approximately $1.2 billion in principal debt during the quarter, reducing gross debt to $2.4 billion. Subsequently, the company retired another $750 million, bringing gross debt down to approximately $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, cash and cash equivalents totaled $1.3 billion at the quarter’s end.

The company also returned $568 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the reporting period. Additionally, its board increased the quarterly cash dividend by approximately 3% to $0.76 per share. Seagate will distribute the dividend on January 7, 2027, to shareholders holding shares on December 23, 2026.

Seagate’s financial results reflect rising demand for high-capacity storage and continued improvements in profitability. Its HAMR technology roadmap supports higher storage density as customers expand their data storage requirements. However, the after-hours stock decline contrasted with the company’s earnings growth and stronger balance sheet.

The post Seagate Technology (STX) Stock: Surges as $4.2B Revenue and Strong Profits Lift Q1 Earnings appeared first on Blockonomi.

XRP is rebounding toward $1.32 after defending the $1.26 support for the second time in October. The asset now pushes toward a short-term descending channel’s upper boundary and the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement. A breakout from this area could shift the short-term structure, while another rejection would keep sellers in control.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

On the daily chart, XRP is correcting the August rally from $0.99 to the $1.70 high. The decline has carried the price below the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement at $1.34, which now acts as resistance. The failed attempt to break back above $1.40 on October 21 reinforced the bearish short-term structure.

The key support is $1.26, where the 0.618 retracement overlaps with a prior demand zone. Two lower wicks into this area suggest buyers are responding, but the rebounds have remained modest. For now, the level continues to hold, yet the market has not confirmed a reversal.

On the upside, a reclaim of $1.34 would be the first sign of improvement, opening the way toward the $1.40 supply zone. Beyond that, the $1.50 region marks the origin of the last major breakdown and the next significant overhead barrier.

Conversely, if $1.26 breaks on a decisive daily close, XRP could slide toward the 0.702 retracement at $1.20. Below that, $1.14 stands out as the 0.786 retracement and the top of the demand block that launched the August rally.

The 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows XRP trading inside a descending channel since the late-September high near $1.65, with consistent lower highs. The upper boundary rejected the price near $1.40 on October 21, triggering a sharp decline back toward the $1.26 demand zone. That reaction confirmed the trendline as dynamic resistance.

Buyers have since defended the $1.26 area twice, producing a series of slightly higher lows. XRP is now climbing toward the channel’s upper boundary around $1.34, which overlaps with the daily 0.5 retracement. This confluence makes the next few candles important for the short-term direction.

A decisive breakout above the trendline could trigger a relief rally toward the $1.40 supply zone. Clearing it would weaken the bearish channel and bring $1.50 back into focus. Failing that, a rejection near $1.34 would likely send the price back to retest support.

A 4-hour close below $1.26, together with a loss of the channel’s lower boundary near $1.23, would suggest buyers are losing control. In that scenario, the $1.20 level would likely be the next downside target. The channel therefore remains the dominant pattern. Until XRP breaks above its upper boundary, rebounds toward $1.34 are more likely to face selling pressure than to confirm a trend reversal.

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP Must Reclaim This Key Level to Restart the Rally appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Some customer personal data at South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange, Bithumb, was reportedly leaked on October 28 after an external unauthorized party accessed one of its internal workplace tools.

This is the latest in a string of similar incidents that have cut across crypto companies and traditional financial firms.

What Bithumb and Korean Regulators Have Confirmed

According to the Yonhap News Agency, the exchange detected abnormal access by an outsider without authority on October 27, inside its in-house mobile groupware system.

While the exchange is said to still be working out the exact scope of the breach, another firm, Daishin Securities, which was also hit, reported that information on more than 38,000 of its customers, including names, emails, and phone numbers, was leaked.

Mirae Asset Global Investment was also a victim, and Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is said to be investigating all three incidents and has already sent an on-site team to Daishin. At a meeting with the chairmen of eight bank holding companies, FSS Director Lee Chan-jin pressed the financial sector on IT security, saying:

“As artificial intelligence is used as a means of hacking, security vulnerabilities will be easily detected and simultaneous attacks will become a regular occurrence.”

He added that boards must now take the lead in improving the security capabilities of their companies.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) also reacted to the news, telling his 12.9 million followers on X that while they may not be able to prevent leaks, they could take measures to protect themselves, including reducing the information they share and locking down their accounts. Leaked exchange data, he pointed out, mostly feeds phishing and SIM-swapping attacks, and he recommended using a unique email alias for each exchange and hardware keys or passkeys instead of SMS codes.

“Assume anyone who contacts you about your account, ‘security issues,’ or ‘refund recovery’ is a scammer, even if they know your name, balance, or recent trades,” CZ cautioned.

Customer Data Breaches on the Rise

The Bithumb case has come right in the middle of other security disclosures involving crypto businesses, with hardware wallet maker Foundation saying yesterday that its customers had been hit with more than 23,000 phishing emails sent from its official domain after hackers compromised its API keys on Cloudflare.

Recall that in August, a Trezor provider named ShipMonk had the names, locations, and emails of more than 67,000 users stolen, while more recently, Keystone Wallet, another major provider, reported that unauthorized people accessed its official website and stole the shipping information of its customers, although they did not compromise wallet passwords and private keys.

There was also an incident today involving Amplitude, a Coinbase vendor, where a subset of the exchange’s users reportedly had their contact details exposed, with SlowMist claiming that the hacker had gotten the details of more than 70,000 customers. However, Coinbase support rejected the breach label, stating that it had not seen any evidence of unauthorized people accessing its systems. It also told users that their funds were unaffected.

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The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange will briefly suspend some important services on the Ethereum (ETH) network this week.

It will also remove several trading pairs that no longer meet the required standards. Here’s everything users should know.

The Upcoming Disruption

Binance will perform wallet maintenance on the ETH network on October 28, and deposits and withdrawals on that blockchain will be temporarily unavailable during the process. The effort is scheduled to take about one hour, after which operations will resume.

As usual, the company assured that token trading on the network will not be affected and promised to handle all user-related technical requirements.

“Deposits and withdrawals for token(s) on the aforementioned network will be reopened once the upgraded network is deemed to be stable. No further announcement will be posted,” the announcement reads.

Binance has performed many similar wallet maintenance events this year, with no reports of issues or user complaints. In August, it temporarily paused transfers on the Ethereum network, while prior to that, it briefly suspended TRX deposits and withdrawals.

Goodbye to These Pairs

Besides the update regarding the Ethereum network, Binance revealed that it will delist the following spot trading pairs: AAVE/BTC, ATOM/BTC, CAKE/BTC, DASH/BTC, ETC/BTC, ICP/BTC, PENDLE/BTC, RENDER/BTC, TAO/BTC, THETA/BTC, XAUT/BTC and XTZ/BTC on October 30.

The decision follows a rigorous check of all listed pairs on the platform, as the exchange regularly checks whether they meet certain standards such as adequate liquidity and trading volume.

“The delisting of a spot trading pair does not affect the availability of the tokens on Binance Spot. Users can still trade the spot trading pair’s base and quote assets on other trading pair(s) that are available on Binance,” the entity explained.

In addition, Binance will say goodbye to ten margin trading pairs on the same date. Those in question include RE/USD1, 币安人生/U, KAT/U, BTC/USDS, ETH/USDS, AVNT/U, FET/U, TRUMP/U, APT/U, WLFI/U.

The announced delistings haven’t triggered major price moves for the involved cryptocurrencies. This is hardly surprising, as stronger market reactions typically occur when Binance discontinues all services for a given digital asset.

That was the case earlier this month, when the exchange removed Epic Chain (EPIC) and QuickSwap (QUICK), triggering severe crashes in both.

The post Binance Alerts Users: Ethereum Deposits Paused and Major Delistings Ahead appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP whales have held the largest share of the token’s supply since November 2022. Wallets holding at least 10 million XRP now control 46.87 billion tokens, or around 68.5% of the total supply.

The increase comes as the price struggles near $1.3. According to Santiment, this shows that large holders continue to accumulate despite the current weakness.

Accumulation Grows

The latest trend suggests major investors are maintaining their exposure while smaller traders may be losing confidence. But Santiment explained that the crypto asset still needs to clear important levels before a stronger recovery can take shape. The $1.3 mark remains a crucial level, while $1.5 could offer stronger confirmation of bullish momentum. Holding above $1.2, alongside continued whale accumulation, would support the outlook.

Further gains in whale holdings could strengthen the recovery case.

Meanwhile, XRP exchange outflows reached around 5.3 billion tokens over a 30-day period. The figure remains below the 6 billion XRP recorded in October. With approximately 2.206 billion tokens leaving, Binance accounted for the largest share. Next up was OKX with 501.51 million, followed by Bybit, which recorded 479.94 million in outflows. Upbit saw around 392.90 million XRP leave its platform, followed by Bitget at 243.39 million.

The outflows declined during the first half of August before picking up later that month. Higher levels continued through September and October, in a recovery from the quieter summer period. These movements may mean more XRP is moving into private wallets or other platforms. That could reduce the tokens readily available for sale on exchanges.

Additionally, the TD Sequential indicator has flashed a buy signal on the three-day chart. The last three similar signals were followed by rebounds of 31%, 24%, and 18%.

On the ETF front, however, US-listed spot XRP funds started the week with $3.61 million in outflows, reversing course after ending the previous week in positive territory.

The Bigger Picture

On the corporate investment side of things, Evernorth Holdings is looking to raise up to $80.7 million through an equity facility with Cantor Fitzgerald. It plans to use part of the proceeds to buy more XRP, while also funding its operations and developing products across the XRP ecosystem.

The move comes as the company builds on its recently launched Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN. Evernorth already holds around 473 million XRP in its treasury and aims to generate returns through institutional strategies. It has also partnered with Ripple, Kraken, Coinbase, and BitGo to support those plans.

Additionally, Ripple is expanding its corporate treasury platform with AI-powered automation and round-the-clock payment services. Its new 24/7 Returns feature could allow eligible businesses to earn returns on qualifying digital assets, including RLUSD, beyond traditional banking hours.

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South Korea is likely to postpone its crypto income tax for a fourth time, as Newsis reported on October 26, after an official from the presidential office, also known as the Blue House, confirmed that a delay is under discussion.

January 2029, when the United States is due to join the OECD’s crypto information-sharing network, is the most probable new start date.

Blue House Points to Missing US Data

“Taxation of virtual assets is being discussed with a view to delaying implementation,” a Blue House official stated on October 25.

Lawmakers and the government are expected to amend the Income Tax Act during the tax law reform debate that begins in November, with consultations with relevant organizations starting as early as October 26. A government official said the final call will probably come between late November and early December.

At the center of the case sits the United States. Almost half of the virtual asset market is there, the official pointed out, and “the biggest obstacle is that the United States does not provide us with taxation information.” Without that data, tax officers would have to trace American exchange activity one account at a time, and the tax could end up falling mostly on users of domestic exchanges.

The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) starts running next year, with 46 countries including South Korea beginning data exchanges. Canada, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore are among 29 countries that join in 2028, with Washington’s first exchange set for 2029.

Seoul initially favored a January 2027 start, arguing that overseas financial account reporting could help collect foreign tax information, but calls for a moratorium from both the opposition and the ruling party, along with related bills, shifted the government toward suspension.

Petitions and Earlier Resistance

Introduced in 2020 through an Income Tax Act revision, the levy takes 22% (local taxes included) of gains above 2.5 million won, about $1,886, once acquisition costs are deducted. But the Korean parliament has already suspended it three times.

Public pressure is building too. A petition seeking a two-year postponement reached the 50,000-signature threshold on the National Assembly’s electronic petition system, which sends such petitions to a standing committee for review. An anonymous petitioner wrote that “most crypto investors are sitting on heavy losses” and that taxing now is unfair to young people.

The petition also argued that the tax would push investors to offshore platforms, though as CryptoPotato reported, regulators ordered blocks on 27 overseas exchanges on October 13, KuCoin and MEXC among them. A May petition to abolish the tax reached 50,000 signatures in eight days but went no further after referral to a committee.

The proposed 2029 date is similar to that suggested in a bill introduced by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Min-gyu, which is seeking to postpone taxation until January 1 of that year. Still, the government hasn’t finalized its decision, and the timetable is still subject to parliamentary debate.

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