Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) spot ETFs pulled in $3.50 million over two days with zero outflows while Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) funds bled $1.11 billion combined.

What the ETF Flows ShowFranklin Templeton’s XRPZ (NYSE:XRPZ) drove the entire Sept. 16 inflow, adding 2.71 million XRP worth $3.50 million according to SoSoValue.

Cumulative XRP ETF inflows now stand at $1.72 billion with total net assets at $1.40 billion.

The divergence is hard to ignore: institutional money kept flowing into XRP even as the CLARITY Act failed to pass a procedural vote and the Fed’s first rate hike in three years triggered a broad retreat from crypto funds.

What Polymarket Traders Are PricingPolymarket odds for XRP price targets in September currently sit at:

That near-tie is not a coincidence. It mirrors exactly what the chart is showing: a market that broke out hard from $1.00 in late August, ran into resistance, and is now cooling with no clear directional conviction.

Why the Ripple-Stripe Integration Matters for XRPCoinDesk reported Thursday that Ripple updated its XRP Ledger AI Starter Kit to support the Machine Payments Protocol, a standard co-authored by Stripe and Tempo that lets AI agents pay for services automatically using XRP and RLUSD.

The update also adds the Open Wallet Standard, allowing software to manage wallets across multiple blockchains through one interface.

“XRP and RLUSD are first-class options wherever developers are building,” RippleX head of product Jazzi Cooper posted on X. 

Ripple now backs both MPP and x402, the web payments standard it added in June, giving developers on either standard a path to accept payments on the XRP Ledger.

XRP Price Analysis: Key Levels to WatchXRP is trading flat Thursday, pulling back sharply after rejecting the $1.30 to $1.32 zone that held as support through most of September. 

Price now tests the $1.26 to $1.28 support band that first launched the late August breakout from $1. 

RSI at 46.29 sits at its weakest reading since before the breakout, with the 20-day EMA at $1.3447 now acting as resistance overhead rather than support below.

The setup is straightforward: holding the support band keeps the recovery structure intact and gives $1.40 a realistic path. Losing it opens the door toward $1.20.

Key levels for XRP: $1.40 — psychological resistance $1.34 — 20-day EMA, now resistance $1.25 to $1.28 — critical support band, must hold Photo via Shutterstock

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Bitcoin’s post-quantum migration debate has moved toward wallet security and dormant-coin handling after Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet argued that choosing a new signature scheme may prove easier than moving Bitcoin users and existing funds safely.

Summary

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet says Bitcoin faces a migration challenge, not an immediate quantum crisis. SHRINCS combines stateful signatures with a stateless fallback while relying on SHA-256 for security today. Current SHRINCS signatures range from 548 bytes to 5,777 bytes, depending on the signing path. Reusing one stateful signing slot can enable forged signatures, creating serious wallet-level fund theft risks. Bitcoin BIPs 360 and 361 remain drafts, leaving post-quantum migration policy unresolved across the network. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet said in a technical analysis published by Ledger that “Bitcoin does not have a quantum computer problem today,” while warning that migration research, software implementation, hardware-wallet changes and user adoption could take years. He said no cryptographically relevant quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin’s current signatures is known to exist today, while the timing of such a machine remains uncertain.

His review focuses on SHRINCS, a draft Bitcoin-specific post-quantum signature proposal that combines a smaller stateful signing mechanism with a larger stateless recovery path. The specification remains unfinished, carries no assigned BIP number and states that its formal “security proof is TODO.”

⚛️ Bitcoin does not have a quantum computer problem today. It has a migration problem, and migrations could take years to get right.

SHRINCS is the first Bitcoin-specific post-quantum proposal I have seen that makes a serious end-to-end trade-off, and it deserves to be read…

— Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_) September 16, 2026 Bitcoin migration involves more than choosing cryptography Guillemet divided the transition into three problems: selecting a post-quantum signature scheme, adapting Bitcoin wallets and protocol infrastructure to that scheme, and deciding how existing BTC should move to quantum-resistant outputs. The final problem includes coins whose owners may have lost their keys or have not moved funds for many years.

Bitcoin’s current transaction authorization relies heavily on ECDSA and Schnorr signatures built on elliptic-curve cryptography. A sufficiently capable quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could theoretically recover private keys from exposed public keys, but no publicly demonstrated machine can perform that attack against Bitcoin today.

Guillemet said migration cannot be judged solely by the cryptographic strength of a replacement scheme because wallets, hardware devices, backup systems and multi-device setups must implement it safely. He described reaching social agreement over vulnerable legacy coins as one of the harder unresolved questions.

A similar position has emerged from other cryptographers. Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh has argued that Bitcoin should prepare for quantum risk while avoiding a rushed migration that could introduce severe software failures.

SHRINCS trades smaller signatures for wallet state The current SHRINCS draft specification describes a hash-based system built around SHA-256, the same hash family already used extensively by Bitcoin. Its designers target approximately 128 bits of classical security and 64 bits of quantum security under their chosen parameters.

Its 48-byte public key commits to two signing paths. The compact route uses Flexible XMSS and WOTS+C, producing stateful signatures from 548 bytes up to 4,619 bytes. A stateless fallback based on SLH-DSA concepts produces a 5,777-byte signature.

NIST standardized SLH-DSA as FIPS 205 in August 2024. The standard itself is stateless and based on SPHINCS+, while the SHRINCS draft uses a custom parameter configuration alongside its separate stateful component.

The newer numbers are important because an earlier version of SHRINCS produced a frequently cited 324-byte stateful signature. Guillemet said that figure no longer describes the current Bitcoin draft. The September specification starts at 548 bytes for its stateful route.

Blockstream Research has argued that hash-based signatures offer conservative cryptographic assumptions and relatively cheap verification. Its May research noted that standardized post-quantum signatures are much larger than Bitcoin’s current 64-byte Schnorr signatures, creating pressure on block space and transaction throughput.

Blockstream has already demonstrated SHRINCS verification on the Liquid sidechain through Simplicity, but that experiment does not mean the scheme is active on Bitcoin mainnet. The Bitcoin specification remains research work requiring review and consensus before any network deployment.

Stateful signatures create a new wallet failure mode The compact SHRINCS path requires every one-time signing key to be used only once. A wallet therefore maintains a counter identifying which signing slot should be used next, and that counter must move forward permanently before a signature leaves the device.

If a wallet uses the same signing slot for two different messages, information exposed by the signatures may let an observer forge a valid signature. Guillemet wrote that the attacker does not necessarily recover the entire private seed, but the affected user’s funds can still become stealable.

Backups create another problem. Restoring a wallet from an older copy could restore an outdated counter. Two hardware devices initialized from the same seed could face the same risk if they independently use the stateful path without coordinating which one-time keys have already been consumed.

An independentProject Eleven review of SHRINCS reached a similar conclusion. Researchers Alex Pruden and Conor Deegan said the scheme transfers a security-critical state requirement into wallets and custodial systems, where backup restoration or state rollback could lead to reuse of a one-time key.

SHRINCS provides a fallback when the state is lost or uncertain. The original seed can still derive the stateless signing key, allowing funds to move using the 5,777-byte signature. The wallet must permanently stop using the compact stateful route for that key once its counter can no longer be trusted.

Guillemet described this property as one of SHRINCS’ stronger design choices because losing state affects efficiency without automatically making the coins unspendable.

Current wallet features would not transfer cleanly The move from elliptic-curve signatures to hash-based signatures would change several wallet tools Bitcoin users rely on today. Non-hardened BIP32 derivation lets an extended public key generate child public keys without exposing private keys, supporting common watch-only wallet designs. Guillemet said an efficient equivalent does not naturally carry over to hash-based signatures.

Threshold signing presents a related problem. Schnorr-based systems can combine participants efficiently, while known hash-based alternatives tend to require larger signatures, more storage or communication, or different trust assumptions. Guillemet said SHRINCS should not be expected to provide a compact drop-in replacement for current Schnorr threshold systems.

Hardware performance remains another constraint. Ledger’s analysis says post-quantum key generation and the stateless SHRINCS path can take minutes on some secure hardware because the process performs many SHA-256 operations and requires more memory than Schnorr signing.

Blockstream’s research frames the tradeoff differently, arguing that SHRINCS verification is dominated by SHA-256 calculations and can therefore remain computationally manageable even when signatures consume more bytes. The current draft claims its worst-case verification cost per signature byte is below that of BIP340 Schnorr.

Bitcoin has no adopted post-quantum migration yet SHRINCS is only one part of the current Bitcoin quantum-security discussion. BIP 360, called Pay-to-Merkle-Root, is a separate Draft proposal designed to remove Taproot’s quantum-vulnerable key-path spend and protect users against long-exposure attacks.

BIP 360 does not itself introduce a post-quantum signature algorithm. Its authors state that short-exposure attacks, where an attacker derives a private key after a transaction reveals its public key but before confirmation, may require a future post-quantum signature scheme.

BIP 361 addresses the migration problem more directly. The Draft proposal describes a phased sunset of legacy ECDSA and Schnorr spending after a post-quantum output mechanism becomes available. Its proposed schedule includes an initial migration period followed later by tighter restrictions on legacy signatures.

As crypto.news reported in its BIP 360 and BIP 361 review, one unresolved issue is what should happen to vulnerable BTC that never migrates. Possible approaches can affect coins believed lost, abandoned or controlled by owners who cannot participate in a future upgrade.

Coinbase’s independent cryptography advisory board has separately called for migration planning to begin before a quantum attacker exists.The board supported preparation while leaving questions over freezing or handling legacy coins to the Bitcoin community.

The official Bitcoin BIP repository still lists both BIP 360 and BIP 361 as Draft as of Sept. 17. SHRINCS itself remains an unnumbered draft specification, with its authors warning that the cryptography is prototype work requiring further peer review and a completed security proof.

FAQs Is Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum computers today? No publicly demonstrated quantum computer can currently recover Bitcoin private keys from its elliptic-curve public keys. Guillemet describes the immediate challenge as preparing a migration before such hardware becomes practical.

Has Bitcoin adopted SHRINCS? No. SHRINCS is an experimental draft specification without an assigned BIP number. It is not activated in Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin consensus rules.

What happens if a SHRINCS wallet loses its signing state? The current design allows the seed to recover a stateless signing path, producing a larger 5,777-byte signature. The wallet should not resume compact stateful signing when its previous counter cannot be trusted.

Why is reused SHRINCS state dangerous? Its compact route relies on one-time signing keys. Reusing the same slot for different messages can expose enough information to permit forged signatures and possible fund theft.

Are BIP 360 and BIP 361 active? No. The canonical Bitcoin BIP repository currently lists both proposals as Draft. Neither has been activated as a Bitcoin consensus change.

Moscow Exchange has scheduled the Sept. 22 launch of perpetual futures tied to Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP and Tron indexes, with the cash-settled contracts restricted to qualified investors.

Summary

MOEX will launch five perpetual crypto futures on September 22 for qualified market investors only. Contracts track Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP and Tron indexes without delivering underlying digital assets physically. More than 72,000 qualified investors have traded MOEX crypto futures, the exchange said this week. Crypto futures turnover has exceeded 600 billion rubles since MOEX introduced contracts during last summer. Contracts will be dollar-quoted, ruble-settled and automatically rolled using daily funding calculations under exchange specifications. Moscow Exchange said in itsofficial Sept. 16 announcement that the products will operate as one-day futures with automatic rollover, giving investors exposure to cryptocurrency price movements without receiving or transferring the underlying digital assets. The exchange’s contract specification is set to take effect on Sept. 22.

The Sept. 16 announcement remains the latest MOEX launch notice located as of Sept. 17. No subsequent exchange notice reviewed changed the scheduled Sept. 22 start.

🇷🇺 BIG: Russia's largest exchange, the Moscow Exchange, will launch perpetual futures on BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP and TRX indices on September 22, available only to qualified investors. pic.twitter.com/H0lBUHGONJ

— The Crypto Johannes (@TheCryptoJonny) September 17, 2026 MOEX perpetual futures will cover five crypto indexes The new contracts will track five indexes calculated by Moscow Exchange. BTCUSDF will reference the MOEX Bitcoin Index, while ETHUSDF will follow the exchange’s Ether benchmark. SOLUSDF, XRPUSDF and TRXUSDF will track the corresponding Solana, XRP and Tron indexes.

MOEX already offers monthly futures tied to the same five cryptocurrency indexes. Bitcoin and Ether index futures began trading in November 2025, while contracts linked to Solana, XRP and Tron followed on May 14, 2026. Before the altcoin futures arrived, Moscow Exchange changed how its cryptocurrency benchmarks were calculated. Since May 13, the indexes have used prices from major cryptocurrency exchanges and update every 15 seconds during relevant trading periods. MOEX then uses the indexes to calculate settlement values for its existing contracts.

MOEX introduced indexes for SOL, XRP, TRX and BNB in May using data from Binance, Bybit, OKX and Bitget. At the time, the exchange said the benchmarks could later support new trading instruments. SOL, XRP and TRX subsequently became underlying indexes for monthly futures and will now receive perpetual contracts. BNB is not included in the five perpetual futures announced for Sept. 22.

Contracts settle in rubles without delivering crypto Although each new contract will be quoted in U.S. dollars using its corresponding index value, MOEX said financial settlement will take place in Russian rubles. Investors therefore will not need to hold Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP or Tron to trade the products.

MOEX describes all of its current crypto futures as settlement contracts. At expiration or settlement, no cryptocurrency changes hands; only the financial result is calculated and settled through the exchange and participating brokers. Its product documentation says movements in USD/RUB affect the ruble value of the result because the underlying futures prices are expressed in dollars.

Unlike MOEX’s existing monthly crypto-index contracts, the new instruments are one-day futures with automatic rollover. Funding will be calculated under the exchange’s published specification, with MOEX setting the K1 parameter at 0% and K2 at 0.35%.

The exchange already runs perpetual futures across other asset categories. Its existing perpetual lineup contains 31 contracts covering currency pairs, MOEX indexes, the government bond index, precious metals and Russian and foreign securities. Maria Patrikeeva, managing director of the MOEX derivatives market, called the launch “an important milestone in the development of the Russian derivatives market.” She said the exchange was seeing “strong investor demand” for derivatives tied to digital assets.

Crypto futures demand has passed 600 billion rubles MOEX said more than 72,000 qualified investors have traded its digital-asset futures since the exchange began offering crypto-linked contracts, with cumulative transaction volume exceeding 600 billion rubles. The figures come from Moscow Exchange and have not been presented as Bank of Russia statistics.

The exchange’s current crypto derivatives product page still displays an earlier August snapshot showing 71,000 clients had traded crypto-related products since launch. It lists average daily turnover of 2.5 billion rubles during August and a record daily volume of 10.2 billion rubles on Aug. 21.

The newer 72,000 figure in the Sept. 16 release covers activity after that August snapshot. MOEX did not publish a separate breakdown showing how much of the cumulative 600 billion rubles came from Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP or Tron contracts.

However, Moscow Exchange first entered regulated crypto-linked futures with a contract based on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF in June 2025. An Ether ETF-linked contract followed in August, before MOEX moved to futures directly referencing its own Bitcoin and Ether indexes in November.

As crypto.news reported when the first Bitcoin ETF future launched, access was restricted to qualified investors from the start. The IBIT-linked contract was quoted in dollars and settled in rubles, establishing the same basic cash-settlement structure later used for direct cryptocurrency-index futures.

MOEX’s 2025 annual report said more than 40,000 clients traded its crypto-linked contracts during that year, generating more than 212 billion rubles of turnover.

Russia still limits these derivatives to qualified investors The structure follows rules the Bank of Russia introduced in May 2025 for financial products tied to cryptocurrency prices. The central bank said financial institutions could offer qualified investors derivatives, securities and digital financial assets linked to cryptocurrency values, provided the products did not involve physical delivery of cryptocurrency.

MOEX repeats the restriction on its own crypto-futures page. Both individuals and legal entities must hold qualified-investor status to trade the exchange’s cryptocurrency futures, and brokers determine final client access.

Russia’s rules for direct cryptocurrency transactions changed on Sept. 1, 2026. Under the new legal framework described by the Bank of Russia, both qualified and non-qualified investors can access cryptocurrency through regulated intermediaries, although the two groups operate under different limits.

Non-qualified investors must pass a test and are limited to purchases of eligible liquid cryptocurrencies worth no more than 300,000 rubles per year through each intermediary. The Bank of Russia identified Bitcoin, Ether and USDT for retail access under its liquidity and price-history criteria. Qualified investors can trade cryptocurrencies without the same purchase ceiling after completing the required testing.

As crypto.news reported when the new framework took effect, the Sept. 1 rules created regulated routes for cryptocurrency trading and custody through supervised intermediaries. MOEX’s Sept. 22 perpetual futures remain a separate derivatives product and are limited to qualified investors under the exchange’s specifications.

The Bank of Russia expanded routes to qualified-investor status shortly before the new crypto framework started. Rules effective Aug. 31 allow individuals to qualify through approved Russian financial-market examinations and certificates, including a MOEX Investor Certificate, alongside existing asset, income, experience and education criteria.

Bitcoin Core 32.0 has entered its final release-candidate testing cycle after developers tagged v32.0rc1 on Sept. 14, bringing fee estimation, block-validation performance and security fixes closer to a planned Oct. 10 release.

Summary

Bitcoin Core 32.0 entered release-candidate testing September 14, with final tagging targeted for October 10. New fee estimation combines block history with current mempool conditions and may recommend lower fees. Block validation now prefetches previous outputs across eight worker threads by default, reducing disk waits. A wallet notification flaw could let authenticated users execute commands on affected non-Windows node systems. Testing found sixteen unauthenticated REST connections could drive memory use to roughly three gigabytes quickly. The Bitcoin Core project’s official GitHub release shows v32.0rc1 at commit d0231bb, signed with a verified maintainer signature on Sept. 14 at 12:58 UTC. The project’s release schedule still targets Oct. 10 for the final v32.0 tag, although the date remains subject to testing and further fixes.

Version 32 focuses on node software behavior, wallet interfaces, fee calculation, networking and performance. The draft release notes do not list a change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules, meaning the update does not redefine which transactions or blocks the network considers valid.

Bitcoin Core 32 targets Oct. 10 after RC1 tag Developers entered feature freeze on Aug. 20, limiting work to fixes needed before release. On Sept. 14, they split the 32.x branch from the main development branch and started the release-candidate cycle while development work for version 33 resumed separately.

The first candidate is intended for node operators, wallet developers and other users to test before developers decide whether the code is ready for a stable release. Bitcoin Core opened a dedicated 32.0 release-candidate testing feedback issue on Sept. 15, one day after RC1 was tagged.

The project asks testers to use the testing guide for RC-specific checks and report software problems through separate GitHub issues. No final v32.0 binary has been released as of Sept. 16.

Bitcoin Core does not update automatically. Operators choose when to install new versions, meaning older releases can remain active after newer software becomes available.

That manual upgrade model has mattered in previous security disclosures. As crypto.news previously reported, Bitcoin Core disclosed CVE-2024-52911 in May after the vulnerable 28.x branch reached end of life. The bug had already been fixed in Bitcoin Core 29.0 before technical details became public.

New fee estimator blends mempool and block history One of Bitcoin Core 32’s more visible user-facing changes affects estimatesmartfee, the RPC used by wallets and applications to calculate transaction fees.

Until now, Bitcoin Core’s main estimator has relied on observed confirmation behavior from transactions included in past blocks. Version 32 adds a separate estimator based on transactions currently waiting inside the node’s mempool.

The new mempool estimator produces both economical and conservative estimates from current pending transaction conditions. Bitcoin Core checks recent block activity before using it and can reject the estimate when the mempool appears too sparse or unhealthy.

When both systems produce valid results, estimatesmartfee returns the lower fee estimate. The new method therefore cannot push the existing block-policy recommendation higher through the combined default mode; its role is to lower the recommendation when current mempool conditions support doing so.

That design can respond more quickly after a period of expensive block space ends. A block-history estimator may continue incorporating recently confirmed high-fee transactions, while the mempool may already show fewer transactions competing for confirmation.

The software preserves a way for applications to use the previous method. An added fee_rate_estimator option lets users request block_policy, mempool_policy or the combined default behavior. Bitcoin Core stores the new mempool estimator’s statistics in a separate data file so they can be reloaded after restart.

Wallet fee calculations will use the combined default estimator. The response can identify which estimator produced the selected fee, while higher verbosity levels expose mempool-health statistics for applications that need more detail.

Block validation gets parallel disk prefetching Bitcoin Core 32 changes how nodes retrieve transaction data while connecting blocks, particularly when the needed information must be read from storage.

The software can now prefetch previous transaction outputs, known as prevouts, from the chainstate database across several worker threads while block validation continues. The default is eight prefetch threads, with operators able to raise the setting to 16 or disable parallel fetching by setting it to zero.

Prevouts identify the coins being spent by transaction inputs. Nodes need that information to check whether inputs exist, have not already been spent and satisfy the applicable validation rules.

The improvement is intended to cut time spent waiting for disk reads when a node processes blocks containing inputs not already available in faster memory caches. The effect will vary with storage hardware, cache behavior and node configuration.

Bitcoin Core 32 exposes the setting through -prevoutfetchthreads=<n>, giving operators control over how many threads take part. The draft notes describe the feature specifically as a block-validation performance improvement.

Separate RPC changes give operators more information during AssumeUTXO background validation. After a snapshot-based node reaches the chain tip, getblockchaininfo can now report the progress of the historical chain validation still running behind the active node state.

Security fixes close wallet and HTTP memory flaws Bitcoin Core 32 fixes a wallet notification flaw affecting non-Windows systems under a narrow set of conditions.

The draft notes state that an authenticated RPC user with permission to create wallets could craft a wallet name containing special replacement characters when the node was configured with -walletnotify. Under those conditions, the name could cause arbitrary commands to execute with the privileges of the Bitcoin Core process.

Version 32 changes wallet-notification placeholder replacement so wallet names are treated as literal text. The release tightens wallet naming as well by rejecting certain relative-path names containing . or .. path elements.

A second issue emerged during review of Bitcoin Core’s rewritten HTTP server, which is replacing libevent in version 32.

Developer Matthew Zipkin submitted pull request #36123 after an audit using Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model identified a memory-exhaustion path. While the server handled one request, it could continue reading and queuing data sent by the same connection without an effective size limit.

The first analysis suggested the condition mainly required an authenticated client capable of keeping a request busy. Further testing found that REST traffic created a similar problem without authentication.

A reviewer reported that 16 unauthenticated REST connections pushed one test process from 46 MB of memory to roughly 3 GB in around one minute. After the revised fix, the same test increased memory use by roughly 3 MB over 90 seconds, compared with 3.2 GB before the patch.

The patch was merged Sept. 5, before v32.0rc1 was tagged. Because the rewritten HTTP server is new to version 32, the specific flaw was caught before the server appeared in a stable Bitcoin Core release.

The use of Kimi K3 fits a recent pattern of AI-assisted security review across Bitcoin software. As crypto.news reported in August, Bitcoin Red Team had logged 7,958 potential findings after scanning hundreds of Bitcoin-related open-source projects, though many required human verification before they could be treated as confirmed vulnerabilities.

Resource-exhaustion problems have appeared in other Bitcoin software this year. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Core Lightning confirmed security flaws after reviewing AI-generated reports and warned operators to upgrade or temporarily use offline mode.

PSBT version 2 becomes the default for four RPCs Bitcoin Core 32 changes the default format created by four commands used with Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions.

createpsbt, walletcreatepsbt, converttopsbt and psbtbumpfee will produce PSBT version 2 by default. Developers added an optional psbt_version argument so applications can explicitly request another supported version when necessary.

PSBTs let several wallets, applications or hardware signing devices exchange transaction information before the completed Bitcoin transaction is broadcast. Moving the default to version 2 may require testing by software that assumes Core’s RPC output will use the older format.

The update does not remove the ability to request the previous version. Applications built around the affected RPC commands can set the format explicitly while they test version 2 compatibility.

Wallet tooling receives other changes in the same release. A new exportwatchonlywallet RPC creates a descriptor-wallet file containing public descriptors, transaction history and address-book data without private keys. Bitcoin Core’s offline-signing tutorial now uses that command for creating an online watch-only wallet.

Another new command, derivehdkey, lets a wallet derive an extended public or private key through a path containing at least one hardened step, while addhdkey lets a BIP32 extended key be added without immediately using it to generate output scripts.

PrivateBroadcast receives continued maintenance as well. Crypto.news reported in June that Bitcoin Core 31.1rc1 fixed a network condition that could expose an originating IP address when PrivateBroadcast was used. Version 32 contains further PrivateBroadcast RPC and transaction-relay changes documented in its draft release notes.

The current Bitcoin Core schedule still lists Oct. 10 as the target for tagging v32.0. The RC testing feedback thread opened Sept. 15 remains active, with developers directing testers who find actual Bitcoin Core defects to file separate issues before the final release.

Bitcoin miners faced a challenging environment in the second quarter of 2026, as CoinShares reported that their weighted average ex-tax cash cost climbed to approximately $75,500 per Bitcoin. This figure remains well above the quarter-end Bitcoin price, which closed at $58,400. As a result, listed mining firms are rapidly reconsidering their capital allocation strategies to adapt to this tighter margin landscape.

Q2 mining costs push major operators below cash breakevenMining profitability reached record lows in June, with CoinShares data indicating Bitcoin’s monthly average hash price dropped to $27.7 per PH/s/day during the month. This sharp decrease meant that, for a period, most operators were earning below their cash breakeven points, placing additional stress on the sector.

Hash price has since rebounded to around $38 per PH/s/day, supported by a rise in Bitcoin’s own price towards $77,000. This recovery brought many miners back above the cash cost threshold, providing some relief to operators who endured an especially difficult June.

Mining companies are facing historically high costs and thinner margins, forcing them to reevaluate their exposure to Bitcoin as hash prices remain volatile and monthly difficulty levels limit revenue potential.

Transaction fees continued to account for less than 1% of total block rewards, indicating that mining companies remain heavily reliant on Bitcoin price appreciation or operational cost reductions to maintain profitability.

MetricQ2 2026Latest (July 2026)BTC price$58,400$76,370Average hash price (per PH/s/day)$27.7$38Weighted average cash cost$75,500N/ABitcoin price recovery improves mining outlookBitcoin’s price improved markedly since the end of June. At the time of writing, Bitcoin traded around $76,370, supported by a total market capitalization near $1.53 trillion and daily trading volume of about $32.68 billion according to CoinMarketCap. Rising prices have benefited miners and driven the average hash price back up, temporarily lifting margins across the sector.

CoinShares stated that should Bitcoin remain above $70,000 through the third quarter, this could help stabilize mining profitability. However, operators remain vigilant, balancing operational costs against Bitcoin’s price fluctuations as they plan for the rest of 2026.

Miners diversify with AI data center investmentsSome leading mining companies are reducing their reliance on cryptocurrency production and shifting capacity toward artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, which is now considered more profitable. Core Scientific, a major US-based miner, reportedly paid $41.9 million to cancel contracts for approximately 15 exahashes per second (EH/s) of next-generation Bitcoin mining hardware. In total, at least 35 EH/s is expected to exit the group of publicly listed miners in the coming months.

CoinShares identified at least 225 regulatory or developmental restrictions on data center construction across 30 US states, with 151 restrictions currently active. At the same time, the US energy grid’s interconnection queue has reached nearly 2,600 gigawatts (GW), greatly boosting the value of sites with existing, energized grid access for mining or data services.

Mini dictionary: Core Scientific, a prominent US-based publicly listed Bitcoin mining company, is known for operating large-scale crypto mining facilities and increasingly advancing into AI data center management and infrastructure development.

The appeal of AI has driven a recent surge in data center leases. Recent transactions show that three fully leased AI data centers sold for approximately $27 million per megawatt, compared with valuations below $3 million per megawatt for some miners’ energized but unleased capacity. CoinShares noted that pre-existing grid connections are difficult to reproduce, making them highly valuable assets for both mining and AI operations.

Despite this trend, transitioning power capacity to data centers and AI applications carries risk. Contracted power capacity must be monetized to generate meaningful revenue. CoinShares estimated there is over $100 billion in publicly disclosed AI and high-performance computing (HPC) backlog, supporting about $1.1 billion in annualized revenue across nearly 550 megawatts currently being billed, far less than the 4 gigawatts already contracted.

Leased AI data centers have surged in value due to grid connection scarcity and high demand for compute resources, but monetizing contracted capacity remains a critical challenge.

Marathon Digital Holdings, the publicly listed Bitcoin miner known by its ticker MARA, picked up 1,292 BTC for roughly $98.6 million, working out to about $76,347 per coin. The purchase was executed through FalconX, an institutional prime broker, and surfaced via on-chain analytics from Lookonchain before any formal company announcement.

The timing matters. MARA spent the first quarter of 2026 offloading a substantial portion of its Bitcoin reserves, selling approximately 20,880 BTC for around $1.5 billion. The company channeled proceeds toward operational expenses, liquidity management, and a strategic push into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.

From seller to buyer: MARA’s shifting treasury strategy The Q1 sales cut deep into MARA’s holdings. The company entered late 2025 holding roughly 53,822 BTC, a figure that ranked it among the largest corporate Bitcoin holders in the world. By March 2026, that number had dropped to approximately 35,303 BTC, a reduction of more than a third.

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The September 15 purchase is not MARA’s first move back toward accumulation. The company quietly bought 1,000 BTC through the same FalconX channel back in June 2026, signaling that the sell-heavy posture was transitional rather than permanent.

As of early 2026 filings, MARA’s Bitcoin treasury was valued somewhere between $2.4 billion and $2.7 billion depending on where prices sat at any given moment. That range places MARA in rarefied company, occasionally trading the title of second-largest public Bitcoin holder with MicroStrategy depending on the week and the market.

What FalconX’s role tells us about how big players actually move The fact that both the June and September purchases flowed through FalconX is worth pausing on. Institutional prime brokers exist precisely to let large buyers move serious capital without immediately tipping off the open market. FalconX allows MARA to source liquidity across multiple counterparties simultaneously, keeping slippage low and execution cleaner. The repeated use of the same broker across two separate purchase events suggests this is now a deliberate operational playbook rather than a one-off arrangement.

Lookonchain’s on-chain identification of the transaction is a reminder that even when institutions use off-exchange execution, the final Bitcoin settlement still lands on a transparent public ledger.

Reading the signals for the broader market What to watch: whether MARA follows this purchase with additional disclosures about its revised treasury target, how its AI and HPC infrastructure bets are maturing alongside the renewed Bitcoin accumulation, and whether other major miners interpret this as a cue to rebuild their own reserves ahead of the next potential demand cycle.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the US Senate on Tuesday, September 15, dealing a major setback to the crypto industry’s biggest regulatory push in years.

Senators voted 49-50 on a procedural motion to move forward with the bill. It needed 60 votes. The vote was on whether the Senate should begin considering the legislation, rather than final passage.

So why did it fail?

1. Democrats Wanted Trump to Sell Large Crypto Holdings
This became the biggest disagreement in the final hours.

Republicans made a major concession before the vote. Their final bill required senior officials with a “significant financial interest” in certain crypto companies to either sell that interest or place it in a qualified blind trust.

Democrats wanted to go further.

Their final counteroffer would have required officials with a “very large interest” in a crypto company to sell it, removing the blind-trust option for those holdings. Democratic negotiator Angela Alsobrooks said divestment was the major unresolved issue before the vote.

The difference is simple. Under the Republican proposal, an official could remain financially invested through a blind trust. Democrats wanted very large interests sold completely.

Crypto billionaires have spent nearly $300M on the midterm elections.

Meanwhile, Trump and his family have pocketed more than $1.4B from crypto deals.

Now the crypto industry wants Congress to do its bidding by passing the corrupt CLARITY Act.

The Senate must say NO.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 15, 2026

2. Democrats Wanted the Rules to Cover Trump’s Children
The Republican bill covered senior elected officials, federal judges and their spouses. Democrats wanted the ethics restrictions expanded further, including to children of covered officials. 

That was particularly relevant because Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump have links to World Liberty Financial.

The Democratic counteroffer also sought tighter restrictions around paid crypto promotions.

Republicans rejected those additional changes on Tuesday morning. Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ office argued Democrats were repeating demands Republicans had already considered during months of negotiations.

Today, I voted no on the Clarity Act, legislation meant to regulate cryptocurrency in America.

The ethics provisions in this bill are simply too thin. President Trump, his children, and his Cabinet are making billions of dollars in the crypto space, in part from bilking everyday…

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) September 15, 2026

3. Democrats Still Had Concerns About Who Would Enforce the Rules
Republicans had already moved considerably on enforcement.

Earlier versions gave the US attorney general the main enforcement role. Democrats argued that created an obvious problem: a Justice Department controlled by the president could be responsible for enforcing ethics rules against that same president.

The final Republican bill gave state attorneys general a role in enforcement, one of the concessions President Trump accepted before the vote.

Democrats still argued that the mechanism left too much authority inside the federal administration and could make enforcement difficult in practice.

Hot take: Trump coin, World Liberty, USD1, and Melania coin are why CLARITY failed.

An unprecedented $1.3 billion pocketed. More than all past U.S. presidents made during their terms combined.

— Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) September 15, 2026

4. Banks and Crypto Companies Were Still Fighting Over Stablecoin Rewards
Ethics was the final major obstacle, but another fight remained unresolved.

Banks have warned that stablecoins paying rewards could pull deposits out of traditional banks. That could particularly hurt smaller community banks that rely on deposits to fund loans.

The final CLARITY draft gave the Treasury secretary temporary authority to restrict stablecoin rewards if they caused damaging deposit outflows.

Some lawmakers still wanted stronger protection for banks. Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the Republicans who opposed advancing the bill, raised concerns about community banks.

The CLARITY Act didn't advance in the Senate today, which was a disappointment. While it's possible bi-partisan conversations continue and it lives to fight another day, we can't wait on Congress anymore.

The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need to create clear rules under…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) September 15, 2026

5. Illicit Finance and DeFi Rules Were Still an Issue
Democrats also wanted stronger protections around money laundering, national security and illicit finance.

The latest Republican draft made changes to DeFi regulation and anti-money laundering requirements. However, lawmakers including Elizabeth Warren argued that more work was still needed.

These issues contributed to the wider disagreement, although divestment and presidential ethics were the clearest final sticking points.

Crypto Prices Fell Before the Vote Was Even Over
The reaction has been clearly negative, especially in assets most exposed to U.S. crypto regulation. Bitcoin fell more than 5% during Tuesday’s sell-off, while Coinbase and Circle shares fell as much as 10%. Ethereum dropped more than 6%, while XRP lost roughly 12% at one point.

Part of the decline began before the Senate vote.

Markets could see negotiations breaking down during the morning. That meant traders were already reducing risk before senators officially voted.

CLARITY was also only one source of pressure.

US Treasury yields climbed above 5%, oil prices surged above $100 and markets were preparing for a Federal Reserve interest-rate decision on September 16. Higher interest rates generally make risk assets such as crypto less attractive.

Will Crypto Prices Keep Falling?
Further losses are possible, although CLARITY alone may have already caused most of its immediate damage.

Dennis Porter, co-founder of Satoshi Action Fund, made this argument to BeInCrypto more than a month before the vote.

“I think failure is priced in right now,” Porter told BeInCrypto.

At the time, Polymarket gave CLARITY only around a 16% chance of becoming law in 2026. Porter argued that a failed vote could therefore have less impact on crypto prices than many investors expected.

He also said clear rules could encourage larger institutions to make longer-term crypto investments. He expected that benefit to appear gradually rather than produce an immediate Bitcoin rally.

So far, that argument has partly held up.

Bitcoin suffered a meaningful decline after negotiations collapsed, but there has been no CLARITY-driven market crash on the scale that might occur after a completely unexpected regulatory shock.

Assets more directly exposed to US crypto regulation were hit harder. XRP fell much more sharply than Bitcoin, while Coinbase suffered a double-digit decline.

The next major market driver is now likely to be the Federal Reserve.

If rates rise and the Fed signals further tightening, crypto could face more pressure. A softer message could instead help risk assets recover.

What Happens to the CLARITY Act Now?
The bill is stalled, but there is still a route to revive it.

September 15: The Senate failed to invoke cloture, with the vote ending 49-50.
Before October 5: Senators could reopen negotiations and attempt another procedural vote if Republicans and Democrats reach a new compromise.
October 5-November 6: The Senate is scheduled for a state work period covering the November 3 midterm elections.
After November 6: Congress could try again during the post-election session.
December 18: The Senate’s current schedule lists this as its target adjournment date.
January 2027: If Congress does not pass the legislation before the current Congress ends, lawmakers would have to introduce legislation again in the next Congress.

There is one important procedural detail.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis switched his vote to “no” at the end of Tuesday’s vote, preserving a route to seek reconsideration later. That means another attempt remains possible if negotiators can find enough votes.

For now, the biggest question is whether Republicans and Democrats are willing to reopen the ethics negotiations.

Without a compromise on divestment and enforcement, CLARITY still does not have the 60 Senate votes it needs to move forward.

Disclaimer

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17h35 ▪ 7 min read ▪ by Mikaia A.

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Russia does not shut the door on crypto. It rather chooses who can open it, how far, and especially for what purpose. After a new wave of European sanctions this summer, Moscow accelerated its regulatory project. Putin signed the law, investors now have a regulated market, and the digital ruble has just scaled up. Behind this closely monitored opening lies a fairly clear line: protecting the Russian currency at home, finding more financial freedom elsewhere.

In brief Russia authorizes certain international settlements in digital assets, while maintaining the ban on cryptocurrency payments for purchases made on its territory. Russia authorizes certain international settlements in digital assets, while maintaining the ban on cryptocurrency payments for purchases made on its territory. The digital ruble recorded 87,000 opened accounts and more than 50,000 transactions during its first ten days of large-scale deployment. The Bank of Russia fears that stablecoins will compete with the ruble and simultaneously strengthens tax identification, transaction monitoring, and control of regulated platforms. Sanctions are giving bitcoin a new job in Russia The timeline helps to understand the movement. On July 23, the European Union adopts its 21st sanctions package. Notably targeted are 94 banks and major financial institutions, 33 additional Russian entities subject to transaction bans, and 14 exchanges related to crypto established in third countries. The cross-border A7 network is also under European scrutiny.

Moscow was already looking for other channels. Russian companies can use digital assets for certain international settlements under an experimental regime supervised by the Bank of Russia. Deputy Kaplan Panesh straightforwardly described the purpose of the arrangement: to allow Russian companies to pay foreign partners while bypassing sanctions-related restrictions.

Bitcoin finds here a use that Moscow still does not grant it in Russian shops. It can circulate in certain foreign exchanges, without becoming a daily currency inside the country.

This wide gap is not an ideological conversion. Russia is looking for additional rails as several traditional rails become more difficult to access. Putin does not need to like cryptocurrencies to find the plumbing interesting.

Can the digital ruble win over russians at home? On September 1, another piece arrived on the chessboard: the digital ruble. This time, no decentralized network nor private issuer. The new currency circulates on the Bank of Russia’s platform and represents a third form of the ruble, alongside cash and bank money.

The launch attracted the curious. In ten days, 87,000 accounts were opened and more than 50,000 transactions made. Elvira Nabiullina herself acknowledges that part of the users are still testing the service:

Many people are simply testing to see how it works. We hope they will appreciate the convenience and the free services. 

Major banks must offer this infrastructure since September. Large merchants concerned must also accept these payments.

The project thus offers Putin and the authorities a domestic counterweight to private stablecoins. Crypto can enter the scene; the ruble intends to keep the boss’s chair.

Why Moscow won’t let crypto challenge the ruble Thirteen days after the massive launch of its CBDC, the Bank of Russia cooled the atmosphere. On September 14, its document dedicated to the development of the financial market for 2027-2029 lists digital currencies among risks to watch.

The contentious word is not really bitcoin. It is mainly stablecoins that worry. If Russians start using them as substitutes for the ruble, monetary sovereignty can erode. The regulator also mentions the possibility of total loss for investors and difficulties posed by assets circulating beyond national legal borders.

Regulated crypto will therefore have a short leash. Non-qualified investors can purchase up to 300,000 rubles per year per intermediary. Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT are among the assets selected for regulated exchanges. Domestic payments in cryptocurrencies remain prohibited.

Rosfinmonitoring also gains visibility. Opening an account with a Russian digital custodian now requires a tax number INN.

The law signed by Putin thus opens the market without handing over the house keys. At home, the ruble still does not share its throne.

Can crypto give Russia more room to maneuver abroad? Here is the most pragmatic side of the strategy. Russia monitors crypto at home, while allowing certain uses for foreign trade. This compartmentalization responds to a rather down-to-earth reality: an economy under sanctions continues to import, export, and search for partners willing to settle their affairs.

The European Union perfectly understood this. Its July package does not only target Russian banks. It also affects digital asset providers based in Georgia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus. Brussels can now further target foreign providers used to circumvent its restrictions.

The battle therefore far exceeds Putin, Moscow, and a few exchanges. It concerns the payment infrastructures themselves: who controls them, who can use them, and under what rules?

Russia has some trading partners and is naturally looking for channels less dependent on Western banks. Digital assets can provide a piece of the puzzle, not a magic wand.

Perhaps this is the whole Russian subtlety: crypto becomes acceptable when it helps cross a border, much less when it threatens to undermine the ruble’s border.

Some numbers that better tell the Russian pivot Since September, non-qualified individuals can purchase up to 300,000 rubles worth of digital assets per year and per intermediary. The massive launch of the digital ruble generated 87,000 new accounts and more than 50,000 transactions in ten days. The European package of July 23 targets notably 94 banks and major financial institutions as well as 14 platforms related to digital assets. Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT are among the three assets offered by the Bank of Russia for the new regulated market. Since September, concerned merchants with annual revenues over 120 million rubles must accept the digital ruble. Putin thus seems to have found his balance: letting crypto breathe when it serves foreign exchanges, while strengthening the digital ruble at home. Europe watches the same chessboard from the other side. France pushes the Twenty-Seven to develop euro stablecoins alongside the digital euro, facing the weight of tokens backed by the dollar. Behind Moscow as behind Brussels then returns an old question in new clothes: who will control the currency that will circulate tomorrow?

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Mikaia A.

La révolution blockchain et crypto est en marche ! Et le jour où les impacts se feront ressentir sur l’économie la plus vulnérable de ce Monde, contre toute espérance, je dirai que j’y étais pour quelque chose

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

A Swiss Bitcoin (BTC) payment firm has taken its servers offline as a precaution after a malicious user likely reached internal systems and may have seen customer data.

Neuchâtel-based Swiss Bitcoin Pay, which processes on-chain and Lightning payments for merchants, shut the platform down while it investigates.

In an X post, the company says attackers may have accessed customer email addresses, Bitcoin addresses and IBANs, transaction history, and hashed passwords, and that it is not yet clear whether anything else was reached.

“A malicious user has likely gained access to Swiss Bitcoin Pay’s internal systems. As a precaution, we are temporarily shutting down our servers while we investigate and secure our infrastructure… User funds are safe, and any amounts owed to users will be fully returned.”

The firm says that any payments on its platform go straight to merchants’ wallets, and that any amounts owed will be returned in full.

It remains unclear when the service will be made available again as the firm continues to work to ensure its systems are secure.

“We do not have a reopening date yet, but we are working as quickly as possible to secure everything properly.”

Swiss Bitcoin Pay was founded in late 2022 and operates as a non-custodial Bitcoin payment processor.

Generated Image: Midjourney

XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have sustained robust inflows, significantly outpacing Bitcoin funds over the past several weeks, despite stagnant price movement for the underlying token. In late August, XRP ETFs attracted $110.49 million, marking their strongest inflow week in 2026 so far and boosting cumulative net inflows to an estimated $1.66 billion.

ETF inflows diverge as spot prices stagnateRecent data indicate a stark contrast between institutional demand for XRP and the performance of its spot market. While the price of XRP has hovered between $1.35 and $1.40, exchange data show ETFs have continued to draw new investment. On September 10, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced $282.6 million in outflows, the third consecutive session marked by sizeable withdrawals. In the same period, XRP funds saw inflows of $5.1 million, extending a multi-session streak of positive momentum.

Coinpaper reported that XRP ETFs pulled in $19 million during a week when Bitcoin funds lost $449 million. In another round of trading, XRP ETFs added $14.38 million, while Bitcoin funds lost $236.5 million. This trend has persisted through several market sessions.

XRP ETFs continued to gain new assets even as the underlying token’s price met resistance around $1.36, while Bitcoin investment products lost hundreds of millions in the same period.

This divergence has underscored increased attention to XRP’s supply and demand dynamics within institutional products.

Institutional accumulation and supply dynamicsCurrent estimates show the seven U.S. spot XRP ETFs collectively hold approximately 1.1 billion XRP, or about 1.13% of the total existing token supply. The combined value of these holdings is roughly $2 billion. Continued accumulation by ETFs means a larger portion of XRP sits within institutional investment vehicles instead of circulating freely on exchanges.

Despite the surge in ETF demand, XRP’s price has not reflected a similar bullish momentum. The token has struggled to move decisively above $1.40, and ETF accumulation has not yet triggered a major spot market rally.

Experts point to several factors limiting a stronger uptrend, including ongoing profit-taking, liquidity in exchange markets, and persistent risk aversion among crypto investors.

Bitcoin faces similar headwinds, currently trading below $80,000 as investors anticipate the next Federal Reserve decision and adjust to high inflation and interest-rate expectations.

Reuters analysts emphasize that while structural institutional demand for Bitcoin is increasing, broader macroeconomic risks continue to weigh on both leading cryptocurrencies.

Mini dictionary: ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund), an investment vehicle that tracks the price of an underlying asset or basket of assets and is traded on stock exchanges. In the context of cryptocurrencies, ETFs offer investors regulated exposure to digital assets without requiring direct token ownership.

Technical levels and market outlookThe $1.40 mark has emerged as an important technical level for XRP. A sustained move above this price would signal strengthening spot-market demand and suggest that institutional accumulation is impacting the broader market.

AssetETF Weekly InflowSpot PriceRecent Net ETF FlowsXRP$110.49 million$1.35–$1.40+$14.38 millionBitcoin-$449 millionUnder $80,000-$236.5 millionIf this resistance becomes support, market participants may set their sights on higher targets, such as $1.60 and later $2. However, should XRP drop below $1.30 despite ongoing ETF inflows, it would indicate that institutional accumulation is not sufficient to offset continued selling pressure.

A broader improvement in cryptocurrency sentiment may be required for XRP to break out of its current range. Market participants are also monitoring the CLARITY Act vote, which may add further volatility. Recent trading has seen XRP maintain its stance near $1.40 ahead of the Senate’s procedural assessment.

Institutional demand for XRP has remained strong through ETF products, even as price action stalls and the macro environment adds uncertainty.

Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee has formally endorsed Bitcoin as a scarce, non-sovereign store of value, drawing a direct parallel to gold and recommending it as a legitimate portfolio allocation for clients across the risk spectrum.

What the allocation framework actually looks like The GIC’s recommended Bitcoin exposure ranges from 0-2% for balanced growth portfolios and climbs to 2-4% for clients with a higher risk tolerance and a more opportunistic mandate. Those numbers were formalized in October 2025 and reflect the committee’s view that Bitcoin’s fixed supply and low current penetration make it a credible long-term holding.

Morgan Stanley estimates Bitcoin’s market cap represents roughly 2% of a $130 trillion addressable market. That market is defined as the combined value of global M2 money supply and gold.

The bank’s research projects annualized returns for Bitcoin across several adoption scenarios. A flat-adoption environment produces returns in the neighborhood of 3%. A baseline scenario tied to steady population growth points toward 6-7% annually. Accelerated adoption could push returns closer to 10%. These are scenario-based return estimates grounded in user-growth modeling frameworks typically applied to emerging technology platforms.

Amy Oldenburg walked through the digital gold thesis and the allocation framework in a Bitcoin Magazine interview on September 14, 2026.

The MSBT ETP: putting product behind the thesis In April 2026, the bank launched MSBT, a spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Product. By September 14, 2026, the product had gathered approximately $609 million in assets under management.

Morgan Stanley’s emphasis on client education is deliberate. The bank frames Bitcoin’s case around attributes that traditional asset allocation frameworks can engage with: fixed supply, the absence of sovereign control, and a large but underpenetrated addressable market.

What this means for institutional adoption This is a formal allocation recommendation from a Global Investment Committee, backed by a proprietary ETP and communicated publicly through media appearances. A 2% allocation in a balanced portfolio is small enough to be positioned as a diversification hedge rather than a speculative bet.

The focus on Bitcoin specifically, rather than the broader digital asset universe, is notable. Morgan Stanley’s research zeroes in on Bitcoin’s monetary properties and store-of-value characteristics rather than treating it as part of a broader crypto basket.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Bitcoin has held near $77,000 as investors have reduced risk before the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 16 policy decision, with analysts watching $76,000 support and $83,000 resistance.

Summary

Bitcoin remains range-bound as markets price in an 86%–87% chance of a 25-basis-point Fed hike. Analysts identify $76,000 and $83,000 as the levels needed to confirm Bitcoin’s next direction. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded about $463 million in net outflows last week. A possible Bank of Japan hike could tighten yen funding and pressure leveraged crypto positions. Nansen senior research analyst Nicolai Søndergaard told crypto.news that Bitcoin traders have adopted a cautious position before Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision, even though the expected 25-basis-point rate increase is likely priced into the market.

Weekend trading remained choppy, while capital stayed concentrated in Bitcoin and other liquid cryptocurrencies rather than smaller tokens or leveraged positions. Søndergaard interpreted the setup as investors waiting for central-bank guidance instead of withdrawing from the crypto market completely.

“Investors are not rushing for the exits, but they are not chasing risk either; they are staying in the majors and waiting for the Fed to show its hand,” he said.

Bitcoin needs to break $76K or $83K Holding around $77,000 has left Bitcoin close to the lower end of a range that analysts expect to remain in place until the central bank meetings provide a clearer direction.

Søndergaard said a move above approximately $83,000 or below $76,000 would need strong spot-market volume before he would consider it a valid directional break. Without that confirmation, he expects traders to continue taking short-term positions around the week’s policy events.

“For now, the market still looks range-bound. I would want to see a clean break above roughly $83k or below $76k, backed by strong spot volume, before treating it as a real directional move.”

Bitfinex analysts have identified a similar trading range. According to earlier market analysis, they expect the Fed decision to produce enough volatility for Bitcoin to test liquidity near both $82,000 and $76,000 rather than moving cleanly in one direction.

Market caution has also appeared in U.S.-listed investment products. Bitget Wallet research analyst Lacie Zhang said U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds posted roughly $463 million in net outflows last week, although buyers continued defending Bitcoin near $76,000.

The outflows show that allocation demand has weakened without disappearing, according to Zhang. A separate ETF flow report placed the weekly withdrawal at $462.7 million, while spot Ethereum funds attracted $196.9 million during the same period.

Fed guidance poses more risk than the expected hike Interest-rate futures have placed the probability of a 25-basis-point Fed increase at about 86%–87%, according to Zhang and ViaBTC chief analyst Jeff Ko. Both analysts said the decision itself has already been largely absorbed by the market, leaving the policy statement, economic projections and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference as the main sources of risk.

Zhang said a hawkish surprise could push two-year Treasury and real yields higher, raising pressure on Bitcoin and other non-yielding assets. A decision to hold rates, or guidance suggesting that one increase would be enough, could produce the opposite market response.

Ko tied the change in rate expectations to last week’s U.S. consumer price index report. Headline CPI increased 0.4% from the previous month and 3.4% from a year earlier, with gasoline accounting for more than one-third of the monthly rise, he said.

Core CPI rose 0.3% month over month, one-tenth of a percentage point above consensus, while its annual rate eased to 2.4%, the lowest level since March 2021. Before the inflation report, futures had placed the probability of a quarter-point increase at roughly 65%–70%, according to Ko.

“On balance I think a hike buys credibility with a new chair whose reaction function is still being tested. The more interesting question is whether this is a one-off insurance move or the start of another cycle, and the dots will answer that more clearly than the decision does.”

Longer-dated Treasury yields may provide a more useful signal than rate expectations after the announcement, Ko added. The 10-year yield was near 4.95% by Sept. 10, while the 30-year yield stood around 5.37%.

For Bitcoin, Ko said investors should assess real yields, the dollar, and spot ETF flows together. His constructive scenario requires a rate increase followed by stable or falling yields and continued ETF accumulation, which would indicate that institutional buying is absorbing tighter financial conditions.

CLARITY Act vote adds a second U.S. risk Before the Fed announces its decision, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on Tuesday afternoon. The measure requires 60 votes to advance, leaving Republicans with 53 seats dependent on support from at least seven Democrats.

Ko said prediction markets had reduced the probability of enactment. In his assessment, failure to advance the bill could leave U.S. crypto market-structure legislation unresolved until the 2027 Congress.

A failed procedural vote followed by hawkish Fed projections could compound the effect on crypto markets, Ko added, because the two events would affect regulatory expectations and financial conditions within roughly one day of each other.

Senate Republicans have presented Democrats with a 635-page proposal containing 126 requested changes. The draft includes revised ethics restrictions for federal officials, lawmakers, judges and their spouses, as well as proposed Treasury authority to respond if payment stablecoins cause widespread deposit withdrawals from community banks.

Opposition has also come from state officials. A group of 17 attorneys general, including officials from California, Illinois, Arizona, Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin, challenged the bill before the procedural vote.

BoJ hike could squeeze crypto carry trades Outside the United States, Zhang identified the Bank of Japan as an underpriced source of market risk. Investors widely expect Japan’s central bank to move its policy rate toward 1.25%, but she said the increase could still reduce yen-funded liquidity even if traders have anticipated it.

A higher Japanese rate raises borrowing costs for investors who fund positions in yen and place the capital in assets offering stronger returns elsewhere. As such positions unwind, Zhang said pressure can reach cryptocurrency markets faster than it would following an expected hold from the Bank of England.

“The Fed remains the dominant central-bank signal for Bitcoin because it sets the dollar-liquidity and real-yield backdrop for non-yielding assets. But markets may be underweighting the Bank of Japan.”

Zhang said a less disruptive result would require central banks to describe any tightening as dependent on incoming economic data rather than the start of repeated rate increases. The Bank of England and the Bank of Japan will announce their policy decisions after the Fed meeting.

A rally in crypto markets has stalled as optimism wanes that a key US regulatory bill will progress this week.

The odds of the Clarity Act passing this year, which had jumped above 30% on Polymarket during the US trading session, fell back to 18% early Tuesday in Asia. That saw Bitcoin — which accounts for around 60% of the market value of all cryptocurrencies — retreat from as high as $79,586 to below $78,000 as of 8:40 a.m. in Singapore.

US Senator Mark Warner told reporters at the US Capitol that a group of Democratic negotiators would send a counteroffer to Republicans ahead of tomorrow’s pivotal procedural vote on the Clarity Act, the comprehensive crypto regulation bill that has been stuck in partisan wrangling for a year. The bill will need a number of Democrats to cross party lines to advance and move later to final passage thanks to the Senate’s 60-vote rule for most legislation.

“Odds of a 2026 signing sat above 70% in May, collapsed to the low teens through August and rebounded toward 30% on Monday. That is a market with no stable read,” said Rachael Lucas, an analyst at BTC Markets, citing prediction-market odds. Still, “a counteroffer is consistent with a negotiation that is still live, not one that has broken down,” she said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters earlier Monday that progress had been made in recent days, but he didn’t know if the votes would be there to advance the bill Tuesday.

The biggest sticking point has been ethics provisions that Democrats have seen as inadequate to prevent President Donald Trump from continuing to profit from crypto after he reported $1.4 billion in income last year. But other issues, including concerns from banks that crypto stablecoins could siphon their deposits, have also been the subject of massive lobbying efforts.

Republican senators released a final draft of the bill, with changes addressing some of its most contentious points.

The new version would give the Treasury secretary power to intervene if deposit flight became “detrimental” to community banks. It also added new ethics guardrails for the president and other elected officials holding cryptocurrencies. The new ethics rules would force the president to divest from virtual assets or place significant holdings in a blind trust, or else face financial penalties. It also empowered state attorneys general to play a role in enforcing the ethics rules.

Shares of crypto-related companies rallied Monday, with digital exchange Coinbase Global Inc. jumping 9.2% and stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group Inc. increasing 7.5%.

Still, for some industry observers, the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting meeting may turn out to be the most market-moving event for the digital-asset market this week.

“Markets now price roughly an 86% to 87% chance of a 25 basis point Fed hike on Wednesday, and Bitcoin appears to have absorbed much of that base case by holding in the mid-to-high $70,000s rather than breaking its August structure,” said Lacie Zhang, a research analyst at Bitget Wallet. “The larger repricing risk would come from a hawkish surprise in the statement.”

Strive has purchased 469 Bitcoin for about $36.6 million, raising its corporate treasury to exactly 25,000 BTC as of Sep. 11.

Summary

Strive paid an average of about $77,954 for each Bitcoin acquired between Sep. 8 and Sep. 11. The company funded the $36.6 million purchase through proceeds from its SATA preferred stock rather than common shares. Strive also held about $204.2 million in cash and $49.81 million worth of Strategy’s STRC preferred stock. CEO Matt Cole said the company’s amplification ratio had increased to 53.5%. According to Strive’s Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company bought Bitcoin (BTC) between Sep. 8 and Sep. 11 at an average price of approximately $77,954 per coin.

Before the latest transaction, Strive held 24,531 BTC. The additional 469 BTC brought its balance to an even 25,000 BTC, adding another milestone to the company’s rapid accumulation campaign.

Chief Executive Matt Cole shared Strive’s updated Bitcoin portfolio tracker on X after the purchase was disclosed.

“Wall-breaking season at Strive,” Cole wrote.

The transaction followed several purchases completed within a short period. Strive acquired 1,800 BTC for about $143 million between Aug. 24 and Aug. 28, paying an average price of $79,431 per coin.

As crypto.news reported on Aug. 31, the 1,800 BTC purchase lifted Strive’s holdings to 23,156 BTC and moved the company into fifth place among publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holders at the time. Strive used proceeds from sales of SATA preferred stock and ASST common shares under its at-the-market programs to finance that acquisition.

Later purchases added 1,375 BTC before the latest 469 BTC transaction completed the move from 23,156 BTC to 25,000 BTC. Across the two additions, Strive expanded its treasury by 1,844 BTC after reaching the 23,156 BTC level.

At the stated purchase price, the newest Bitcoin acquisition was completed below the $79,431 average paid for the late-August batch. Strive’s filing provided the purchase period, total cost and average price, allowing U.S. investors to compare the transaction with the company’s earlier disclosures.

The company’s latest total also represents a sharp increase from April, when it held 14,557 BTC. At the time, earlier Strive coverage showed that the firm had climbed to ninth place among public corporate holders after building a Bitcoin balance sheet valued at more than $1 billion.

SATA proceeds funded the latest Bitcoin purchase Rather than using proceeds from common-stock sales, Strive financed the latest $36.6 million purchase through its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, which trades under the SATA ticker.

Preferred shares generally sit above common stock in a company’s capital structure for dividend and liquidation claims. Strive’s use of SATA gives the company a separate route for raising money while limiting the number of common shares issued specifically for the latest Bitcoin transaction.

According to the company’s disclosure, SATA’s nominal issuance value has passed $1 billion. The preferred-stock program has become a central source of funding for Strive’s Bitcoin purchases, although the company has also used common equity during earlier rounds.

The distinction matters to holders of Nasdaq-listed ASST because new common shares can dilute each existing shareholder’s ownership percentage. Preferred-stock financing carries its own costs and obligations, including dividend payments, but the latest deal did not depend on fresh common-share proceeds.

U.S. investors receive details about such transactions through Strive’s SEC filings. The reports show how much Bitcoin the company owns, how it paid for new purchases, and which other assets remain on its balance sheet. Investors can then assess their exposure through ASST alongside the risks created by Bitcoin price changes and the company’s financing structure.

Strive’s common stock had already drawn attention before the latest filing. On Sep. 7, the company signaled that another purchase could be approaching as its holdings stood at 23,156 BTC and ASST traded above $27, its highest level of 2026 at the time. Cole posted a Bitcoin-themed message on X before the later acquisition became public.

Strive reports a 53.5% amplification ratio Along with the updated Bitcoin balance, Cole said Strive’s amplification ratio had risen to 53.5%. The company uses the measure to track the amount of Bitcoin exposure available to common shareholders compared with its net asset value.

Strive’s portfolio tracker presents the ratio as one of its performance measures, although it is not the same as a standard accounting figure such as earnings, revenue or cash flow. Investors therefore need the company’s methodology to understand how changes in Bitcoin holdings, share issuance and other assets affect the reported percentage.

A rising ratio indicates that Strive calculates more Bitcoin exposure for common shareholders relative to the net asset value used in its formula. The figure can change when the company acquires Bitcoin or adjusts its capital structure, including through preferred or common-stock transactions.

Because Bitcoin remains a volatile asset, Strive’s treasury strategy also links the market value of its holdings to movements in BTC. A decline in Bitcoin can reduce the dollar value of the company’s main reserve asset, while a price increase can raise it. ASST shareholders receive indirect exposure through the listed company rather than owning the underlying coins themselves.

Cash and STRC remain on Strive’s balance sheet Apart from its 25,000 BTC treasury, Strive reported approximately $204.2 million in cash as of Sep. 11. The cash balance gives the company an asset that is not directly tied to Bitcoin’s market price and can be used for operating needs or other corporate purposes.

Strive also owned 505,000 shares of STRC, a preferred stock issued by Strategy. The position carried a fair value of about $49.81 million on the reporting date, according to the company’s disclosure.

Strategy designed STRC as a variable-rate preferred security. By holding the shares, Strive has exposure to another U.S.-listed company whose balance sheet and financing programs are closely connected to Bitcoin.

Strive assembled part of its current treasury through its combination with Semler Scientific. The transaction followed an earlier corporate reorganization involving Asset Entities, whose shareholders approved the merger with Strive in Sep. 2025.

At that stage, Strive Asset Management held 69 BTC as of Sep. 3, 2025, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data cited in the report. The subsequent expansion through direct purchases, preferred-stock financing and assets obtained from Semler Scientific raised the company’s reported balance to 25,000 BTC by Sep. 11, 2026.

In brief Strategy repurchased 1,420,467 shares of its STRC preferred stock for $139.3 million between September 8 and 13, funded entirely from its USD Cash reserve. The company bought no Bitcoin for a second straight week, holding steady at 845,050 BTC acquired for $63.73 billion at an average of $75,412 per coin. Roughly $1.05 billion remains under Strategy's $2 billion digital credit securities repurchase program, alongside $1 billion still available for MSTR stock buybacks. Strategy repurchased 1,420,467 shares of its STRC preferred stock for $139.3 million in the week to September 13, according to an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

That pulled back from the $176.3 million the Bitcoin treasury company spent the previous week, when its board doubled the authorization behind its digital credit securities repurchase program to $2 billion. Every dollar came out of USD Cash, the liquidity pool management taps for buybacks, dividends and Bitcoin purchases alike.

Myriad: How much Bitcoin will Strategy hold? Click to make your prediction.The company bought and sold no Bitcoin during the period, leaving its holdings unchanged at 845,050 BTC for a second consecutive week. Strategy acquired that stack for $63.73 billion at an average price of $75,412 per coin, inclusive of fees.

Strategy repurchased none of its STRF, STRK, or STRD preferred shares, and bought back no MSTR common stock either. About $1.05 billion remains available under the $2 billion digital credit securities program, while a separate $1 billion authorization for MSTR stock sits untouched.

The company's dollar balances stood at $5.10 billion in the USD Reserve, which backs preferred dividends and interest payments, and $1.30 billion in USD Cash as of September 13. That's down from $1.44 billion a week earlier, tracking almost exactly with the $139.3 million spent buying back STRC.

Per Strategy's own credit dashboard, STRC's BTC Credit spread—the risk premium implied by pricing the security against Strategy's Bitcoin collateral—sits at roughly 57 basis points, assuming a 10% annualized Bitcoin return, 40% volatility and Bitcoin near $77,266.

That keeps the security in investment-grade territory on Strategy's own scale, which flags anything under 150 basis points that way. The same dashboard puts Strategy's aggregate Bitcoin reserve at $66.2 billion against a blended breakeven annualized return of 2.48%, with a duration of 40.3 years.

To put this in simple terms, a basis point is basically a way for finance experts to talk about tiny percentages—one basis point is equal to 0.01%, so 57 basis points is 0.57%. Think of the "Bitcoin Credit spread" as a safety gap: it represents the extra cost or risk associated with this investment compared to a safer investment.

Strategy has a rule that as long as this risk stays below 150 basis points (1.5%), they consider the investment very safe, or ​"investment-grade."​

The breakeven return of 2.48% is the minimum amount Strategy needs their Bitcoin to grow each year to cover their costs, and the 40.3-year duration means they have a very long time to reach that goal, giving them a massive cushion against short-term price drops.

So, at least on paper, things look OK, especially if Bitcoin keeps going up.

The buyback slowdown comes as Strategy awaits word on an MSCI proposal that could strip "non-operating companies" like Strategy from its global equity benchmarks.

Feedback on that consultation closes September 30, with a decision due October 16 — a date that could move billions of dollars in passive fund flows tied to Strategy's index weighting.

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South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit, recorded 11.2 trillion won, about $8 billion in weekly trading volume, a 6.74% increase from the prior week.

XRP was the most traded asset, ahead of Bitcoin and Tether. The print gives investors a fresh look at where Korea’s retail liquidity is concentrating.

Why XRP Keeps Topping Bitcoin on Korea’s Biggest Exchange Upbit is a KRW-native venue. Volume here is local cash, not recycled stablecoin flows recycled across global order books. Korean retail traders deal directly in XRP/KRW pairs, bypassing dollar-based routes entirely. This is not a one-week anomaly.

XRP trading volume has topped Bitcoin on Upbit before, including during the period when Hana Bank and South Korea’s four biggest financial firms pursued a combined $670 million stake in Dunamu, Upbit’s parent company.

That institutional backdrop explains part of why the exchange draws such deep liquidity.

The pattern goes deeper than preference. BTC and XRP dominate Upbit trading when Korean equities crack, with capital rotating into crypto during domestic stress.

That rotation dynamic has recurred multiple times in 2025 and 2026. The dominance is structural, not a spike. XRP has held the top crypto position in South Korea on Upbit for extended stretches.

A single day last year saw over $1.22 billion in XRP volume on the exchange alone, representing more than 22% of Upbit’s entire daily activity.

During peak periods, Upbit’s daily volumes have surged over 270%, with single-day highs reaching $3.81 billion. XRP captured the largest share of
those spikes.

Retail Tape vs Institutional Track: Two Different XRP Stories The Upbit data is one half of the XRP picture. The other half is institutional. On the payments side, Ripple has built a stack in Korea that now includes three bank partnerships.

Ripple partnered with Jeonbuk Bank to replace SWIFT with real-time payments, cutting multi-day settlement windows for business clients. That followed earlier integrations with Kyobo Life and Kbank.

The infrastructure layer is also expanding. A South Korean giant launched XRP custody services covering Upbit, Coinone, and Korbit, the three largest domestic exchanges.

That is not retail enthusiasm. That is institutional plumbing. Meanwhile, the derivatives market tells a different story. CME has overtaken Binance as the largest XRP futures venue by open interest.

That is a sign institutional capital is rotating into regulated derivatives, even as retail volume lives on Upbit’s spot order books.

The timing lines up. XRP futures volume hit a 6-month high in August, with Binance printing $37 billion and Upbit’s own spot volume hitting $4.68 billion for the month.

Last week’s $8 billion weekly print extends that run. The split is the investor takeaway: Korea handles retail. CME handles institutional. Both are growing at the same time.

For context on the policy backdrop shaping this week’s flows: the Senate CLARITY Act vote is scheduled for September 15, the day after Upbit’s weekly print landed.

The SEC also delayed Teucrium’s leveraged XRP ETF to October 11. Washington is still debating the wrapper. Korea is already trading the asset.

One thing this week’s data does not confirm: a market-cap flip. Ex-Ripple CTO David Schwartz has argued XRP could overtake Bitcoin, but that is a market-cap argument, not a volume argument.

High retail volume on a single exchange is not global adoption. It is participation, and Korea is participating at a structural level.

The regulatory weight on XRP this week is real. The SEC delayed a new XRP ETF as the CLARITY Act Senate vote looms. That delay has not slowed Korean won-denominated demand.

From on-chain data to charting, explore these free crypto tools every investor should know.

Cross-chain liquidity protocol Symbiosis has recovered approximately 15 BTC after an attacker exploited its Bitcoin Bridge, while its native bitcoin route remains suspended and affected liquidity providers await a compensation plan.

Summary

Symbiosis recovered approximately 15 BTC after an attacker exploited its Bitcoin Bridge on Sept. 11. The protocol offered a 20% bounty for further fund recovery while its native Bitcoin Bridge remains paused. Blockaid said the exploit minted roughly 46.1 billion unbacked syBTC, but the attacker sold only around 4.39 WBTC for $336,000. Bitcoin swaps have resumed through Chainflip and THORChain while Symbiosis prepares a compensation framework for affected liquidity providers. Symbiosis said the security incident occurred on Sept. 11 after an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Bitcoin Bridge, prompting the protocol to halt its native BTC routes and isolate the affected bridge from the rest of its infrastructure.

Symbiosis experienced a security incident. At approximately 04:28 UTC on Sep 11, 2026, attacker exploited a vulnerability in Bitcoin Bridge. BTC routes have been halted. Other routes remain operational and safe.

Where we stand:
• Only the Bitcoin Bridge was affected, and it is…

— Symbiosis (@symbiosis_fi) September 11, 2026 The recovered bitcoin has been moved to a team-controlled multisig wallet. Symbiosis has not disclosed a final loss figure, saying its accounting work is still underway as it contacts liquidity providers affected by the incident.

The protocol initially offered the attacker a white-hat bounty equal to 20% of the funds if the remaining assets were returned by Sept. 13. Symbiosis said that after the deadline, the same 20% reward would be offered to anyone who provides information that leads to further fund recovery.

Symbiosis Bitcoin Bridge remains paused The exploit was limited to Symbiosis’ native Bitcoin Bridge, according to the protocol, while routes involving EVM networks, TRON and TON continued to operate. Its Octopools product and relayer network remained online during the response.

Bitcoin swaps have since resumed through third-party integrations with Chainflip and THORChain, giving users an alternative route while the protocol keeps its own bridge offline.

Symbiosis has not given a date for restoring the native Bitcoin Bridge. The team has said it is working with security researchers and assessing the final impact before providing further details.

The protocol had processed more than $10 billion in transactions since launching roughly five years ago. DefiLlama data cited in the original report placed its total value locked at around $7 million, while recorded bridge volume stood at approximately $3.19 billion since the data series began.

Attention has since turned to liquidity providers exposed through the Bitcoin route. Symbiosis said affected LPs are being contacted directly and that a compensation framework is under preparation, with eligibility criteria expected to be released separately.

Unbacked syBTC mint reached roughly 46.1 billion tokens Blockchain security firm Blockaid identified a much larger token mint behind the exploit than the amount the attacker was ultimately able to convert into other assets.

According to Blockaid, a call made to Symbiosis’ BridgeV2 contract on BNB Chain resulted in roughly 46.1 billion syBTC being minted and sent to a newly created address.

🚨Community alert: Blockaid detected an ongoing exploit on @symbiosis_fi on BSC.

Signed BridgeV2 receive minted ~2^62 raw syBTC (8 decimals; face value ~46.1B) to a fresh EOA; same beneficiary dumped ~4.39 WBTC on Ethereum Uni V4.

~$336k realized WBTC proceeds so far.

— Blockaid (@blockaid_) September 11, 2026 The unauthorized quantity was more than 2,000 times Bitcoin’s fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins. The figure represented synthetic tokens created through the affected bridge contract, not newly created BTC on the Bitcoin network.

Despite the size of the mint, Blockaid said the apparent attacker was able to sell only around 4.39 WBTC through Uniswap v4 on Ethereum, generating approximately $336,000 in proceeds.

DeFiLlama similarly classified the incident as an “unbacked cross-chain mint” and recorded a loss of around $336,000.

The difference between the number of synthetic tokens created and the funds eventually extracted resembles previous bridge incidents in which attackers gained the ability to create unbacked representations of an asset but faced limits when trying to exchange them for liquid, fully backed assets.

Recent bridge exploits produced similar gaps A separate Bitcoin-linked bridge incident occurred days earlier on Blockstream’s Liquid Network, where an attacker exploited a bug to create approximately 4,000 unbacked L-BTC before redeeming the tokens against bitcoin held by the network.

As crypto.news previously reported, the parties behind the Liquid exploit subsequently returned 3,400 BTC after Blockstream said the affected bridge nodes had been patched. Roughly 598.5 BTC remained outstanding following the recovery.

Blockstream later rejected the attacker’s demand to keep part of the outstanding bitcoin as a bounty.

Another case in April involved Hyperbridge’s cross-chain gateway, where an attacker minted roughly 1 billion unauthorized DOT-equivalent tokens after gaining control through a forged cross-chain message. The attacker ultimately extracted around $237,000, far below the theoretical value of the tokens created.

Hyperbridge subsequently opened a public bug bounty program in May, offering rewards of up to $50,000 for critical vulnerabilities. Its listed scope included cross-chain message spoofing, access-control flaws, state manipulation and other weaknesses that could affect funds or message integrity.

A more recent incident involving The Sandbox produced another large unbacked mint. In August, a cross-chain bridge vulnerability allowed unauthorized SAND to be minted on Base and BNB Smart Chain, while the project said its Ethereum and Polygon deployments were unaffected.

On-chain researchers estimated that approximately 14.75 million Ethereum-backed SAND left the bridge adapter during that incident, with token sales generating roughly $675,000.

Symbiosis prepares compensation framework for LPs Symbiosis has kept the affected Bitcoin Bridge isolated while maintaining its other cross-chain services and using Chainflip and THORChain to support bitcoin swaps.

The project has not disclosed how the recovered 15 BTC will be distributed or whether all affected liquidity providers will qualify for repayment. The final loss amount remains under calculation.

The initial 20% white-hat offer gave the attacker until Sept. 13 to return funds under the bounty arrangement. Symbiosis said the same percentage would subsequently be available to anyone whose information helps recover more assets.

The team said its relayer network continues to operate as it works through the recovery process and prepares the rules for compensating affected liquidity providers.

“We are contacting every affected LP directly,” Symbiosis said. “We are building a compensation framework and will publish the criteria shortly.”

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) saw clients pull $19.23 million on September 11, making it the largest single-fund redemption of the day across all US spot Bitcoin ETFs. The broader category experienced roughly $13 million in net outflows on the same session, meaning some competing funds actually attracted fresh capital while IBIT bled.

To put the number in perspective: $19.23 million represents roughly 0.03% of IBIT’s total assets under management, which currently exceed $60.6 billion.

What’s actually happening under the hood An important distinction here is that BlackRock isn’t choosing to dump Bitcoin. The company operates as an intermediary. When ETF shareholders decide to redeem their positions, the fund is mechanically obligated to sell the corresponding amount of underlying Bitcoin to generate cash for those departing investors.

The redemptions flow through Coinbase Prime, which serves as IBIT’s custodian. So when you read that “BlackRock sold Bitcoin,” what really happened is that some combination of institutional and retail investors decided to exit their positions, and the fund’s plumbing did what it’s designed to do.

This particular outflow didn’t happen in isolation either. The four trading days from September 8 through September 11 saw approximately $463 million in category-wide outflows across US spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Context: IBIT’s dominance remains unchallenged Since launching in January 2024, IBIT has accumulated roughly $64 billion in cumulative net inflows. IBIT has consistently led the US spot Bitcoin ETF category in both total inflows and assets under management. On strong market days, the fund has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in a single session.

The fund’s AUM exceeding $60 billion as of mid-September 2026 places it among the largest ETFs in any asset class, not just crypto. For context, most ETFs never reach $1 billion in assets. IBIT blew past that milestone in its first week of trading back in 2024.

Other spot Bitcoin ETFs, including products from Fidelity, ARK Invest, and Bitwise, have carved out their own niches but none have come close to matching IBIT’s scale. BlackRock’s brand recognition among institutional allocators, combined with competitive fee structures, has created a flywheel effect where size begets liquidity, and liquidity begets more size.

The macro backdrop driving redemptions Shifting expectations around Federal Reserve monetary policy have been reshaping how investors think about risk assets broadly. When rate expectations change, institutional investors tend to adjust their portfolio allocations across the board, and Bitcoin, as a higher-volatility component of many portfolios, often gets trimmed first during risk-off rotations.

The oscillation between inflow and outflow periods throughout 2026 follows a pattern attributed to institutional portfolio rebalancing and profit-taking strategies. Smaller spot Bitcoin ETFs with thinner AUM would feel a $19 million outflow much more acutely. For IBIT, it’s a rounding error that happens to make a good headline.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Analysis

The Cash App parent filed for an OCC national trust charter to custody bitcoin and stablecoins under federal preemption – joining a charter wave that now has three distinct lanes.

The Wallet That Wants to Become a Bank On September 8, 2026, Block, Inc. filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter under the name Builders Bank & Trust, N.A. The filing positions Block to custody Bitcoin and stablecoins under federal preemption, bypassing the state-by-state money transmitter licensing regime that has constrained its Cash App business since inception. The charter is uninsured and non-deposit-taking — Block is not seeking to become a traditional bank. It is seeking federal authorization to hold digital assets at institutional scale.

Three Lanes in the Charter Wave Block’s filing joins a charter wave that has accelerated through 2026, but the applicants are not all pursuing the same objective. The wave has sorted into three distinct lanes. Circle received final OCC approval in July for its national trust bank, positioning USDC infrastructure under federal oversight. Ripple obtained a conditional charter. BitGo secured final approval. These are crypto-native firms seeking legitimacy through federal chartering — a path from the margins to the regulated center.

The second lane is represented by Wall Street’s institutional pivot. JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, and State Street have expanded digital asset custody through existing banking licenses and subsidiary structures. These institutions are not filing for new charters; they are extending existing ones. The motivation is different — they are defending market share against digital-native competitors, not seeking legitimacy.

Block represents a third category. It is a consumer fintech — Cash App has over 50 million monthly active users — building institutional plumbing. The Builders Bank & Trust filing is not about Wall Street scale or crypto-native legitimacy. It is about converting retail-scale digital asset activity into federally chartered infrastructure. If approved, Block can custody Bitcoin and stablecoins for its massive consumer base without navigating 48 separate state licensing regimes.

The Federal Preemption Play The structural advantage of an OCC trust charter is preemption. Block currently operates Cash App’s Bitcoin buying and selling through state money transmitter licenses — a patchwork of requirements that varies in cost, timeline, and compliance burden across jurisdictions. A national trust charter would replace that patchwork with a single federal framework.

The charter also provides access to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails and correspondent banking network — infrastructure that state-licensed money transmitters cannot directly access. For Block, this means the ability to settle stablecoin transactions and manage Bitcoin custody within the same regulatory perimeter as chartered banks, without the capital requirements and deposit insurance obligations that come with a full banking license.

What the OCC Is Evaluating The OCC’s Digital Assets Licensing page lists specific criteria for national trust bank charters. Applicants must demonstrate that their proposed activities are fiduciary in nature, that they have adequate capital and liquidity, and that their management has the expertise to operate under federal supervision. Block’s application references its existing compliance infrastructure, its proof-of-reserves attestations, and its track record operating under state money transmitter licenses in all 50 states.

The timing matters. The CLARITY Act is heading for a Senate floor vote on September 15. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, established stablecoin-specific regulatory framework. The OCC is processing charter applications within an increasingly defined legislative architecture. Block is filing into a regulatory environment that is crystallizing, not one in search of direction.

The Custody Question Bitcoin custody at institutional scale is the real prize. The OCC’s Interpretive Letter No. 1192 confirmed that national banks can custody cryptocurrency assets. Block’s filing builds on that precedent by positioning custody as the core activity of a dedicated trust entity, not a sideline service of a larger banking operation.

For Cash App’s 50 million users, the immediate impact is limited — they can already buy and sell Bitcoin through the app. But for the institutional clients Block has been quietly cultivating, a federally chartered custody solution changes the calculus. It means regulated entities can hold Bitcoin and stablecoins with a counterparty that operates under OCC supervision, rather than relying on state-licensed custodians or offshore exchanges.

What to Watch The OCC’s processing timeline for national trust bank charters has varied from six months to over a year. Block’s application will face scrutiny on its capital adequacy, its management expertise, and its ability to separate fiduciary activities from its broader consumer fintech business. The charter wave is accelerating, but each application is evaluated on its own merits. Block’s path through the OCC will determine whether consumer fintechs can compete with Wall Street and crypto-native firms for the federal charter infrastructure that is rapidly becoming the cost of entry for institutional digital asset custody.

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UniCredit has already tested the market through a Bitcoin-linked certificate and Italy’s first public-blockchain tokenized minibond

UniCredit is exploring an expansion into digital assets that would add crypto custody and brokerage, and has started selecting a technology provider to hold the assets and handle client transactions, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

As per the report, the discussions are early, and no final decision has been made. Areas under consideration include custody and brokerage, tokenized investment products and fixed-income securities, and stablecoin applications for clients. UniCredit has not disclosed which providers it is weighing, how much it might spend, or when it would choose one.

Any crypto services would fall under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, whose grace period ended on July 1. MiCA requires crypto-asset service providers to hold a license and lets authorized firms passport custody and trading across the 30-country European Economic Area.

Building on Earlier Crypto Moves Selecting an outside technology provider is the path other large banks have taken into crypto custody. Deutsche Bank tapped Swiss firm Taurus for digital asset custody and tokenization after what the vendor called a detailed selection and due diligence process.

UniCredit has already put crypto products in front of clients. The bank opened a five-year, dollar-denominated certificate linked to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) to professional clients in July 2025, with full capital protection at maturity, a cap of 85% on returns and a $25,000 minimum. It was the first product of its kind in Italy.

In December 2025, UniCredit and state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti structured Italy’s first tokenized minibond on a public blockchain, a €5 million issue for E4 Computer Engineering recorded on Polygon.

UniCredit also belongs to Qivalis, an Amsterdam consortium that has grown to 37 European banks across 15 countries and plans to launch a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin on Ethereum in the second half of 2026. The token would be backed one-for-one by euro deposits, subject to approval from the Dutch central bank.

You may also like: Ethena Expands Ecosystem With Launch of Self-Custodial Money App Circle Puts USDC on the Front of Chelsea’s Shirts in Principal Partnership Gemini Signs Apex Letter of Intent to Bring Crypto Event Contracts to Brokerages Banks Push Into Digital Assets Other large lenders have already started selling crypto to clients. BBVA began offering Bitcoin (BTC) trading and custody to private banking clients in Switzerland, and Israel’s Bank Leumi lined up Galaxy to run trading and custody for a 2027 launch covering Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

UniCredit is also expanding in digital markets beyond crypto. On September 8, it bought a minority stake in VC Trade, a Frankfurt platform that digitizes bond and loan deals. The platform sits in debt markets, separate from the crypto plans, and has handled more than €90 billion across over 600 transactions.

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Bitcoin traded near $77,100 on Friday, encountering significant resistance after rallying above $82,000 in recent weeks. The cryptocurrency’s momentum slowed as it approached a dense cluster of technical and on-chain barriers, identified by blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant.

Long-term holders and technical resistance zonesAccording to CryptoQuant, investors who have held Bitcoin for extended periods released up to 539,000 BTC over a 30-day period in 2026. These sales primarily took place in the $77,100 to $80,200 price range, creating an area of concentrated supply where sellers are likely to defend their positions during price advances.

The price remains below the 365-day moving average at $81,700, a technical level that previously rejected rallies in early September. CryptoQuant considers a daily close above this moving average as confirmation of a new bullish phase, rather than just a temporary breakout.

The $77,100 to $80,200 resistance zone is particularly notable because it represents coins released from long-term holders who accumulated during previous market cycles. Each attempt to move above this range is met with selling, and failed efforts can prompt further profit-taking from these investors.

CryptoQuant notes that a decisive break above $81,700 would target the next resistance at $83,600, which is defined by their network valuation model, with a further barrier at the $88,700 trader realized price band. Without a clear move above these points, Bitcoin could remain constrained by existing supply.

Should Bitcoin reverse, the analytics firm identifies the 200-day moving average near $70,000 as the first major support level. A larger accumulation zone exists between $62,000 and $65,000, containing around 476,000 BTC added this year.

Mini dictionary: CryptoQuant, a blockchain analytics and data provider that specializes in on-chain market indicators and technical analysis for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

ETF flows highlight shifting demandUS spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced a notable shift this week, marking four consecutive days of net outflows. On Friday, funds saw net redemptions totaling $13.29 million, pushing the week’s total outflow to $462.73 million, despite $2.60 billion in trading volume.

The persistent ETF withdrawals coincided with Bitcoin trading just below the $77,100 local resistance band. Analysts specify that while these institutional redemptions coincided with price struggles, they do not constitute definitive proof of causation. However, the data suggests that institutional buyers did not provide consistent support during this period of overhead supply.

ETF AssetFriday Net FlowWeekly Net FlowTrading VolumeNet AssetsUS Bitcoin ETFs– $13.29 million– $462.73 million$2.60 billion$97.58 billionUS Ether ETFs+ $216.41 million+ $216.41 millionN/AN/AIn contrast, US spot Ether ETFs received $216.41 million on Friday, completing their fourth consecutive week of net inflows. While the divergence in flows does not directly indicate funds shifting from Bitcoin to Ether, the selective demand highlights shifting sentiment among institutional investors.

Analysts suggest that Bitcoin must secure a strong move above $81,700 to shift focus toward the $83,600 valuation ceiling and then $88,700, where trader cost bases cluster. A failure to do so could lead to repeated tests of the current supply zone and possible declines toward defined support levels.

CryptoQuant emphasizes that the path forward relies on overcoming layered resistance, with each band above $77,100 representing potential hurdles for buyers. Ongoing ETF outflows and long-term holder selling reinforce the need for increased demand before a sustainable breakout can be confirmed.

Strategy, known as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has significantly strengthened its financial position in a move to improve its S&P rating and move beyond the current B- grade.

Liquidity Boost and Credit Rating OutlookThe company has focused on increasing its US dollar reserves, reducing its debt burden, and ensuring continued access to capital markets. S&P Global Ratings recently outlined these three areas as critical for any potential credit rating upgrade for Strategy, which remains six grades below investment status at BBB-.

Chaitanya Jain, Strategy’s head of investor relations, reported noticeable advancements across these fronts. As of September 7, Strategy’s dollar liquidity surged to $6.54 billion, up sharply from $54 million on September 30 of the previous year.

The recent regulatory filing shows this liquidity consists of $5.10 billion in reserves and $1.44 billion in cash. This sizable buffer enables the company to cover interest and preferred stock costs for approximately four years without the need to sell any of its Bitcoin holdings.

Strategy’s net dollar debt has dropped from roughly $8.16 billion after the third quarter of 2025 to about $174 million in September, following the repurchase of $1.5 billion of convertible senior notes due 2029, acquired at an 8% discount.

However, the company still carries additional obligations related to perpetual preferred stock and associated dividends, which remain on its balance sheet.

Debt Management and Capital GenerationBetween January and August 2026, Strategy generated $21 billion in revenue from common and preferred equity, securing new capital every month. The reduction in convertible debt, paired with rising dollar reserves, has provided increased financial flexibility amid volatile market conditions.

S&P Global Ratings continues to express caution regarding Strategy’s reliance on Bitcoin assets to cover obligations denominated in US dollars—a structure that creates risk if the cryptocurrency’s value drops or if capital market access becomes strained.

The company’s substantial dollar reserves offer more time to navigate periods of Bitcoin price volatility or restricted funding options, potentially allowing Strategy to avoid selling digital assets under unfavorable conditions.

Market Dynamics Increase Importance of Real-Time MonitoringManagement of liquidity and prompt reaction to fast-changing market conditions are more important than ever for companies like Strategy, especially when a sudden Federal Reserve decision or a rapid listing of a new altcoin can dramatically shift the market. In this context, many investors are turning to privacy-first solutions such as CryptoAppsy, which integrate real-time charts, smart price alerts, coin-focused news, and macroeconomic data into a single interface. These comprehensive tools help traders avoid losses caused by jumping between multiple platforms, streamlining portfolio monitoring without requiring account signup.

Strategy’s business model is highly dependent on access to capital markets, as it routinely raises funds to boost its Bitcoin holdings. If financing costs increase or market access is constrained, the company’s dollar reserves serve as an important hedge.

Despite the improvements in liquidity and debt reduction, S&P’s decisions regarding a possible rating upgrade will depend on Strategy’s ability to maintain sufficient reserves and manage its obligations through fluctuating market conditions.

The next potential step for Strategy’s credit outlook will rely on the persistence of its liquidity buffer and its effectiveness in balancing Bitcoin exposure against ongoing financial commitments.

In brief Blockstream said it will not "pay a ransom" for the return of about 598.5 BTC still held after the Liquid exploit. The hackers returned 3,400 BTC on Monday, about 85% of what was taken. The company said it will work with law enforcement, exchanges and forensic specialists to trace the rest should it not be returned. Blockstream has refused to pay for the return of the $47 million in Bitcoin still missing from the Liquid Network, abandoning days of negotiation with the people who took it.

"Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure," the company said on Friday. "It is not white-hat activity. It is theft."

To those responsible for the theft of bitcoin from the Liquid Network:

Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds. Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is…

— Blockstream (@Blockstream) September 11, 2026

Around 4,000 BTC was drained from the sidechain on Sunday, worth about $320 million. The attackers returned 3,400 BTC on Monday, leaving 598.5 BTC at the address they withdrew to, where it remains unmoved.

A flaw in how Liquid nodes cache range proof verifications let the attackers mint unbacked L-BTC and swap it for reserve Bitcoin through SideSwap, a federation member holding a peg-out authorization key. The reserve fell to 197 BTC. Blockstream patched the bridge nodes within ten hours and shipped Elements v23.3.4 on Wednesday. Liquid resumed producing blocks and processing transactions Thursday, though peg-outs stay disabled as a precaution while "the final stage of recovery" continues. It warned separately of scammers targeting node operators with fake update sites.

Myriad: Bitcoin's next move? Click to make your prediction.Tuesday's incident report from Liquid struck a different tone, saying it was coordinating "with the white hat hacker" to restart the network.

Its participation in those talks "should not be mistaken for acceptance of the actions taken nor of the terms being demanded," Blockstream said. Those terms were public. In a Bitcoin transaction on Wednesday, the exploiters wrote that Blockstream had allocated "only $1.5M (maybe even 0) to secure $5B assets," calling it "a flagrant neglect of security." They wanted 10% "using your own money as bug bounty," or "you will cause all your holders a 15% loss for your irresponsibility and stinginess."

A precedent Blockstream won't setBlockstream will not be "a party to the precedent that open-source software developed for the good of the Bitcoin community should subject its developers to paying a ransom that far exceeds their economic participation," it said.

Nor will it cover the shortfall from users. "Bitcoin is hard money and can't be minted without costs," it said. "Bitcoin doesn't haircut users to pay a ransom."

Instead it will pursue "every lawful avenue" with law enforcement, exchanges and forensic specialists, should the funds not be returned.  "Transactions do not disappear, and neither does the evidence they leave behind," it warned, closing: "Return the bitcoin."

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Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States posted their most significant daily net outflow in nearly two months, partially offsetting the gains from a recent surge in inflows. The combined outflows suggest shifting sentiment among institutional investors after a strong rally over the previous three weeks, during which net inflows had reached $3.8 billion.

According to market tracking firm SoSoValue, the spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $282.6 million in net assets on Thursday. This figure represents the highest single-day net outflow since July 13, when the funds saw $424.7 million exit the market. The latest movement reduced momentum from the robust inflows that characterized recent weeks.

Collectively, spot Bitcoin ETFs now hold $97.5 billion in total net assets. The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), managed by ARK Invest and 21Shares, led Thursday’s losses with $164 million in outflows. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), a pioneer in the crypto ETF sector, saw $36 million in net withdrawals, while Fidelity’s FBTC lost $33.6 million.

SoSoValue data showed that over the last three sessions, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a combined net outflow of $449 million for the week so far. Despite this reversal, overall cumulative net inflows across all spot Bitcoin ETFs remained positive, totaling $55.17 billion since their inception.

ETFOutflow (Thursday)Total Net AssetsARKB$164 millionData not specifiedGBTC$36 millionData not specifiedFBTC$33.6 millionData not specifiedEther and Solana ETFs also see outflowsSpot Ether (ETH) ETFs, which have attracted growing attention as a major investment product in the digital assets market, registered $29.8 million in net outflows on Thursday. This movement erased the majority of the $34.8 million in inflows observed the previous day, highlighting volatility in investor interest.

Spot Solana (SOL) ETFs also faced pressure, recording $483,000 in net outflows on Thursday. These outflows followed a day when the funds attracted $11.7 million in net new investments, based on SoSoValue figures.

The recent outflows across these leading spot cryptocurrency ETFs coincide with a broader period of market adjustment and profit-taking following substantial gains earlier in the month.

Mini dictionary: SoSoValue is a digital asset market data provider tracking real-time flows and statistics in major cryptocurrency products, including spot and derivative ETFs.

Investors withdrew $282.6 million from US spot Bitcoin ETFs, the highest daily outflow since July 13, causing providers such as ARK 21Shares, Grayscale, and Fidelity to report significant single-day net asset losses.

In brief More than 100 participants working with AI agents reduced the challenge’s resource score from 10.75 billion to 1.496 billion. The leading circuit used 1,151 logical qubits and about 1.3 million Toffoli gates, though comparisons with Google’s results carry caveats. A later design brought the gate count below 1 million; the results exclude the hardware costs of a full attack. Researchers working with AI coding agents reduced a resource benchmark for a key step in a potential quantum attack on the cryptography protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum by 86%, according to a paper posted Wednesday.

In other words, they reduced the computing resources needed for uncovering a wallet’s private key, which could let an attacker steal its funds. When quantum computers powerful enough to carry out a full attack will arrive—a milestone known as “Q-Day”—remains uncertain.

Myriad: Bitcoin's next move? Click to make your prediction.“Although its timing remains uncertain, migration away from vulnerable cryptography is already under way,” the researchers wrote. “NIST has standardized post-quantum replacements, and the initial public draft of NIST IR 8547 proposes deprecating classical public-key algorithms at the 112-bit security level after 2030 and disallowing them after 2035.”

The findings came from ECDSA.Fail, an open competition launched by Eigen Labs in late May. More than 100 participants worked on circuits for secp256k1, the elliptic curve used to secure transaction signatures on Bitcoin and Ethereum. The paper’s authors include researchers affiliated with Theta Labs, MultiVM Labs, Eigen Labs, Trail of Bits, StarkWare, and the Ethereum Foundation.

Researchers designed and tested a quantum circuit that performs a calculation needed to crack Bitcoin’s cryptography, cutting its resource score by 86%. The tests verified the circuit’s calculations; they did not crack a Bitcoin private key.

The challenge measured how much quantum memory and computational work each circuit needed, multiplying its logical qubits by its Toffoli gates, a costly type of quantum operation invented by Tommaso Toffoli in 1980. A lower score means the calculation requires fewer combined resources, potentially making a future attack easier to carry out.

By July 26, participants had cut that score by 86%, from 10.75 billion to 1.496 billion. The leading design used 1,151 logical qubits and about 1.3 million Toffoli gates. According to the study, the score was roughly half of Google Quantum AI’s March benchmark, though differences in testing and counting methods prevent a direct comparison.

“Beyond the resulting circuits, ECDSA.Fail provides a case study of Open Autoresearch: a verifier-gated research process in which human participants and AI agents iteratively generate, implement, test, and share candidate improvements against a common measurable objective,” the researchers wrote.

The report is a part of growing efforts by crypto companies to invest in research to defend against quantum attacks.

In July, Galaxy Digital committed up to $5 million to that work, while nine firms—including BlackRock, Coinbase, and Strategy—pledged a combined $15 million over three years for broader Bitcoin security research, including quantum defenses.

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