Penguin's focus on AI memory solutions highlights the critical role of efficient data handling in advancing AI capabilities and infrastructure growth.

The post Penguin Solutions targets AI memory bottlenecks with new hardware appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The shift to open-weight models in enterprise workflows by 2030 could significantly reduce costs and increase control over AI processes.

The post Gartner predicts open-weight models will run 90% of enterprise agent workflow steps by 2030 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Solana's transaction surge highlights scalability but raises questions on genuine user growth versus automated trading activity.

The post Solana records 3.3B successful transactions in October appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Hyperliquid's revenue success without venture funding highlights the potential of decentralized finance, but regulatory challenges loom.

The post Hyperliquid generates $713M in revenue over past year appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Samsung's Texas expansion enhances US tech sovereignty, challenges TSMC's dominance, and strengthens AI supply chains with strategic partnerships.

The post Samsung to produce AMD and Nvidia chip parts at second Texas plant appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Nvidia, Nike Join 50 Companies Blocking OKX–ICE Stock Token Push

Fifty public companies have now objected to having their shares tokenized on OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), as the venue’s first 30-day notice window closes Tuesday.

The venue’s Oct. 30 notice added 12 objectors, including Nvidia, Costco, Nike, Micron and Reddit. They join Microsoft, Alphabet, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Broadcom, Verizon and Intel, among others. Of the 62 companies OKXICE initially proposed to tokenize, 43, or about 69%, have objected, according to a CoinDesk tally.

The list has grown fast: nine objectors on Oct. 15, 16 on Oct. 19, 38 on Oct. 28 and 50 two days later.

How the opt-out works

The objections stem from the SEC’s five-year “Innovation Exemption,” issued Sept. 17, which lets tokenized securities venues (TSVs) trade blockchain versions of U.S. stocks through automated market makers without registering as exchanges. When an unaffiliated third party tokenizes a company’s stock, the venue must notify the issuer, which then has 30 days to object in writing. Silence counts as consent, and the order offers no way to object after the window closes.

OKXICE plans 24/7 trading of tokens backed one-for-one by shares, paired against stablecoins such as USDC in permissioned pools on OKX’s X Layer blockchain.

The objecting companies have not given reasons. JPMorgan said it remains encouraged by tokenization but wants to be thoughtful about how its shares are represented and traded. “Given how easy the opt-out is, the list of objectors is likely to keep growing,” Olivia Vande Woude, head of tokenization at Ava Labs, said.

Nasdaq’s role

The fight has also taken on a competitive edge. An executive at a Nasdaq-listed company told Crypto in America that a Nasdaq representative urged the company to object and offered a call to explain why. Nasdaq declined to comment on the claim but reiterated that TSVs are not the best path to tokenization.

Nasdaq argues that venues outside the National Market System could fragment liquidity and lack real-time best-price display and consolidated-tape reporting. It is building its own issuer-centric Nasdaq Equity Token with Kraken, targeted for the second quarter of 2027.

A full-page Wall Street Journal ad urging CEOs to opt out, headlined “YOUR STOCK. THEIR TOKENS. YOUR PROBLEM.,” linked to Nasdaq’s FAQ via QR code. Conservative-leaning nonprofit Common Sense Leadership Fund paid for it. Nasdaq said it had no connection to the ad and never funded the group.

OKXICE co-chair and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called the objections a “natural response.” 

“We are at the very beginning of the rollout of fundamentally different market structure,” he said last week.

For context, a tokenized stock is a blockchain token backed one-for-one by a real share, which a third party holds. OKXICE lets it trade around the clock against stablecoins like USDC. Under the SEC’s Innovation Exemption, the venue can list these tokens without the issuing company’s consent, unless the company objects within 30 days.

This post Nvidia, Nike Join 50 Companies Blocking OKX–ICE Stock Token Push first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin Freezes Deposits and Withdrawals Due to Ongoing Security Incident, Losses Estimated Near $40 Million

Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchange kept deposits and withdrawals suspended on Monday after a security incident in one of its systems. The shutdown left customers unable to send funds into or out of the platform while the company worked to restore operations.

Mercado Bitcoin said in a statement posted to X that it had identified and contained the incident. The company said customers suffered no losses and that no data had leaked. It described the suspension as a precaution. Its teams are investigating, tracing assets and coordinating with authorities, the company said. According to Bloomberg, the company said it would absorb all losses.

The company has not said which system was breached, how much was taken or when it will reopen. Its current statements gave no total loss figure and no timetable.

Mercado Bitcoin has since published destination addresses tied to transactions from the incident, covering Bitcoin, Ethereum-compatible networks, Solana, Stellar and Tron. It said it shared the addresses for identification and tracking purposes. Blockchain security firm Hypernative has put preliminary estimates of suspicious transfers above $40 million across several blockchains. The exchange has not confirmed that figure.

Other analysts are citing higher figures and that the sweeping is ongoing.

Stablecoin issuer Tether has entered the response. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on X at 10:06 a.m. ET that the company had frozen more than 4.5 million USDT linked to the incident. Tether invested $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin back in July, when it said the exchange served 4.5 million users.

A rough week for Mercado and other exchanges

The incident comes days after one of the largest crypto thefts in recent memory. On Oct. 29, attackers reached $6.3 billion in assets at Binance after compromising an engineer’s laptop and gaining access to internal systems used to process withdrawals. 

Binance said it found no evidence that private keys were exposed. By Nov. 1, it had replaced 95 percent of the stolen assets and begun restoring withdrawals in phases.

On the law enforcement front, the FBI has attributed the attack to North Korea, and the U.S. Secret Service is working with Circle to trace and freeze funds. Tether reported about $1.57 billion in USDT frozen, and Circle said it had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with authorities. 

Binance has said it found additional points of breach beyond the initial compromise, which it originally attributed to a single engineer’s laptop. The exchange has not yet published a full post-mortem explaining how the attackers prepared and executed the operation, which some estimates suggest took at least 36 hours of groundwork. 

The destination of roughly $3.3 billion in stolen funds that were not frozen has also not been fully explained, and the exchange has not detailed what it expects to recover from that pool. Investigators continue to track wallet activity across ten blockchains.

This post Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin Freezes Deposits and Withdrawals Due to Ongoing Security Incident, Losses Estimated Near $40 Million first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Binance Reopens Withdrawals as Hack Recovery Enters Second Week 

Binance restarted customer withdrawals on Sunday, four days after hackers drained roughly $6.3 billion from its hot wallets in the largest crypto theft on record. 

The exchange reopened in stages over the weekend, starting with bitcoin and expanding to 15 networks. The move marked the first real test of whether the platform could absorb a loss of that size without freezing its customers out for longer.

The recovery push began Saturday. In its third recovery update, Binance said it had replenished 90% of the impacted amount with company funds. The exchange drew on part of its Secure Asset Fund for Users, a portion of its futures insurance fund and its corporate treasury to buy replacement tokens. 

The futures fund contribution drew particular attention, since Binance described the remaining balance as a regulatory requirement. Binance also published a new proof-of-reserves snapshot dated October 31, giving users a baseline to check their balances against.

Sunday’s reopening began at 06:00 UTC with BTC. Binance then added ETH, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Tron, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Zcash, TON and Sui. Between 06:00 and 15:30 UTC, the exchange processed about $4.65 billion in withdrawals against roughly $1.01 billion in deposits. 

That produced a net outflow near $3.64 billion, equal to about 2.1% of the $171 billion in assets Binance reported in its late-October proof of reserves.

Deposits stayed open throughout the rollout, and the exchange said temporary delays were possible during the initial surge in volume.

Binance said its Sunday update raised coverage to 95% of the impacted amount. The remaining 5% sits in less liquid tokens outside the top ten assets on its proof-of-reserves list. Sourcing those tokens at the required scale takes more time, and the exchange said it is working with industry partners and over-the-counter desks to complete the purchases. Binance has committed to covering the full amount, and it has repeated that users will not bear the financial impact of the theft.

On Monday, Binance said the full zero-knowledge proof for the October 31 snapshot is complete. Users holding BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD or ZEC can run the exchange’s verifier to confirm their balances are backed at least 1:1. 

The verifier is open source, and the exchange has pointed users to a step-by-step guide. 

The exchange plans another snapshot covering more tokens on November 4, with a proof expected to take 40 to 50 hours to generate. A further withdrawal phase is scheduled for Tuesday, and the exchange said it would share details once the rollout is ready.

Binance hack background

On the law enforcement front, the FBI has attributed the attack to North Korea, and the U.S. Secret Service is working with Circle to trace and freeze funds. Tether reported about $1.57 billion in USDT frozen, and Circle said it had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with authorities. 

The market reacted sharply to the breach. Bitcoin fell about 5% to below $77,000 in the hours after the attack, and shares of Coinbase,Robinhood, Strategy, and Strive all declined as investors weighed the risk of exchange-level losses across the sector.

Binance has said it found additional points of breach beyond the initial compromise, which it originally attributed to a single engineer’s laptop. The exchange has not yet published a full post-mortem explaining how the attackers prepared and executed the operation, which some estimates suggest took at least 36 hours of groundwork. 

The destination of roughly $3.3 billion in stolen funds that were not frozen has also not been fully explained, and the exchange has not detailed what it expects to recover from that pool. Investigators continue to track wallet activity across ten blockchains.

This post Binance Reopens Withdrawals as Hack Recovery Enters Second Week  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitwise’s André Dragosch: Bitcoin’s “Fair Value” of $197,000

Bitwise’s André Dragosch joins Spencer Nichols to explain why Bitcoin tends to move before shifts in global liquidity, acting as the canary in the liquidity coal mine, and why his global money supply model puts Bitcoin’s fair value at $197,000 today. They also dig into recession risk, the Fed’s next move, and how capital rotating out of precious metals could help Bitcoin catch up to the money supply.

Host: Spencer Nichols — Bitcoin Magazine
André Dragosch — Bitwise Director, Head of Research – Europe

Chapters:
00:00 Why French Bond Yields Are Rising
03:13 Tightening Financial Conditions Go Global
08:04 What the Dollar and an AI Bubble Mean for Bitcoin
12:45 Contagion Risk in the AI Credit Complex
17:23 Bitcoin, the Canary in the Liquidity Coal Mine
21:21 The Fed’s Dilemma and the Debt Burden
25:42 China’s Slowdown and Recession Risk
30:18 Will Bitcoin Decouple From Stocks?
33:47 Bitcoin’s $197K Fair Value
37:43 Bretton Woods III and Bitcoin as Global Money
42:07 Bitcoin’s Reserve Currency Call Option
46:48 Bitcoin-Backed Credit and Strategy as a Bank

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

This post Bitwise’s André Dragosch: Bitcoin’s “Fair Value” of $197,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mark Mason.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Adam Back: Pension Funds Are Bitcoin’s “Third Wave” of Adoption

The first wave of Bitcoin adoption was individuals. The second was the ETFs. Adam Back, CEO & Co-Founder of Blockstream, explains why the third wave of model portfolios, managed funds and pension funds is still largely to come, and how Swiss banks are getting ready for it.

Chapters:
00:00 Why Blockstream Opened an Office in Lugano
01:20 Why Blockstream Started Offering Consulting
02:01 Swiss Banks Want Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Custody
03:04 Tokenized Money Market Funds vs. Stablecoins
04:13 Tokenized Shares on Liquid and Blockstream AMP
05:55 Where Institutions Still Get Stuck
07:00 Build In-House or Use a Custodian?
08:01 How Regulation Shapes Bitcoin Custody
10:01 Basel Rules and the Cost of Holding Bitcoin
10:40 The Three Waves of Bitcoin Adoption

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

This post Adam Back: Pension Funds Are Bitcoin’s “Third Wave” of Adoption first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mark Mason.

Bybit and Bitget recorded larger address counts during the shutdown, but the data do not establish Binance customer migration.

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The November 2 update links hot-wallet thefts to an August-patched flaw and says updating cannot remove access already gained.

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Historical estimates show no detectable reversal after restrictions are lifted, while the monetary-policy consequences remain unresolved.

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A September comparison found wider non-aggregator round-trip spreads at five of six venues, without proving current per-swap savings.

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The moving reference can reveal off-hours collateral declines without ensuring a buyer for seized assets.

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$Solana is trading around $93 this morning, down more than 2% in 24 hours and about 19% over the past 30 days. It has now been below $100 for a week and sits under its 200-day moving average near $98. Live prices are on our crypto prices page.

Among the majors, $SOL is the clear underperformer of this crash. Here is why, and what has to happen for it to turn.

Why Is Solana Down Today?

• Record ETF outflows: US spot Solana ETFs lost about $71 million in a single session, their largest daily exit since launch. Institutional money that drove the summer rally is now leaving.
• Whales are dumping: on-chain trackers show several large wallets quietly moving SOL to exchanges over the past 48 hours. Unlike Ethereum, where whales are buying the dip, Solana's big holders are selling it.
• The Binance exposure: SOL fell more than 5% on the night of the Binance hack, more than BTC or ETH, because the exchange holds a large share of SOL spot liquidity. Withdrawals on the Solana network were among those halted.
• High beta, low patience: Solana is the market's favourite leverage play. When sentiment flips, it gets liquidated first and hardest.

Solana Price Analysis: Oversold but Not Bottomed

The RSI on the daily chart sits near 31, close to oversold. That usually produces a bounce, but a bounce is not a reversal. The structure stays bearish until SOL closes back above the 200-day line.

• $92: the level SOL is testing right now
• $85: the next support, from the September consolidation
• $78: the deeper floor, roughly where the April low sits
• $99 to $100: reclaiming this flips the short-term picture
• $104 to $107: the next resistance band if the bounce holds

Solana Price Prediction: What Changes the Picture?

Two things. First, ETF flows need to stop bleeding; a single positive inflow day after a record outflow tends to mark a local bottom. Second, SOL needs to stop underperforming ETH. The ETH/SOL ratio has moved 5% in Ethereum's favour this week, which tells you where rotation is heading.

Not sure where to buy? Compare the best regulated crypto exchanges for fees, coins and security in our exchange comparison.

Is Solana a Good Buy at $93?

For a long-term holder, the $85 to $92 zone is where the risk/reward starts to make sense, especially with the network's uptime streak past 1,000 days and no fundamental breakdown. For a trader, there is no reason to catch this knife before a daily close above $100. Watch the ETF numbers tonight.

Running a Bitcoin node means keeping a full copy of the Bitcoin blockchain on your own hardware and checking every transaction yourself against the network's rules. For retail investors it pays off if they hold their coins themselves and no longer want to tell an outside server which addresses belong to them. Running costs are modest: at German electricity prices, an energy-efficient small computer uses roughly €16 to €39 a year. Storage is the bigger expense, because the blockchain now takes up well over 600 gigabytes.

If you only hold bitcoin on an exchange, you do not need a node of your own. If you use a wallet with your own key, however, a node gives you independence: the wallet no longer asks the manufacturer's servers whether a payment has arrived, but your own computer. This guide explains which hardware is enough, how much electricity and storage to plan for, how to connect your wallet, and why maintaining the software is the part where many operators fail.

What is a Bitcoin node? Full node, pruned node and Lightning node compared

A full node is a computer running Bitcoin client software that downloads every block since 2009 and recalculates each one. The node trusts no one: it only accepts a block once signatures, amounts and block rules check out. The most widely used software is Bitcoin Core, the network's reference implementation.

A pruned node checks just as thoroughly but discards old block data after verification and keeps only the most recent. That is why it needs little storage, though it can no longer serve old blocks to other nodes. For the privacy of your own wallet, that is no drawback.

A Lightning node is something else. It sits on top of a Bitcoin node and manages payment channels for fast small payments. That requires funds in a hot wallet that is permanently online. If you only want to verify and store, you do not need this second layer. Bitcoin miners, in turn, create new blocks; a node does not, and receives no reward.

Why your own node improves your wallet's privacy

Every wallet has to ask somewhere which balances belong to its addresses. Without your own node, those requests go to the wallet provider's servers or to public Electrum servers. The operator can see which addresses belong together and can link them to your IP address. With your own node, that mapping stays inside your home.

The second benefit is validation: your node checks for itself whether an incoming payment is valid and how many confirmations it has. You do not have to rely on an outside server telling the truth. Especially if you keep larger amounts in a hardware wallet, this closes the last gap to full self-custody. The third effect concerns the network: every node that accepts incoming connections relays blocks and transactions and makes Bitcoin harder to censor.

18,816 reachable Bitcoin nodes: one in four runs outdated Bitcoin Core software

What the network looks like is shown by Bitnodes, a service that regularly counts all nodes reachable from outside. On November 2 there were 18,816. We counted the software identifiers ourselves: 16,818 nodes report as Bitcoin Core, or 89.4 percent. Another 1,937 nodes, 10.3 percent, run the alternative Bitcoin Knots. 7,824 of the counted addresses, a share of 41.6 percent, sit on the Tor anonymity network.

The age of the software stands out. Bitcoin Core 32 has only been available since October 27 and was running on 3,305 nodes a week later. Support for version 29 ended on the same date. According to the project's life cycle, only versions 30, 31 and 32 still receive security updates. Even so, 4,990 nodes reported Bitcoin Core 29 or older, 26.5 percent of all reachable nodes. Anyone who sets up a node and then forgets about it quickly joins this group.

October showed that this is not a theoretical risk. The Bitcoin Core project published three security advisories at once on October 28; on October 29 we described which nodes were affected and how the update works. Which options changed with version 32 is covered in our overview of Bitcoin Core 32.

Storage for the Bitcoin blockchain: 600 to 779 gigabytes and pruning mode

Figures on storage requirements vary. The Bitcoin Core download page cites a one-off download of around 600 gigabytes and 5 to 10 gigabytes a month after that. Blockchain.com's data series already showed about 779 gigabytes of block data at the end of October, excluding the software's database indexes. From October 4 to 28 alone, almost six gigabytes were added there.

For planning, that means a one-terabyte SSD will do for a full node for a while yet, and two terabytes give room for several years and for add-on services such as an Electrum server, which builds its own index. In pruning mode, by contrast, Bitcoin Core says 10 gigabytes are enough, with no loss of security in verification. The catch: a pruned node must also download and verify the whole blockchain once; it just does not keep it. And some add-on software, such as a full Electrum server, requires the unpruned data.

Hardware for a Bitcoin node: Raspberry Pi, mini PC or ready-made device

Three routes have become established. The cheapest is a single-board computer such as the Raspberry Pi 5 with eight gigabytes of memory and an NVMe SSD. It is quiet and frugal, but much slower than a normal computer during the first sync of the blockchain. The second route is a used or new mini PC with an x86 processor. It uses more electricity but computes faster and runs any Linux distribution. The third route is ready-made devices or prebuilt system images such as Umbrel, Start9 or RaspiBlitz, which install Bitcoin Core, an Electrum server and Lightning through a web interface.

Storage matters more than the processor. A traditional spinning hard disk slows verification so badly that the first sync can take weeks. An SSD is a must, and cheap models without their own cache cope less well with the constant writes. Four gigabytes of memory are enough to run the node; with eight or more the sync is noticeably faster, because Bitcoin Core can then keep more data in its cache.

Electricity costs of a Bitcoin node at 37 cents per kilowatt hour

According to published measurements, a Raspberry Pi 5 draws about 3 watts at idle and just under 9 watts at full load. With an NVMe SSD and fan, such a node runs roughly between 5 and 12 watts in continuous operation. Over a year, that is 44 to 105 kilowatt hours. At the average household electricity price of 37.0 cents per kilowatt hour that the German energy association BDEW calculated for 2026, running it costs about €16 to €39 a year.

A mini PC uses several times as much, depending on the model. Before buying, calculate with the idle figure the manufacturer states, because a configured node spends most of the day idling. Only the first sync pushes the processor and SSD to their limits for a few days.

Initial block download: the first sync of the blockchain takes days

The initial block download is the phase in which a new node fetches all blocks from other nodes and verifies them. Overnight into Tuesday, the blockchain reached block height 974,322. On a mini PC with a fast SSD and a good connection, the sync is often done in one to two days; on a Raspberry Pi it can take a week. During that time the node downloads several hundred gigabytes, so a capped data plan is unsuitable.

After that, things calm down. In normal operation, a new block and a few megabytes of traffic arrive every ten minutes on average. If the node accepts incoming connections, though, it also uploads data for others. Bitcoin Core offers an upload limit for this that you can set in the configuration file.

Connecting your wallet to your own Bitcoin node: Electrum server and Sparrow

The node is only useful once your wallet actually queries it. Most desktop wallets use the Electrum protocol for this. Between Bitcoin Core and the wallet sits an Electrum server, a program that makes the blockchain searchable by address. Fulcrum and electrs are widespread, and the ready-made systems ship both as apps. The Sparrow wallet can also connect directly to Bitcoin Core, with no Electrum server at all.

The combination of a hardware wallet and your own node is considered the cleanest form of self-custody: the key stays offline on the device, and the queries stay on your own network. Which programs can connect to your own server varies by provider; our comparison of software wallets helps you choose. Mobile wallets usually reach the node on the go via Tor, without you having to open a port on your router.

Securing your Bitcoin node: updates, RPC interface and Tor

Three rules keep the risk low. First, updates: with every new major version, support ends for the version three generations older, and security flaws are disclosed after a fixed period. In the release notes for Bitcoin Core 32.1, the project announces that two weeks later it will disclose three medium to high severity flaws that were fixed in version 30.0. Anyone who stays on an old version is then online with known vulnerabilities.

Second, the RPC interface: programs control the node through it, and it must never be exposed to the open internet. At most you may open port 8333, through which nodes connect to one another. Third, add-on services: every app on a ready-made system is another attack surface. How quickly that gets expensive was shown on November 2 by a BTCPay Server warning that hot wallets on older installations had been drained; we have summarized the background and the recommended steps. A pure verification node without a hot wallet does not carry this risk, because no funds sit on it.

Tor also hides the IP address from which your node sends transactions. Bitcoin Core can run exclusively over Tor, and the ready-made systems usually switch this on with a single click.

Bitcoin Knots or Bitcoin Core: the dispute over OP_RETURN data

Since Bitcoin Core 30 significantly raised the default limit for data in so-called OP_RETURN outputs in October 2025, the community has been arguing over how much non-payment data nodes should relay. Bitcoin Knots, a derivative of Bitcoin Core maintained by Luke Dashjr, filters such transactions more strictly. Both programs follow the same consensus rules and accept the same blocks; they differ in which unconfirmed transactions they pass on.

For your wallet's privacy, the choice makes no difference. Knots is a visible minority with 10.3 percent of reachable nodes, while Bitcoin Core remains the standard and is the software with the most guides and the fastest security updates. Newcomers are well served by Core and can decide the filtering question later.

Tax and legal aspects of running a Bitcoin node in Germany

A pure full node generates no income, because the network does not pay nodes for their work. Unlike mining, there is therefore no income you would have to declare on your tax return. Electricity costs are private expenses and do not reduce your tax. Anyone who also runs a Lightning node and earns routing fees is in different territory and should clarify the classification with a tax adviser. The node does not change the rules for your coins either: whether a sale after the one-year holding period is tax-free depends solely on the purchase date, not on the software you use to send it.

Bitcoin node: one terabyte of SSD and about €30 of electricity a year

A node of your own costs hardware once and little electricity after that. It gives you independence from outside servers and a wallet that reveals nothing about your addresses. In return it needs maintenance: let the updates slide and you end up in the quarter of nodes running without security updates. Three steps lead to a clean setup:

1. Sort out custody first: the node protects your privacy, not your key. Keep the key on a device that stays offline; the hardware wallet comparison shows the differences in price and features.
2. Choose suitable wallet software: make sure the wallet can connect to your own Electrum server or directly to Bitcoin Core. The software wallet comparison lists programs for desktop and smartphone.
3. Withdraw your coins to your own wallet: only once your bitcoin is with you does your node also verify your own payments. Which providers handle withdrawals cheaply is covered in the comparison for buying bitcoin.

(As of November 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

DefiLlama is the largest freely accessible data platform for decentralized finance (DeFi). It shows how much capital sits in crypto protocols such as Aave, Lido or Uniswap, how much these protocols earn in fees, which stablecoins are in circulation and what yields pools are currently paying. The data is free, available without registration, and the methodology is public. On November 3, 2026, according to DefiLlama, $81.8 billion was locked in DeFi, 53.9 percent below the record of November 9, 2021. How to read TVL, fees, revenue, stablecoins and yields correctly, and where even experienced investors take a wrong turn, we show here using our own analysis of DefiLlama data.

DefiLlama at a glance: the key numbers

• On November 3, 2026, $81.8 billion sat in DeFi protocols, compared with $144.5 billion a year earlier.
• Ethereum accounts for $43.6 billion of that, or 53.2 percent; DefiLlama tracks 290 blockchains with locked capital.
• Measured in ether, the capital on Ethereum fell by only 7.8 percent since November 3, 2025; in dollars, by 46.9 percent.
• In the 30 days to November 2, 2026, users paid $2.27 billion in fees, of which $1.25 billion stayed with the protocols.
• Dollar stablecoins worth $296.5 billion were in circulation on November 3, 2026, with Tether (USDT) holding 60.2 percent of them.
• Of 2,654 yield pools with at least $1 million in deposits, half paid less than 2.17 percent a year.

What is DefiLlama? The open data platform for DeFi

DefiLlama is an analytics dashboard that has been collecting data on decentralized finance applications since 2020. The platform reads balances directly from the blockchains' smart contracts, converts them into US dollars at market prices and compiles them into rankings. What DeFi is in principle and how lending and exchange protocols work is covered in our guide to decentralized finance.

The core of DefiLlama is open: for each protocol there is a small program, known as an adapter, that defines which contracts are counted. These adapters are public in DefiLlama's adapter repository on GitHub, and anyone can review them and propose corrections. What each metric means is described in DefiLlama's methodology documentation. This openness is why exchanges, analysts and media cite DefiLlama as a reference.

On defillama.com you now find far more than TVL rankings: fees and revenue, trading volume on decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, yields in pools, bridges, funding rounds, token unlocks and a list of known hacks. The API delivers the basic data without a key, and heavy users can buy a paid Pro tier. Our analysis is based on the full dataset of November 3, 2026: 8,919 entries in the protocol list, 427 stablecoins and 15,900 yield pools. We compare further tools for market analysis in our overview of crypto analytics tools and platforms.

TVL on DefiLlama: what total value locked measures

TVL stands for total value locked. It is the dollar value of all coins that users have deposited in a protocol: deposits in lending protocols, liquidity in exchange pools, collateral for stablecoins. TVL is therefore a stock measure. It says how much capital trusts a protocol, but not how much the protocol earns or how often it is used.

The history reflects the market's cycles. In November 2021, DeFi TVL reached $177.5 billion; in October 2023 it fell to $36.0 billion. On November 3, 2025, the statistics showed $144.5 billion, at the start of 2026 still $111.9 billion, and on November 3, 2026, $81.8 billion.

The distribution across blockchains is uneven. Ethereum holds more than half of the capital, followed almost level by Base, Solana, Tron and BNB Chain. Behind them come Bitcoin, the derivatives exchange Hyperliquid's own blockchain, Arbitrum, Robinhood Chain and Monad. How sharp outflows on a single blockchain can be is shown in our analysis DeFi loses 6.7 percent of its ETH deposits.

As of November 3, 2026. Source: DefiLlama. Share of the total across all 290 blockchains with locked capital.

Fees and revenue on DefiLlama: how to read them

DefiLlama separates two metrics that are often confused. Fees are everything users pay to a protocol: trading fees on a decentralized exchange, interest paid by borrowers, and at Lido the staking yield on deposited ether. Revenue is the part that stays with the protocol itself, landing in its treasury or flowing to holders of its token. The rest goes to the liquidity providers, depositors and stakers who supply the capital.

In the 30 days to November 2, 2026, users paid $2.27 billion in fees according to DefiLlama, 15 percent less than in the previous 30 days. Of that, $1.25 billion stayed with the protocols as revenue, just over half. How large the share is depends almost entirely on the business model.

The top of the table is not occupied by DeFi protocols in the narrow sense but by stablecoin issuers. For Tether, DefiLlama counts the interest earned on reserves, mainly short-dated US Treasuries, as fees. Because Tether keeps all of that income, fees and revenue are equal. Lido is the reverse: according to its methodology, Lido keeps 10 percent of staking rewards and passes on the node operators' share from that, leaving about 6 percent as revenue. At Uniswap V4, all trading fees go to liquidity providers; at Uniswap V3, part has flowed into buybacks of the UNI token since December 28, 2025.

30 days to November 2, 2026. Source: DefiLlama, selection of large protocols.

For investors, revenue is the more important number when it comes to the value of a token. At Hyperliquid, according to its methodology, 99 percent of fees flow into a fund that buys back HYPE tokens; a protocol with high fees and zero revenue, by contrast, earns nothing for its token holders. Revenue is not yet profit, though: DefiLlama does not deduct spending on development, security audits or reward tokens.

Stablecoins on DefiLlama: who dominates the market

In its stablecoin section, DefiLlama shows the circulating supply of every token pegged to a currency, broken down by blockchain. On November 3, 2026, dollar stablecoins worth $296.5 billion were in circulation, 2.5 percent less than a year earlier. Two issuers dominate the market: Tether and Circle together hold 84.2 percent.

As of November 3, 2026. Source: DefiLlama. Market share of all dollar stablecoins.

Euro stablecoins play a small role in these statistics. All euro tokens combined came to $0.82 billion, 0.28 percent of the total stablecoin market. The largest is Circle's EURC with €502.6 million in circulation, followed by EURCV from Société Générale's subsidiary SG-Forge with €193.1 million. For investors in the EU, authorization also matters: Tether is not authorized under MiCA, and what that means for you is explained in our guide Tether (USDT) explained. Which stablecoins suit which purpose is shown in our stablecoin comparison.

Read circulating supply as a snapshot with a direction: a shrinking supply means more tokens are being redeemed than newly issued. What such a decline looked like for USDC is shown in our analysis USDC shrinks by $4.08 billion.

Yields on DefiLlama: how to find and check returns

The yields section lists returns from pools across all blockchains: deposits in lending protocols, liquidity in exchange pools, staking and vaults. For each pool, DefiLlama shows the annual yield (APY), split into a base yield from interest and fees and a reward paid in the protocol's tokens, plus the pool's TVL and flags for risks such as impermanent loss. On November 3, 2026, DefiLlama listed 15,900 pools, 2,654 of them with at least $1 million in deposits.

Our analysis of these 2,654 pools shows a clear pattern: the higher the yield, the smaller the pool and the more often the return comes from reward tokens rather than real income. 97.8 percent of the capital sits in pools yielding less than 10 percent. Half of all pools paid less than 2.17 percent. The largest single pool, staked ether at Lido with $21.8 billion, returned 2.28 percent.

As of November 3, 2026. Source: DefiLlama, pools with at least $1 million in deposits; calculation: cryptoticker.io.

For stablecoins the picture is calmer. The 327 stablecoin pools with at least $10 million in deposits paid a median of 4.14 percent, of which 3.46 percent was base yield. Higher figures come almost only with leverage, reward tokens or less proven protocols; how quickly such a loop turns negative we work through in sUSDe yield versus Aave borrowing rate. If you are looking for staking through a regulated provider, you will find terms and licenses in our comparison of the best staking platforms.

Six reading mistakes on DefiLlama and how to avoid them

DefiLlama measures carefully, but each number answers only a specific question. These six mix-ups are the ones we come across most often in discussions and price analyses.

1. Mistaking price losses for outflows

TVL is stated in US dollars. If the ether price falls, TVL drops even when not a single coin leaves the protocol. Our calculation for Ethereum: on November 3, 2025 it held $82.1 billion; on November 3, 2026, $43.6 billion, a decline of 46.9 percent. Over the same period the ether price fell from $3,909 to $2,250. Measured in ether, locked capital fell only from 21.0 to 19.4 million ETH, or 7.8 percent. Most of the decline was a price loss, not a loss of confidence.

2. Adding protocol values into one total

Many deposits are passed on several times: ether is staked at Lido, the staked ether serves as collateral at Aave, and the stablecoin borrowed against it ends up in the next pool. If you add up the individual values of all protocols on Ethereum, you arrive at $144.6 billion. DefiLlama reports $43.6 billion for Ethereum, because the total excludes liquid staking at $39.5 billion, bridges at $25.4 billion, staking pools at $12.9 billion, restaking at $5.8 billion and double-counted deposits. You can toggle such items on in the settings; the default view avoids double counting.

3. Confusing exchange reserves with DeFi

DefiLlama also tracks the reserves of centralized exchanges so that investors can check their holdings. In the raw API list, Binance shows $124.8 billion, more than the entire DeFi market at $81.8 billion. These amounts are customer funds on an exchange, not DeFi capital, and do not belong in the DeFi total. DefiLlama therefore lists them in a separate overview.

4. Mistaking fees for profit

High fees show usage, but not what reaches a token. Uniswap V4 generated $48.5 million in fees over 30 days, and the protocol kept nothing as revenue. With tokens, always look at revenue and, on DefiLlama, also at the part that goes to token holders.

5. High yields with no source

We found yields of 50 percent or more in only 37 of 2,654 larger pools, with $0.13 billion in deposits between them. In more than a quarter of those, most of the yield consisted of reward tokens whose price can fall. Always check how much base yield remains, how large the pool is and how long the protocol has existed. What to do with your deposits after an attack on a protocol is covered in our report on the governance attack on Hifi Finance.

6. Confusing TVL with market value

TVL measures deposits in a protocol; market value measures what all tokens of a blockchain or protocol cost on the market. The two are only loosely related. Cardano is an extreme example: on October 20, 2026, $62 million in DeFi stood against a market value of $8.15 billion, and on November 3 DefiLlama counted only $52.8 million. The context is in our analysis Cardano's DeFi versus its market value. DefiLlama shows the ratio of the two directly on many protocol pages.

How to use DefiLlama in six steps

1. Check the big picture: the home page shows total DeFi TVL and the protocol ranking. Set the period to one year to separate trends from daily swings.
2. Choose a blockchain: the blockchain overview shows where the capital sits and which protocols lead on each blockchain.
3. Read the protocol page: it contains the TVL history, fees, revenue, token metrics, security audits and a link to the methodology. Compare the TVL history with the price of the main coin to avoid mistake number 1.
4. Compare fees and revenue: the fees and revenue rankings show which protocols are really used and which of them keep something.
5. Track stablecoins: if supply grows, new money is flowing into the crypto market; if it shrinks, tokens are being redeemed.
6. Filter yields: filter for stablecoins, set a minimum size of a few million dollars and sort by base yield rather than total yield.

If you want to analyze the data yourself, use the DefiLlama API: TVL, fees, stablecoins and yields can be pulled as tables and fed into your own calculations.

DefiLlama for investors: our verdict

DefiLlama is the best free tool for judging DeFi by numbers rather than narratives. The platform is open, fast and covers almost every protocol. Its value only emerges, however, when you read the numbers correctly: think of TVL in coins before dollars, look at revenue rather than fees, and sort yields by where they come from.

Our analysis shows a market that has shrunk sharply in dollar terms but has remained surprisingly stable when measured in coins. Most of the money is earned not by the well-known DeFi protocols but by stablecoin issuers. And large stablecoin pools typically pay around 4 percent a year; anything well above that calls for close scrutiny. If you want to buy coins for DeFi, you will find licensed providers in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

DeFi applications carry technical risks up to a total loss, for example from smart contract bugs or attacks. This guide is not investment advice.

Leverage trading means trading a larger position than your own capital would allow. With a $1,000 stake and ten times leverage, you move bitcoin worth $10,000: if the price rises 5 percent, you make $500 instead of $50. If it falls 9.5 percent, the exchange closes your position and the stake is gone. In Germany, leverage trading with cryptocurrencies is allowed but capped for retail clients: crypto CFDs may carry at most 2:1 leverage, while the perpetual futures of exchanges with EU authorization go up to ten times. This guide shows how to calculate margin, profit and liquidation price, and where you can trade with a licensed provider.

Leverage trading at a glance: the key numbers

• Leverage of 10 means $1,000 of collateral moves a $10,000 position.
• At ten times leverage, a counter-move of about 9.5 percent is enough for liquidation; at one hundred times, 0.5 percent.
• Since August 1, 2018, crypto CFDs in the EU have been capped at 2:1 leverage for retail clients.
• Since August 2017, retail clients in Germany can never lose more than their account balance on CFDs.
• A long position in the bitcoin perpetual on OKX paid about 1.5 percent of its value in funding from August 5 to November 2, 2026.
• Gains from futures, perpetuals and CFDs are taxed in Germany at the 25 percent flat withholding tax, with no holding period.

What is leverage trading? Leverage explained simply

Leverage is the ratio between the size of your position and the money you post as collateral for it. That collateral is called margin. The exchange or broker provides the rest of the position as long as your margin covers the losses. Leverage of 10, also written 10:1 or 10x, therefore means every dollar of margin stands for ten dollars of position.

With cryptocurrencies, leverage trading almost always runs through derivatives. You do not buy bitcoin but a contract whose value tracks the bitcoin price: a perpetual future, a future with an expiry date, or a CFD. Less common is margin trading on the spot market, where you actually borrow money or coins. All of these let you bet on rising prices, going long, or on falling prices, going short. How a short works in detail is covered in our guide to shorting crypto.

Leverage works equally hard in both directions. It turns a 1 percent price move into a 10 percent move in your stake, up or down. It does not improve your hit rate; it enlarges the size of every win and every mistake. Anyone trading with leverage therefore needs one thing above all: a clear idea of how much they lose when they are wrong.

How to calculate leverage: margin, position size and profit

Three formulas cover the maths. Position size is margin times leverage. Profit or loss is position size times the price change. And the return on your margin is leverage times the price change. The table runs this with $1,000 of margin and a bitcoin price of $77,358, the CoinGecko price at 6:12 p.m. on November 2, 2026. Fees and funding are not included.

The table shows the core of the problem. From 20x upwards, you never experience a 5 percent move against you, because the position is closed before that. According to CoinGecko, bitcoin closed more than 5 percent above or below the previous day on 14 days in 2026 up to early November; on February 6 it was down 14.1 percent. Leverage that promises big gains on paper fails in practice against the normal swing of a single trading day.

A second point is often overlooked: leverage changes by itself. If your position goes into the red, the margin shrinks and the effective leverage rises, even though you have done nothing. A position therefore becomes riskier precisely when it is already losing.

How to calculate the liquidation price: what does 100x leverage mean?

The liquidation price is the price at which the exchange forcibly closes your position. It does so as soon as your margin only covers the maintenance margin, the minimum amount you must keep in place for an open position. For a long position with isolated margin, a close approximation is: liquidation price equals entry price times (1 minus 1 divided by leverage plus maintenance margin). For a short, the signs flip.

With a maintenance margin of 0.5 percent, that means for a long at $77,358: at ten times leverage, liquidation sits at about $70,009, or 9.5 percent below entry. At one hundred times leverage it is $76,971, only 0.5 percent below. 100x leverage therefore means that a move bitcoin often makes within minutes ends the position.

The actual figures at your exchange will differ slightly. The maintenance margin rises in tiers with position size, fees and funding eat into the margin, and what usually counts is not the last traded price but a mark price that the exchange derives from several venues. Every exchange shows you the liquidation price before you place the order. Read it before you confirm.

Isolated or cross margin: how far a loss can reach

With perpetual futures, you choose before each order how your margin is exposed. With isolated margin, only the amount you have allocated to that one position is at risk. If it is liquidated, the rest of your account is untouched. With cross margin, your entire balance serves as collateral for all open positions. That pushes liquidation further out because there is more buffer, but a sharp move can consume the whole account.

For individual trades, isolated margin is the safer choice because you know the maximum loss in advance. Cross margin makes sense when several positions hedge one another, for example a long in bitcoin and a short in ether. How a liquidation wave plays out in practice is described in our analysis of the October liquidations.

Six ways to trade crypto with leverage

Leverage is not a single product. For investors in Germany there are six routes, which differ markedly in maximum leverage, costs and protection.

Leveraged ETPs and knock-out products are bought like a share through your securities account. They have no margin, and you can never lose more than the purchase price. With leveraged ETPs, the daily rebalancing erodes value in sideways markets; our guide to the leveraged bitcoin ETF works through why. How a crypto CFD differs from buying coins directly is set out in our comparison crypto CFD vs buying coins. Regulated CFD providers and brokers are listed in our crypto broker comparison.

Is leverage trading legal in Germany? The limits for retail clients

Yes, leverage trading with cryptocurrencies is legal in Germany. Retail clients are, however, covered by protective rules that depend on the product. For contracts for difference, the European Securities and Markets Authority ESMA introduced tiered leverage limits effective August 1, 2018: 30:1 for major currency pairs, 20:1 for gold and major stock indices, 10:1 for other commodities, 5:1 for individual shares and 2:1 for cryptocurrencies. BaFin made these limits permanent with its general administrative act of July 23, 2019.

Three protective rules come on top of the leverage limits. The provider must close positions as soon as your balance falls below 50 percent of the required margin. Negative balance protection prevents you from losing more than your account balance; BaFin had already banned margin calls beyond the deposit for retail clients in 2017. And every advertisement must state the share of retail accounts that lose money with the provider.

The distinction from the crypto regulation MiCA matters. MiCA governs the buying, selling and custody of crypto assets, but not derivatives. Futures, perpetual futures and CFDs on crypto assets are financial instruments under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive MiFID II. Anyone offering them needs authorization as an investment firm; a MiCA license alone is not enough. On February 24, 2026, ESMA also clarified that contracts marketed as perpetuals can also fall under the rules for contracts for difference. The background is covered in our explainer perpetual futures and the CFD rules.

Exchanges without EU authorization are not bound by these rules. Leverage of 50 or 100 is common there, and in a dispute there is no European supervisor you can turn to.

Where to trade crypto with leverage: providers with EU authorization

For perpetual futures with leverage, five crypto exchanges in Germany have their own EU entity and authorization as an investment firm: Coinbase and Kraken through entities in Cyprus, OKX and Gemini through entities in Malta, and Robinhood through an entity in Lithuania. All five allow up to ten times leverage on bitcoin. Coinbase and OKX structure their perpetuals as futures with a five-year term, to which the 2:1 cap does not apply because futures are exempt from the rules for contracts for difference. Entities, products and launch dates of all five are compared in our guide to crypto futures trading.

Without a derivative, you can get leverage through margin trading on the spot market. Bybit EU, licensed under MiCA by the Austrian Financial Market Authority, has offered it since August 2025 with up to ten times leverage; the group plans to add futures after obtaining investment firm authorization and filed the application in September 2025. At Bitpanda, margin trading lets you bet on rising prices with up to ten times leverage. In both cases you buy real coins with borrowed money.

To get started, we recommend the exchanges where you also buy and store coins: at OKX you trade the X-Perps alongside your spot account, and at Coinbase the futures sit in the same account as your spot holdings. Which exchanges hold MiCA authorization in the EU is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Fees and funding: what leverage trading costs every day

The exchange charges fees on the value of the position, not on your margin. At ten times leverage, every 0.1 percent fee on the position therefore costs you 1 percent of your margin, on opening and again on closing. Frequent traders can quickly pay a double-digit share of their stake without the price having moved at all.

With perpetual futures there is also the funding rate, a payment between the long and short sides that keeps the contract price close to the spot price. We analyzed the 270 settlements of the bitcoin perpetual on OKX from August 5 to November 2, 2026: in 92 percent of cases, long positions paid. In total, a long position cost 1.51 percent of its value over those 90 days. With $1,000 of margin and ten times leverage, that is $151, or 15 percent of the stake, just for holding. How the funding rate is made up and how to calculate it for your position is explained in our guide to the funding rate; the full analysis is in our guide to crypto futures trading.

Risk management in leverage trading: five rules

Successful traders differ less in their hit rate than in how much they lose when they are wrong. Five rules have proved their worth.

1. Risk a fixed small share per trade. A common rule of thumb is no more than 1 percent of the account per trade. With a €10,000 account and a stop-loss 5 percent below entry, the position may then be €2,000. Position size follows from the stop-loss, not from the leverage.
2. Set the stop-loss before you enter. It belongs well ahead of the liquidation price. That way you decide on the exit, not the exchange.
3. Stick to low leverage. Beginners are well advised to use 2x to 3x. The chart above shows why: at three times leverage, liquidation is about 33 percent away; at ten times, less than 10 percent.
4. Use isolated margin for individual trades. That limits the loss on each position to its own margin instead of putting the whole account up as collateral.
5. Expect outliers. In late October 2026, positions worth $1.54 billion were liquidated within 24 hours after a security incident at Binance became public (our analysis). Such days come without warning. Plan every trade so that it survives a 10 percent swing or ends at the stop-loss first.

Leverage trading and tax: how gains are taxed in Germany

Gains from perpetual futures, futures and CFDs count as income from forward transactions under Section 20(2) of the German Income Tax Act. They are subject to the 25 percent flat withholding tax, plus the solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable. The one-year period after which gains on held coins become tax-free does not apply here: a four-minute trade and a four-month trade are treated the same. The saver's allowance of €1,000 applies to all capital income combined.

Losses from forward transactions can be offset against other capital income. The former cap of €20,000 a year was abolished by the Annual Tax Act 2024, for all cases still open. You cannot, however, offset them against gains from coins you have sold, because those belong to a different category of income. If you buy coins on the spot market with borrowed money, they remain purchased crypto assets to which the one-year period under Section 23 applies. Exchanges abroad do not withhold tax; you enter the results yourself in the capital income annex (Anlage KAP) of your return. The details are in our guide to tax on crypto futures, and our crypto tax calculator gives a first estimate. This section is not tax advice.

Our verdict: keep leverage trading in crypto deliberately small

Leverage is a tool, not a promise of returns. With 2x or 3x leverage at an exchange with EU authorization, you can make targeted use of price moves or hedge a holding against falling prices without every turbulent day knocking you out of the position. From 10x, trading becomes a race against liquidation, and from 50x a single swing decides the outcome.

Our recommendation: learn the maths with small amounts, use isolated margin and a fixed stop-loss, and trade only with providers supervised in the EU. There, leverage limits apply, your deposits are held separately, and in a dispute there is a supervisor you can turn to. If you want to hold bitcoin for the long term, you are better off without leverage: a purchase on a regulated exchange and storage in your own wallet carry no liquidation risk.

Leveraged products are complex and risky, and a total loss of the stake is possible. This guide is not investment advice. The links to OKX, Coinbase, Bitpanda and Bybit EU are partner links; they cost you nothing extra.

What is confirmed: on Tuesday morning, November 3, Shiba Inu costs $0.00000453, or roughly €0.00000404, which puts it 10.7 percent above its yearly low of June 25. Our assessment follows further down. The next decision will not come from the chart alone but on the night of the US midterm elections, when the entire crypto market gets reshuffled.

The price comes from Kraken exchange trading data at 9:47 a.m. German time. Since midnight SHIB has lost just under one percent, and the range of the past 24 hours runs from $0.00000451 to $0.00000466. Where the token could head over a horizon of months is covered on our Shiba Inu price prediction page. This piece is about the day: the levels below the price, the lines above it, and what a German investor can sensibly prepare before election night.

Shiba Inu price on Tuesday: 23 percent below its early October level

The figures of recent weeks point in one direction. On October 4, Shiba Inu closed at $0.00000592; today the token is 23.4 percent lower. Against the daily close of October 27, the loss is 7.5 percent. The high of the past twelve months came on December 6, 2025 at $0.00001049, more than twice today's level. SHIB has lost 56.8 percent since then.

A daily close is the last traded price of a calendar day, which at Kraken means midnight Coordinated Universal Time. All percentages in this article refer to these closing prices so that they can be recalculated. We computed the values ourselves from Kraken's public daily data (as of November 3, 2026).

Volume stands out. Over the last 30 days, about 97 billion SHIB changed hands on Kraken per day on average; in the past 24 hours it was just under 65 billion. So the price is not falling in a sell-off but in a thin market, where even smaller sell orders are enough to move it.

Since the quarterly review of November 1: down 3.2 percent

Two days ago we published our Shiba Inu quarterly review. SHIB was trading at $0.00000468 at the time; today it is $0.00000453, a decline of 3.2 percent in 48 hours. The lower level we named then, $0.00000448, has not yet been broken on a daily close, but the gap has narrowed to about one percent.

What is new is the date. On November 3, the US elects all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 senators. The first reliable results arrive during the night to Wednesday, German time, when hardly anyone trades in Europe. What has not changed is the weak volume we already described on Sunday.

US midterm elections: why a meme token moves on election night

Shiba Inu has no direct link to US politics. The token reacts anyway, through the broader market. Bitcoin trades at around $76,400 on Kraken this morning, right at its 100-day average. Our overview of the midterm scenarios explains why the most important US crypto bill depends on the outcome of the Senate races. If the vote goes against expectations, bitcoin moves first and smaller tokens follow with larger swings.

October 29 shows how strong this leverage is for SHIB. On that Thursday the attack on Binance became public, and Shiba Inu swung between $0.00000508 and $0.00000460 within a single day, a range of 10.6 percent. Bitcoin moved between $81,882 and $77,688 on the same day, or 5.4 percent. An event that hits the whole market therefore hits SHIB roughly twice as hard.

One point for context: the trade site CoinGabbar reports, citing a post by the Shiba Inu team on X, that the attacker sold 499 billion SHIB on the market. That figure could not be independently confirmed by Tuesday morning. At today's price the amount would be worth about $2.3 million. Measured against a market value of roughly $2.7 billion and about 589 trillion tokens in circulation, it is not large enough to explain the price action on its own.

October low, August low, yearly low: three supports below the price

A support is a price zone where buyers stepped in before and where many traders therefore place buy orders again. Below the current Shiba Inu price sit three such levels, all documented in Kraken's daily data.

The first is $0.00000446, the intraday low of October 30 and the lowest level of the month. That is a little more than 1.5 percent away. The trade site U.Today cited a support zone between $0.00000440 and $0.00000450 on November 2, so the two readings match.

The second level is the August 12 low at $0.00000435, about four percent below today's price. If it fails, the yearly low of June 25 at $0.00000405 comes into view, 10.7 percent away. On that day the price turned higher and closed at $0.00000424, a sign that larger buy orders were sitting there.

50-day and 200-day averages: where a recovery would hit resistance first

A moving average takes the mean of the closing prices over a fixed number of past days; the exponential version gives more weight to recent days. By our calculation, the exponential 50-day average stands at $0.00000510, 11.2 percent above the price. The 200-day average is at $0.00000549, 17.4 percent higher.

Between the price and the first line lies the round level of $0.00000500, where SHIB turned lower twice on October 28 and 29. U.Today places the first resistance between $0.00000500 and $0.00000530. As long as the price closes below both averages, the downtrend remains intact. A recovery to $0.00000500 would be a gain of just over ten percent and would not change that.

Exchange balance at 85.8 trillion SHIB: a second look beyond the chart

Besides the price, it is worth looking at how many tokens sit on centralized exchanges. This exchange balance shows how much SHIB could be sold at short notice. According to U.Today, it stood at 85.84 trillion SHIB on November 2 and had fallen markedly over seven days. At the same time, the report recorded a net inflow of about 10.9 billion SHIB to exchanges for that day.

The two figures pull in different directions. Falling balances are read as a sign that holders are moving tokens into their own wallets. A net inflow on the same day suggests that some sellers are still bringing tokens to exchanges. U.Today itself calls the balance a constructive signal, but not a confirmed reversal. The report does not name its data provider; earlier analyses based on CryptoQuant put the figure at 80 to 82 trillion SHIB in early 2026, so values from different providers are only partly comparable.

Buying and storing SHIB under MiCA

The EU crypto regulation MiCA has applied since the end of 2024. Providers that broker or hold crypto assets in Germany need authorization, usually granted by BaFin or another EU supervisor. Before buying SHIB, check whether the exchange is listed in the register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges lists licensed providers with fees and deposit methods.

With a thinly traded token, the order type matters. A market order buys at the best available price and can turn out noticeably more expensive when the order book is shallow. A limit order sets the maximum price and only executes once that price is reached. If you want to buy at one of the supports named above, place a limit there instead of chasing the price on election night.

On custody: tokens on an exchange are a claim against the provider. If you plan to hold SHIB for longer, move it to a wallet of your own. Because SHIB is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, the transfer costs network fees in ether, so it makes more sense for larger amounts than for many small portions.

Holding period and loss offsetting for SHIB in Germany

In Germany, gains from selling crypto assets are tax-free under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act if more than one year passes between purchase and sale. Within that period, an exemption limit of €1,000 a year applies to all private sales combined. Exceed it by even one euro and the entire gain becomes taxable.

With a price that has lost 56.8 percent within twelve months, the reverse case matters more for many holders. Losses from a sale within the one-year period can be offset against gains from other private sales in the same year or carried forward to later years. Once the period has passed, losses are worthless for tax purposes. If you bought SHIB less than a year ago, know the purchase date of each lot before you sell. A crypto tax tool sorts purchases by the method that sells the first tokens bought first and shows which lot is still inside the period.

Leverage on SHIB on election night: how liquidations happen

A liquidation is the forced closing of a leveraged position once the posted collateral no longer covers the losses. At ten times leverage, a move of about ten percent against the position is enough; at twenty times, half of that. SHIB swung 10.6 percent within one day on October 29. A position with ten times leverage on the wrong side would not have survived that day.

Election nights raise this risk because results arrive while German investors are asleep. If you hold a leveraged SHIB position, reduce the leverage before the evening or set a stop-loss that triggers even on a night of large swings, before the position is liquidated.

Our view on the Shiba Inu price after election night

In the newsroom's view, another test of the zone around $0.00000446 is more likely than a quick jump above $0.00000500. The evidence: the price is 11.2 percent below the 50-day average, daily volume on Kraken was recently about a third below the monthly average, and SHIB turned lower twice at the round $0.00000500 level in late October.

The falling exchange balance reported by U.Today argues against this, since fewer tokens on exchanges limit selling pressure over the medium term. In addition, the price already turned sharply higher once at $0.00000405 on June 25. We do not derive a buy recommendation from this. Shiba Inu remains a meme token without yield, a total loss is possible, and any position should be sized so that a fall by half remains bearable.

SHIB on election day: below $0.00000446 things get tight

1. Choose a licensed exchange: buy or sell SHIB only through a provider with a MiCA license; the exchange comparison shows fees and order types.
2. Secure your holdings: what you hold for longer belongs in a wallet of your own; our hardware wallet comparison names devices that support ERC-20 tokens such as SHIB.
3. Clarify your tax position: record purchase dates and losses within the one-year period with a crypto tax tool before you sell on election night.

(As of November 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Kim Yo Jong suggested the U.S. itself could be behind the theft, as Binance said hourly deposits had begun to exceed withdrawals.

Users say Claude is routing some requests to a stronger unreleased model, a Mythos 5.5 label appeared in Anthropic’s site code, and OpenAI appears to be testing GPT-6.2 Astra.

Strive added 124 Bitcoin for about $10 million and now trails Twenty One Capital by 390 BTC for third place among Treasury companies.

Onchain investigator ZachXBT says an unidentified EU entity lost more than $106 million from centralized exchange accounts on Sunday,.

Anthropic says Claude wrote an attack that can take over a Linux server with no password. Red Hat patched on Sunday, but Ubuntu still has no fix.

Binance has restored SHIB withdrawals, but the token's chart still points to further downside.

Instead of selling, XRP investors opened nearly 8,000 new wallets in 24 hours after the Binance hack.

NEAR has dropped sharply from its recent rally high, and the question whether key support will hold is now the most relevant one.

Coinbase options data suggests XRP could see an 8.7% price swing by Nov. 8, potentially pushing its price toward $1.36 or $1.14.

Binance has restored withdrawals for Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin on Ethereum as the exchange gradually resumes services following its massive $6.3 billion hack.

TLDR

• Binance began a second phase of crypto withdrawals from 04:00 UTC on Tuesday.
• The move follows last week’s $6.3 billion hack and an initial reopening on Nov. 1.
• Phase two covers networks such as Ethereum, Solana, XRP Ledger, Tron and Base.
• Net outflows fell to $2.57 billion on Monday from $6.1 billion on Sunday, per DefiLlama.
• Binance warned users about scammers offering faster withdrawals for a fee.

Binance is set to begin a second phase of cryptocurrency withdrawals on Tuesday. The move comes as data shows withdrawal volumes have started to stabilize after last week’s $6.3 billion hack.

According to the exchange’s latest recovery notice, withdrawals for more assets will resume step by step from 04:00 UTC on Tuesday. The rollout follows an initial reopening of withdrawals on Sunday, Nov. 1.

Binance said the second phase will follow the same approach as the first. Each asset will reopen once its checks are done, rather than all at once.

“Like phase one, reopening will roll out progressively across the assets as security and readiness checks are completed,” Binance said.

The exchange said it is choosing which tokens to reopen first based on user demand over the past week. Deposits remain open on the platform.

Networks Included in Phase Two

Binance listed the blockchain networks that are part of the second withdrawal phase. They include Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Solana, XRP Ledger and Sui.

The list also covers Arbitrum, Optimism, Tron and Base. Binance shared a list of the specific assets planned for withdrawal on these networks.

On Monday, the exchange also reopened withdrawals for several fiat currencies. These include the US dollar, the United Arab Emirates dirham, the Vietnamese dong, the Philippine peso and the Indonesian rupiah.

These five currencies join a list of 23 other fiat currencies that were already available for withdrawal. That brings the total number of fiat currencies open for withdrawal to 28.

In a separate security reminder, Binance warned users about scams tied to the phased reopening. The exchange said scammers could pretend to be Binance and offer faster withdrawals.

Binance said scammers may also try to sell priority processing or offer help claiming compensation. Others could tell users to move their assets into a so-called “Binance vault.”

“Anyone promising to expedite it for a fee is scamming you,” Binance said.

Exchange Outflows Slow

Data from DefiLlama shows outflows from Binance have slowed since Sunday. Outflows measure the amount of funds users move off the exchange.

Net outflows on Sunday, the day withdrawals first reopened, reached $6.1 billion. That figure came close to the $6.3 billion lost in last week’s hack.

On Monday, net outflows dropped to $2.57 billion. That means Monday’s net outflows were less than half of Sunday’s total.

The slowdown came one day before the second phase of withdrawals was scheduled to start. More assets are set to reopen progressively from 04:00 UTC on Tuesday as Binance completes its security and readiness checks.

The post Binance Begins Second Withdrawal Phase as Exchange Outflows Slow appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre says AI-powered malware will highly likely be used in a ransomware attack on critical national infrastructure by 2028.
• The warning appears in the NCSC’s Annual Review 2026.
• The agency says China, Russia and other nation-states will use “AI cyber” to pursue geopolitical goals.
• State-backed hackers are targeting politicians, government officials and other high-risk individuals.
• Dutch intelligence warned in March that Russian hackers impersonated Signal support to hijack accounts.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned that AI-powered malware will likely be used in a ransomware attack on the country’s critical national infrastructure by 2028. The warning appears in the agency’s Annual Review 2026.

The NCSC is part of GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency. Its annual review sets out the main cyber threats facing the country over the past year and the years ahead.

In the report, the agency said artificial intelligence will increase the scale and efficiency of ransomware operations. It also said AI will boost social engineering and the exploitation of software vulnerabilities.

“It is also highly likely that between now and 2028, AI-powered malware will have been used in a ransomware attack on UK CNI,” the report states. CNI stands for critical national infrastructure.

Critical national infrastructure covers the systems a country depends on to function every day. In the UK, this includes sectors such as energy, water, transport, health and telecommunications.

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that locks or encrypts a victim’s files and systems. Attackers then demand a payment, often in cryptocurrency, to restore access.

State Hackers Expected to Use “AI Cyber”

The ransomware warning forms part of a broader assessment in the annual review. The NCSC linked cyber threats directly to the UK’s economic and national security.

The agency said China, Russia and other nation-states will use “AI cyber” to achieve their geopolitical goals. According to the report, this will increase both the scale and the speed of cyber threats facing the UK.

The NCSC did not limit its concerns to criminal ransomware groups. The report also pointed to foreign governments adopting new technology to strengthen their cyber operations.

Politicians and Officials Targeted

Beyond ransomware, the NCSC highlighted the growing threat of state-backed cyber espionage. The targets include politicians, government officials and other high-risk individuals.

During the year, the agency observed persistent spear-phishing activity against these individuals. Spear-phishing uses tailored emails or messages designed to trick a specific person into handing over access or information.

The NCSC also reported increasing efforts by attackers to compromise messaging applications. Messaging apps can hold private conversations, contact lists and shared files.

Similar warnings have come from other countries this year. In March, Dutch intelligence agencies said Russian state hackers were targeting officials, military personnel and civil servants around the world.

In that campaign, attackers impersonated Signal support staff to hijack user accounts. Signal is an encrypted messaging app that lets users send private messages and make calls.

The NCSC said the ability of state actors to harness new technologies will increasingly determine how effective they are. “Technology has always influenced cyber security. What is different today is the pace,” the agency said.

The post UK Cyber Agency Warns AI Ransomware Attack on Critical Infrastructure Is “Highly Likely” by 2028 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• The S&P 500 rose after all 11 midterm elections from 1982 through 2022, averaging a 13.7% one-year gain. 
• Divided government produced a 15% average one-year S&P 500 gain, versus 11.5% under single-party control. 
• Under a Democratic Congress and Republican president, the S&P 500 averaged 10.9% a year after midterms.
• The S&P 500 fell 22.1% after the 2000 elections, while the 2020 elections saw a 38.3% one-year gain.

The stock market after midterm elections has historically delivered strong returns, regardless of which party wins control in Washington.

CNBC analyzed S&P 500 data from 1980 through 2024. The index rose after all 11 midterms from 1982 through 2022. Investors remain cautious ahead of the vote.

However, past results show that the market often recovers once the uncertainty clears. The index averaged a 13.7% gain one year after those midterm elections.

Midterm History Shows Consistent Gains

CNBC found that the index rose an average of 0.2% after one day and one week. After one month, the average gain reached 1.1%. These figures cover both presidential and midterm elections.

Over a longer period, the stock market after midterm elections performed better. The index gained an average of 13.7% a year after midterms and 13.8% after presidential elections. Returns were positive in 91% of cases.

Short-term returns were less reliable, particularly after presidential contests. Those races produced slightly negative average returns after one day and one week.

Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group, said investors feel anxious before these elections. He added that relief tends to follow, and markets usually perform well afterward.

CNBC shared the findings in a post on X ahead of the vote. The network said markets are anxious ahead of the midterms but have historically performed well afterward. It added that this pattern holds for a red wave, blue wave, split result or status quo.

Divided Government Has Favored Stocks

The stock market after midterm elections has usually favored divided government. This means one party holds the White House while the other controls at least one house of Congress. CNBC examined 10 midterm and five presidential elections that left no single party in charge.

In those cases, the S&P 500 averaged a 15% gain after one year. One-year returns were positive in 14 of 15 cases. By comparison, single-party control produced an average gain of 11.5%.

Detrick said a large red or blue wave is less favored by markets. He pointed to heavy spending and concentrated power as the reasons. A Democratic Congress with a Republican president also produced gains.

After the 1986, 1990 and 2006 midterms, the S&P 500 fell 0.5% on average on the reaction day. It was up 3.4% a month later and 10.9% after a year.

The stock market after midterm elections may coincide with other factors that matter more for returns. The S&P 500 fell 22.1% in the year after the 2000 elections because of the dotcom bust.

That marked the worst post-election result since 1980. In contrast, the index gained 38.3% after the 2020 elections as markets recovered from the COVID-induced selloff.

CNBC also listed Fed policy, earnings and the AI trade as factors that may matter more than the election result.

The post S&P 500 Historically Gains After Midterm Elections, CNBC Data Shows appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.85%.
• Rates in Australia are now at their highest level in 18 years.
• The board voted 6-3, with three members wanting to hold at 4.60%.
• AI investment and higher fuel prices are pushing up inflation.
• Inflation is not expected to reach the top of the target range until late 2027.

Australia’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate on Tuesday, lifting the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.85%. The move takes rates in Australia to their highest level in 18 years.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said inflation remains elevated and is broadly based across the economy. It now expects inflation to stay high through much of 2027.

The bank’s Monetary Policy Board made the decision by majority vote. Six members backed the increase, while three members voted to keep the rate unchanged at 4.60%.

AI Investment and Energy Costs Push Prices Higher

The board pointed to several sources of price pressure. Higher fuel and commodity prices, affected by the conflict in the Middle East, have added to costs.

“AI-related investment is driving rapid growth in prices for technology-related goods,” the board said in its statement. It added that inflation in many goods and services remains high.

The bank said its business contacts report rising cost pressures. Many firms are either raising prices for their goods and services or planning to do so.

Domestic capacity pressures were also judged to be a little tighter than earlier thought. The board said there are signs that higher fuel prices are being passed on to the prices of other goods and services.

Updated staff forecasts revised the inflation outlook materially higher. Inflation is not expected to reach the top of the 2% to 3% target range until late 2027, about three quarters later than previously forecast.

The board warned this creates upside risks to inflation expectations. It said some measures of those expectations have risen lately, and there is an increasing risk that they become embedded.

Economy Slows as Rates Rise

The RBA said rate increases since the start of the year have tightened financial conditions. The economy is slowing, housing prices have fallen sharply, and the unemployment rate has risen.

The bank expects output growth to slow further over the coming year. Higher rates and falling housing prices and turnover are expected to weigh on household spending and home building.

Business investment is forecast to grow faster in the near term, including investment in data centres. Employment is expected to keep growing, but unemployment is projected to rise more than the bank expected in its August forecasts.

The board said uncertainty about the outlook remains high. The Middle East conflict is unresolved, and global oil supply disruptions continue to push up energy prices.

Growth among Australia’s major trading partners has been stronger than expected so far. The board said the boost from AI-related investment has outweighed the negative effects of the Middle East conflict.

In Australia, weak productivity growth continues to limit potential growth. The board also noted uncertainty about how deep the housing downturn will go and how it will affect the economy.

Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the decision was widely expected but still hard for households and businesses. “It’s difficult news for many Australians who are already paying a hefty price for circumstances outside their control,” he said.

The board said it will stay attentive to the data and do what it considers necessary to bring inflation back to target. It said it remains focused on its mandate of price stability and full employment.

The decision contrasts with the US Federal Reserve, which held rates last week. Fed officials have also warned that the AI investment boom is adding to price pressures, including for computer equipment and utilities.

The post AI Is Now Pushing Up Inflation in Australia, and the RBA Just Hiked Rates Again appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company holds about 150,000 Bitcoin.
• Tether’s Q3 report valued its Bitcoin reserves at $8.37 billion as of September 30.
• Excess reserves rose to $7.95 billion, and Q3 net operating profit was $1.5 billion.
• Direct and indirect Treasury bill exposure reached nearly $132.4 billion.
• Ardoino outlined the Independence Stack, covering energy, mining, wallets, communications and AI.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the stablecoin issuer holds about 150,000 Bitcoin. He shared the figure during his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland.

Ardoino said Tether holds “give or take 150,000 Bitcoin” on its corporate balance sheet. He did not give a wallet breakdown or a schedule of when the coins were bought.

The CEO also said Tether serves more than 730 million users worldwide. He said the company adds about 30 million new wallets every quarter.

Tether’s Bitcoin and Reserve Figures

Tether has bought Bitcoin since May 2023. That month, it started a policy of putting part of its profits into the cryptocurrency.

In its third-quarter report, Tether valued its Bitcoin reserves at $8.37 billion as of September 30. That compares with about $5.8 billion at the end of June.

The report values reserve assets on the reporting date. It does not fully match Ardoino’s company-wide Bitcoin estimate.

Tether published its third-quarter attestation, prepared by BDO, on October 30. It showed total reserve assets of $191.45 billion against liabilities of about $183.50 billion.

Excess reserves reached $7.95 billion, up from $4.1 billion at the end of June. Tether earned $1.5 billion in net operating profit in the quarter, bringing its nine-month total to $4.5 billion.

Directly held U.S. Treasury bills made up about $122.84 billion. Overnight reverse repurchase agreements added $9.52 billion, for nearly $132.4 billion in total Treasury bill exposure.

The report also listed $19.08 billion in gold and $14.18 billion in secured loans. USDT issuance stayed near $184 billion during the first nine months of 2026.

Ardoino Outlines the Independence Stack

Ardoino also introduced a technology plan he called the Independence Stack. It brings together tools built to work without relying fully on centralized service providers. His presentation drew on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels.

The plan covers energy, Bitcoin mining, communications, self-custody wallets and artificial intelligence. Ardoino said technology could help communities become more independent in these areas.

Tether has invested in solar-powered battery kiosks in Africa. Ardoino said about 5,000 kiosks serve two million users and support 30,000 women in the network. He outlined a plan to reach 100,000 kiosks over five years, which could serve 200 million people.

In October, 15 mining companies, manufacturers and pools backed Tether’s open-source Mining Development Kit. They include Bitmain, Bitdeer, Canaan, MicroBT, Foundry Digital and F2Pool.

The stack also includes Holepunch, a peer-to-peer communications system that does not need conventional central servers. Tether’s Wallet Development Kit offers software for building self-custodial wallets on multiple blockchains.

In September, Tether and Shiga announced plans for wallets serving people and institutions across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The products would support USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold, but no launch date was given.

Tether’s AI work runs through QVAC, a platform for running AI apps directly on personal devices. In October, the company released an offline speech recognition model for smartphones, smart glasses and robotics.

In Lugano, Ardoino described more models for medical help, translation, computer vision and speech. He said Tether’s research includes translation tools for 19 African languages and medical AI models with 1.7 billion and four billion parameters. He added that Tether’s profits allow it to fund these projects.

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Bitcoin’s gradual recovery following the Binance hack came to an end over the past 12-18 hours or so, with the asset dropping below $77,000 once again ahead of the US midterm elections.

Most altcoins have followed suit, with substantial losses seen in ZEC, NEAR, ENA, and several others.

BTC Slips Below $77K

The promise of an ‘Uptober’ failed dramatically after the rejection at $85,000 on October 21 and the subsequent correction toward $80,000. Although BTC had dipped below that level on several occasions, it still managed to remain above it after the US Federal Reserve held rates unchanged last Wednesday.

However, the devastating Binance hack that unfolded on Friday put the final nail in the Uptober coffin, with BTC nosediving by several grand to a six-week low of $76,100. The asset tried to rebound almost immediately, and there were some positives over the weekend. It rebounded further to $79,000 on Monday morning, but it was rejected there and couldn’t go through that level.

It has been mostly downhill since then. The asset plunged to $76,400 once again earlier this morning alongside most of Wall Street, and more volatility is expected later today as the US midterm elections progress. History shows that BTC tends to correct hard after these elections.

For now, bitcoin’s market cap has declined to $1.540 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts has slipped to just under 60%.

ZEC, NEAR Drop

ETH was rejected at $2,300 yesterday and has slipped to $2,260. BNB is once again below the $700 level, while XRP has defended the $1.25 support. TRX and XMR are slightly in the green, while HYPE, SOL, DOGE, LINK, and ADA are in the red.

ZEC and NEAR lead in terms of daily losses today. The privacy token has tanked by 8.6% to under $1,150, while NEAR is down by 7.3% to $3.83. ENA follows suit with a 5.7% drop to $0.17, while RAIN is up by 5.6% to $0.065.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets is down by $30 billion again to $2.580 trillion on CMC.

The post ZEC and NEAR Tank Again, BTC Dives Ahead of US Midterm Elections: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The 2026 US midterm elections could become an important catalyst for both equities and crypto, particularly if President Donald Trump loses control of both the House and Senate.

Prediction markets currently put the probability of a Democratic sweep at roughly 76%, while Democrats are priced at around 94%-95% to win the House and approximately 76% to take the Senate.

Bullish for the S&P 500?

A widely circulating analysis online, including one published by Michael Burry Stock Tracker account, highlights that there have been seven occasions since 1954 when a president lost both chambers of Congress to the opposition during the midterms. Interestingly, in six of the seven cases, the S&P 500 rose by an average of 2.1% in the following month alone.

The increases jump to 10.7% in the next three months, rising to 17.5% after six months, and 15.5% after one year. In all seven cases, the benchmark index was higher three, six, and 12 months after the election.

Obviously, history doesn’t guarantee future price performance, as it doesn’t mean that a Democratic sweep would automatically trigger a rally. However, there’s a possible explanation for the historical pattern: once the election removes political uncertainty, investors can price the new balance of power more clearly.

This year, the policy implications could be substantial. Reuters reported that Democratic control of Congress could bring greater scrutiny of tech companies and AI investment, slow parts of the financial deregulation agenda, and affect the trajectory of crypto legislation. President Trump would still retain veto power, limiting how dramatically policy could shift.

Not So Good for Bitcoin

After the 2014 vote, bitcoin eventually fell by over 45% within 71 days before reaching its bear-market low. In 2018, the nosedive was even more severe at almost 50% in 39 days. The 2022 election was followed by another double-digit decline, around 25% according to Ted Pillows, in just weeks.

However, that example comes with an enormous caveat, as the FTX crisis unfolded at virtually the same time. BTC fell sharply on election day as Binance announced its attempted rescue of the SBF-led exchange, which failed, and FTX later collapsed and filed for bankruptcy. Blaming BTC’s price drop solely on the midterms would be somewhat misleading.

Dealer.eth highlighted an interesting longer-term pattern: those post-election lows ultimately became the bear-market bottoms of their respective cycles. A year after the aforementioned midterms, BTC was approximately 24%, 45%, and 92% higher, respectively. Independent historical price data puts the average 12-month gain across those three periods at roughly 54%.

The post US Midterms Are Here: History Points to a Stock Rally but Trouble for Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has rejected allegations by US investigators that it was responsible for last week’s hack on Binance.

In a statement, Kim Yo Jong, who is the department director of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, called Washington’s accusations a political provocation.

North Korea Flips the Script on the US

Kim’s statement, published by state news agency KCNA on November 3, accused the United States of repeatedly associating North Korea with major crypto thefts without justification, including last year’s $1.5 billion Bybit hack.

The party official, who also happens to be the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed the latest claims as “absurd rhetoric and nothing new.” She also argued that Washington was trying to damage her country’s international reputation and interfere in its internal affairs.

In one very pointed passage, Kim brought up the US government’s stated intention to confiscate illegally obtained cryptocurrency and add recovered assets to a national strategic reserve to paint it as the actual suspect in the theft.

“The international community needs to recall once again the fact that as soon as the present U.S. administration took office last year, it announced that it would confiscate illegally stolen cryptocurrency assets and use them as a state’s strategic reserve,” the statement read. “If it carefully examines who will get the large amount of the so-called stolen cryptocurrency when the latter is retrieved, it may get a clue about who is behind the hacking incident.”

She concluded by warning that Pyongyang was keeping an eye on the Trump administration’s actions and had “issues to reconsider” over its “hostile attitude” toward North Korea.

The FBI Case

Soon after the hack, Binance announced that it had taken several measures to protect user funds, including halting withdrawals temporarily and bringing in law enforcement to help trace the stolen funds.

A little while later, as CryptoPotato reported, the FBI said the DPRK was responsible for the $6.3 billion attack on Binance, with a state-linked actor, TraderTraitor, observed on-chain converting the stolen assets into ETH and then moving it into DeFi platforms and instant-swap services to hide their origin.

Other investigators, including TRM Labs and Chainalysis, also tied the heist to the same group. Furthermore, on-chain monitors have observed what they say is a portion of the stolen money being moved through several protocols, including THORChain and Relay, pushing up their daily revenues tens of times higher.

Withdrawals have since resumed on the exchange, with users taking out more than $4 billion right after the green light and putting in just over a billion.

The post North Korea Denies Responsibility for $6.3B Binance Hack appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto commentator Tyler D has said that a Democratic takeover of Congress in the November 3 US midterm elections could slow crypto legislation and bring tougher regulatory conditions, but it may also benefit privacy cryptocurrencies.

According to the analyst, even if the next two years bring less regulatory progress, the industry has grown too large to be stopped by a change in political leadership.

Slower Crypto Progress but Potential Gains for Privacy Coins

In a video published by Decrypt ahead of the elections, Tyler D suggested that a Democratic sweep would mean less progress for the industry, although privacy coins could benefit from the resulting regulatory climate.

“The first-order take on the Dem situation for crypto is not that bad,” he remarked. “Overall, you’re going to have less progress, but then it’ll be good for privacy coins.”

The discussion also touched on the difference between legislation and regulatory rulemaking, with the analyst explaining that the SEC and CFTC can introduce and change rules but cannot independently pass laws.

Furthermore, he pointed out that some of those decisions could be reversed if a different administration came to power or there was a change in leadership in the watchdog agencies. That said, he is optimistic about the industry’s ability to withstand political change:

“I think the crypto train is too big to stop at this point. I think the next two years are going to be fine no matter what,” he said.

That view is similar to that of another market watcher, VirtualBacon, who has also dismissed any thoughts of a Democratic victory triggering an immediate Bitcoin collapse. According to him, crypto legislation in Congress has bipartisan support, so an election result is more likely to affect sentiment than the industry’s underlying regulatory direction.

How Bitcoin Is Doing

Yesterday, Bitcoin recovered to around $78,000 after falling to approximately $76,100 following the Binance hack last Friday. But at the time of writing, with politicians making last-minute election pitches, the OG cryptocurrency was back near $76,000, having shed slightly more than 2% of its value in 24 hours and nearly 4% across seven days.

It was all red in the other charts, including a 6% dip in the last fortnight and an over 9% drop in the past month, which has kept BTC almost 29% lower than where it was this time last year and 39% away from its all-time high that was also recorded last year.

Louie, an analyst at BecauseBitcoin, identified $79,000 to $80,000 as the range it needs to reclaim through three or four daily closes to give the recent drop a chance of being nothing more than a bear trap. However, if that fails, he sees dropping to “$70k at a minimum” with lots of bearish pressure against the market.

In the midterms that took place in 2018 and 2022, BTC dropped by 51% and 25%, respectively, although, as trader dealer.eth noted, each of those bear market lows was followed by a positive 12-month run.

The post Analyst Explains What a Democratic Midterm Sweep Means for Crypto appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP whale net flow on Binance hit -226 million units on October 29. This reading is 2.72 times the -83 million units recorded in September 2022.

CryptoQuant analysis flagged 283 million XRP in large-transfer outflows from the exchange that day, as the security breach unfolded.

Whale Movement

TRM Labs traced 233.46 million XRP from five Binance wallets to an attacker-controlled address, while Elliptic independently reported approximately 233 million XRP in related transfers. Large withdrawals above 1 million dropped to 14.7 million on October 30, down 94.8% during the withdrawal suspension.

When Binance began restoring withdrawals, including XRP, in phases on November 1, large-transfer outflows climbed to 80 million, which is 5.44 times the October 30 reading. Whale netflow remained negative at approximately −50 million XRP. According to CryptoQuant, moving the crypto asset off the exchange may reduce the supply available for immediate sale and ease near-term selling pressure.

Binance’s security breach resulted in an estimated $6.3 billion in stolen digital assets, making it the largest crypto heist in history. Initial investigations pointed to a possibly compromised employee laptop. The FBI later confirmed that North Korea was behind the attack and linked it to the state-sponsored cybercrime group “TraderTraitor.”

US President Donald Trump, who had promised to look into the incident, also said he would speak with North Korea if its involvement was confirmed. Binance, meanwhile, said it has covered around 95% of the stolen assets, although sourcing the remaining amount could take longer. The exchange has repeatedly assured customers that it will absorb all losses resulting from the attack.

ETFs Close October in Green

With a hack of that scale hitting Binance, XRP took an expected beating as it fell from above $1.3 to $1.2 within hours. But the drop wasn’t as severe as the collapses seen during some previous exchange failures. The asset managed to recover to around $1.25 at press time.

On the institutional front, October ended on a positive note for spot XRP ETFs, which pulled in $18.83 million overall. The final two weeks did much of the work, after bringing in $4.25 million and $4.32 million, respectively, enough to make up for the modest outflows earlier in the month.

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