Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF clients added $22.38 million worth of Bitcoin, extending the fund’s pattern of steady, if uneven, demand.

Farside Investors data shows the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) recorded a net inflow of $22.4 million on October 9, 2026.

What happened at IBIT A net inflow is simple arithmetic. It is the money investors put into the fund minus the money they pulled out.

BlackRock does not keep that Bitcoin in its own vault. Custody of IBIT’s holdings sits with Coinbase Prime, the institutional arm of the US exchange.

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The October 9 inflow came during a choppy stretch for the fund. On October 7, IBIT saw a $207.7 million outflow, a far larger move in the opposite direction.

Earlier in October, the fund pulled in $195.6 million within the first week of the month.

Bitcoin’s price has recently hovered in a range between $78,700 and $85,000.

The biggest fund in the room IBIT is BlackRock’s flagship US spot Bitcoin ETF. A spot ETF holds the actual asset rather than futures contracts, so every share is backed by real Bitcoin.

The fund is the largest US spot Bitcoin ETF by assets under management, and leads the category in cumulative flows. Total inflows since launch have exceeded $65 billion.

Broader US spot Bitcoin ETF flows were mixed in early October 2026. IBIT often led inflows on positive days, while the category as a whole saw periods of net outflows.

In July 2026, BlackRock cut the minimum threshold for in-kind Bitcoin-to-IBIT conversions from $25 million to $1 million. An in-kind conversion lets an investor hand over Bitcoin directly in exchange for ETF shares, instead of selling coins for cash first. The program has processed over $5 billion in such swaps.

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

Bitcoin has never looked calmer on paper. Its annualized realized volatility has settled into a range of 40% to 47% in 2026, a sharp drop from historical averages above 80%.

The catch is that the calm average hides something stranger underneath. According to CoinDesk, extreme price swings are now happening more often than they did in 2018, one of the most chaotic years in the asset’s history.

The numbers behind the calm Realized volatility measures how much an asset’s price actually moved over a given period. Bitcoin’s version of that figure now sits between 40% and 47% on an annualized basis, compared to earlier market cycles that routinely produced volatility readings above 80%.

Implied volatility has followed the same downward path. That figure comes from options prices and reflects how much movement traders expect going forward. Both the backward-looking and forward-looking gauges have been trending lower heading into 2026.

Then there is the less comfortable statistic. Volatility tied to sudden price jumps has climbed by 71% compared to the first year of spot Bitcoin ETF trading. Those jumps are the tail events, the moves far outside a normal day’s range, and they are now landing more frequently than they did in 2018.

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A drawdown that broke the old pattern Bitcoin hit an all-time high around $126,200 in October 2025. From there, it slid to lows near $58,000 by mid-2026, a drawdown of approximately 53-54%.

Previous cycles saw the asset shed 70-82% after hitting a peak. As of early October 2026, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $85,000, leaving it about 32% below the prior year’s peak.

The staircase market The pattern now emerging has been described as staircase-style price action. Bitcoin climbs gradually, step by step, then drops abruptly when a correction hits.

That shape explains how average volatility and extreme swings can both move in opposite directions at once. Most days are quiet, which drags the average down. The sharp corrections, when they arrive, are concentrated and sudden, which pushes the tail-event count up.

The shift traces back to the post-2024 ETF era. Spot Bitcoin ETFs opened the door for institutional capital to flow into the asset through familiar brokerage accounts. Institutional participation has helped limit cascading liquidations, where leveraged positions get forcibly closed, triggering more selling and further forced closures. Fewer of those dominoes means shorter corrections and shallower overall drawdowns.

What this means for traders and investors For long-term investors, shallower drawdowns of around 53% compared to historical drops of 70-82% make Bitcoin easier to size into a diversified portfolio without one bad year sinking the whole strategy.

For active traders, low average volatility can encourage taking on more leverage, since daily swings feel manageable. When a tail event arrives, those positions are exactly the ones that get wiped out. The 71% rise in jump volatility since the first ETF year suggests that risk has grown, not shrunk.

If implied volatility keeps falling while sudden jumps keep rising, it could mean the market is underpricing the chance of a sharp move. Traders who sell options to collect premium in quiet conditions would be most exposed to that gap.

Buyers waiting for a classic 80% crash to load up may find this cycle does not deliver one. The drop from roughly $126,200 to near $58,000 shows the asset can still cut its value in half within months, but Bitcoin is spending more time behaving like a mature macro asset while its sharpest moments are arriving more often than in 2018.

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

An Ethereum address holding 12,746 ETH has moved for the first time in roughly 10.2 years, according to blockchain tracker Whale Alert.

What happened on-chain Whale Alert flagged the activation of the address, which held 12,746 ETH before stirring. The wallet had sat untouched for about 10.2 years.

Where those coins went, or what the owner intends, has not been publicly reported. The address has activated, and that is the confirmed part of the story.

Analytics firms watching these wallets have described a familiar routine. Long-dormant holders often start with a small test transfer, then follow up with larger movements once they confirm everything works.

A pattern of early wallets returning This address is not the first ancient Ethereum wallet to resurface. Over 2025 and 2026, several others have reappeared, with notable examples moving 10,000 ETH, 2,000 ETH and 40,000 ETH.

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Many of these wallets are linked to early Ethereum holders, particularly participants in the project’s initial coin offering, or ICO. An ICO is a token sale where a project raises money by selling its coins directly to the public before or around launch.

The economics of those early purchases are striking. Original acquisition costs for some of these wallets ran as low as $3,100 for significant ETH holdings, which translates into enormous returns against current valuations.

Several firms track this activity closely. Whale Alert, Lookonchain, Arkham Intelligence and the block explorer Etherscan have all surfaced on-chain movements from these older wallets.

Selling, staking or just checking in When dormant wallets come back, outcomes have varied. Some holders have sent coins to exchanges, which usually signals a possible sale.

Others have directed their ETH toward staking instead. Staking means locking up ETH to help secure the Ethereum network, earning rewards in return.

The research shows some activations have leaned toward staking rather than selling. That points to at least some early holders choosing yield over cashing out.

What this means for the market The immediate market impact of these reactivations has been limited. Individual activations have typically been absorbed without major price swings in ETH.

For traders, the practical takeaway is to watch what happens after the first transfer. Given the documented habit of small test transactions preceding larger ones, the follow-up moves from this address will reveal far more than the initial wake-up.

Destination is the tell. Coins heading to exchange deposit addresses suggest selling pressure, while coins moving into staking contracts suggest a holder settling in for the long haul.

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

THORSday Community Podcast #241 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & patriotsounds | October 8, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube

By Raynalytics

TL;DRChad Barraford used the show to respond to the recent Unchained interview, arguing that discussions of THORChain governance need to distinguish between a minority that can halt activity and the supermajority required to authorize it.Rev-Share is now live with SwapKit. The first credited $25,000 $USDC-to-$BTC trade arrived during the show, beginning a trial intended to win incremental routing without subsidising existing flow.v3.21 has been cut and is in stagenet testing. Monero-related churn edge cases could mean some $XMR work moves to v3.21.1, rather than delaying every other part of the release.Chad described a narrowly scoped AI workflow for tests and performance work. Two draft pull requests tested the THORNode code at roughly 3x faster, while replaying real blocks to check that state does not change.The active set reached 111 nodes during the episode. The team also highlighted RAVN native $BTC delivery, and continued protocol-owned liquidity accumulation.The episode was a dense status check, but its through-line was the difference between what THORChain is testing, what is live, and what still needs proof. Chad opened with a debrief of the Unchained interview, then the conversation turned to a live Rev-Share pilot, the remaining work before $XMR can join the protocol, and a more experimental use of AI in development.

That distinction matters. A new incentive programme is not yet evidence that it will create durable volume. A stagenet release is not a mainnet launch. And AI-assisted code work is not autonomous protocol control. The hosts were clear about those boundaries even as they made the case for moving faster.

1. Chad's Unchained Debrief Focused on Consensus ThresholdsChad used the opening of the episode to respond to questions raised in the recent Unchained interview about THORChain's governance, censorship resistance, and the security implications of its node set. His central argument was that the discussion needs to separate two different thresholds: a minority of 1/3 + 1 can stop activity, while a 2/3 + 1 supermajority is required to authorize protocol action.

That distinction is not a claim that a halt is painless. The hosts described it as a protective power that can freeze the system when something is wrong, not a tool for redirecting funds. Chad argued that an operator acting against its bond providers would face economic consequences, because providers can unbond and move to another operator. Kenton added that many operators manage bonds for multiple providers, rather than controlling all bonded $RUNE themselves.

"Every blockchain in the world can change anything they want with consensus." (Chad)The group compared this tradeoff with proof-of-work and proof-of-stake systems more broadly. Their point was not that every chain has the same implementation, but that no consensus system removes the need to consider who can halt, who can coordinate, and what economic incentives restrain them.

The conversation also returned to the question of selective censorship. Chad argued that freezing a pool based on a percentage of suspicious volume creates no clear rule for when to reopen it, while the hosts said cross-chain infrastructure needs limited safety controls for events such as external-chain failures. These are the team's positions, not settled answers to every governance question, but they explain the reasoning they took into the interview.

https://raynalytics.net/dashboards/rev-share2. Rev-Share Is Live, With New Flow as the TestThe concrete product update was Rev-Share. During the show, the hosts said the first eligible $25,000 $USDC-to-$BTC trade had arrived through SwapKit, after the programme was enabled on both sides. The purpose is not simply to rebate an existing integrator. It is to use a share of fees to improve selected quotes and make THORChain more likely to win routing it would otherwise miss.

Chad pointed listeners to Raynalytics's SwapKit Revenue Share dashboard, where the credit ledger, routed volume, wallet mix, and liquidity fees can be monitored as the pilot develops. The episode's framing was deliberately empirical: give the data time, then decide whether the arrangement is creating profitable incremental volume.

"If it doesn't work for both of us, we ain't doing it at all." (Chad)The hosts also discussed Rev-Share as a possible business-development tool for future wallet and interface integrations. Rather than paying a flat Treasury grant before a partner sends volume, a limited fee share could reward a wallet only as it brings traffic. Kenton used large-wallet integration incentives as an example, while stressing that any allocation remains subject to node governance.

The economics are simple in principle but unproven in practice: a programme can share a large portion of fees from a new route and still improve protocol income if the alternative was no routed volume at all. What matters now is whether the pilot produces that new flow, not whether the mechanism sounds attractive on paper.

3. v3.21 Is Testing, While $XMR Churn Work ContinuesChad said v3.21 has been cut and is being tested on stagenet. The release includes work to re-enable memoless transactions with a dynamic registration cost: as a coin's available memo space fills, registering another entry becomes progressively more expensive. The intent is to make spam costly without relying on a fixed price that can become ineffective.

The main uncertainty is $XMR. The team has encountered churn edge cases in its Monero integration, and Chad said some patches may need to move to v3.21.1 if they cannot be reviewed, merged, and tested in time for v3.21. That is a release-management decision, not an abandonment of the integration. The discussion repeatedly kept $XMR in a pre-mainnet, work-in-progress state.

"We might not be able to get all the Monero patches in for v3.21." (Chad)This follows the liquidity-first approach outlined in the previous podcast recap. A technical release alone would not make a useful $XMR market. Chad said CakeWallet is expected to support THORChain at launch, based on an earlier team conversation, while other wallet support remains an active integration question.

For a transparent release view, the hosts highlighted devops.thorchain.org, which tracks work items and release activity. It is the better source for status than treating a podcast target as a fixed delivery date.

4. AI Is Being Scoped to Tests and Verified Performance WorkChad's most forward-looking update was not an AI agent writing new protocol features unchecked. He described a narrower effort to use AI for two areas where output can be measured: expanding test coverage and finding performance improvements that preserve existing behaviour.

The testing side would add unit, integration, regression, and fuzz tests. The performance side asks an AI system to make a function run faster without changing what the protocol does. Chad said two draft pull requests, produced over a few days, had tested THORNode at roughly 3x faster when combined.

"We can verify its correctness." (Chad)The verification method is the important constraint. The process replays thousands of real mainnet blocks locally and compares each resulting app hash, effectively checking that the protocol state is identical even if execution is faster. Chad said the pull requests still require human approval. He also noted that faster execution does not automatically change the roughly six-second block interval, though it could reduce resource requirements and make erratic block times less likely.

He referred to the broader idea as recursive improvement, not literal recursive self-improvement. Whether this work eventually lives inside Huginn or a separate tool is still undecided. For now, the proposal is an assistive development loop with deterministic checks, not a transfer of governance or deployment authority to an AI system.

5. The Network Added Nodes, Routing and Protocol-Owned LiquidityThe show also captured several live ecosystem updates. After a churn, the active set had grown to 111 nodes. The hosts said it was at least close to the largest active set they had seen, and noted that some operators had waited in standby through months when the protocol could not churn normally.

On routing, RAVN had gone live with native $BTC delivery from Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Avalanche through THORChain. The point is not wrapped Bitcoin exposure. The announced route delivers native $BTC at the destination, extending the set of interfaces that can access THORChain liquidity.

The group also discussed protocol-owned liquidity. They said a deposit of roughly 1 million $RUNE was imminent, which would put protocol-owned liquidity at about 1% per pool. According to the speakers, those positions had already earned about $100,000 in fees. The next question is how the system behaves as new pools, including a future $XMR pool, gain depth and volume.

"We still only need 5% of the market." (Kenton)Those updates do not erase the open questions from earlier in the episode. Rev-Share still needs volume data. $XMR still needs completed churn work and liquidity. But the snapshot was of a protocol adding capacity and connections while it tests the economic and technical assumptions behind them.

What to WatchWhether the SwapKit Rev-Share dashboard shows sustained incremental routed volume, fee generation, and new-wallet activity after the pilot's initial trades.Whether the remaining Monero churn edge cases can be resolved in v3.21, or move cleanly into v3.21.1 without changing the integration's careful launch posture.Whether the new memoless pricing model deters registration spam without creating material friction for ordinary users.Whether AI-assisted testing and performance work continues to pass app-hash replay checks before human review and merge.Whether the active-set growth, RAVN routing, and protocol-owned liquidity provide the deeper distribution and market capacity the team expects.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net

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Solana’s token holders are getting paid again. According to analytics from Blockworks, daily token holder net income on the network has stayed above $400,000 for two straight weeks.

That streak follows three weeks of decline.

What the number actually measures Blockworks starts with a metric called Real Economic Value, or REV. It captures what users pay to use the network, including transaction fees and tips.

From there, Blockworks subtracts operator payments, meaning the costs tied to validators and the operators who run the network’s infrastructure. The formula is simple: Token Holder Net Income = REV minus Operator Payments.

What’s left is the return flowing to SOL holders, both those who stake their tokens and those who don’t.

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The quarterly picture is messier Zoom out, and the story gets less tidy. Blockworks’ quarterly figures show just how much Solana’s holder economics can swing.

During strong stretches of network activity in 2025, quarterly token holder income landed somewhere between $50 million and $100 million.

Q2 2026 looked very different. Token holder income for that quarter came in at approximately -$3.5 million, according to Blockworks data.

Why Blockworks’ framing matters Blockworks has built dashboards that track Solana’s financials in this income-statement style, covering both daily earnings and quarterly results. The approach treats a blockchain less like a tech project and more like a business with revenue, costs, and margins.

What this means for SOL holders Two weeks above $400,000 a day suggests user activity has picked back up, and that the network is generating more value than it spends on operators.

For stakers in particular, this is the metric that connects network usage to their returns.

Still, quarterly results remain well below the $50 million to $100 million range Solana posted during its stronger 2025 periods. And the Q2 2026 loss is a fresh reminder that this number can turn negative when conditions sour.

There are two levers worth watching. The first is demand: whether transaction fees and tips keep climbing as users return. The second is cost: whether operator payments to validators and infrastructure providers stay in check, or grow faster than revenue.

Solana has positioned itself as a high-throughput, low-fee chain. Low fees attract users, but they also mean the network needs a lot of activity to generate meaningful revenue for holders. The swings in Blockworks’ data reflect that trade-off in real time.

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

Getting money into a new blockchain has usually felt like a scavenger hunt. You need an exchange account, the right token, a bridge, and a little faith.

Slush Wallet, the official Sui wallet built by Mysten Labs, wants to skip most of that. On October 6, 2026, it announced an integration with Halliday that lets users fund their wallets from 25 different blockchain networks or with ordinary payment methods like credit cards, bank transfers, and Apple Pay.

The headline change is the removal of the first deposit requirement. For newcomers, that first deposit has long been where interest goes to die.

What the Halliday integration actually does The core feature is simple to describe. A user holding tokens on another chain can send them toward Slush and land with SUI or USDC directly in their wallet.

Behind the scenes, the integration handles bridging and swapping automatically. Bridging means moving value from one blockchain to another. Swapping means trading one token for a different one.

The supported network count stands at 25 chains. That covers the cross-chain side of the problem.

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The fiat side matters just as much. Users can pay with credit cards, bank transfers, or Apple Pay, which removes the need to open an exchange account just to buy a first batch of tokens.

The result, per the announcement, is that cross-chain funding no longer requires exchanges or manual bridging.

Choosing between SUI and USDC on arrival also gives users a practical option. SUI is the network’s native asset, used for fees and staking. USDC is a dollar-pegged stablecoin, useful for people who want to hold value without price swings while they figure out what to do next.

How Slush got here Slush has not always been called Slush. It was rebranded from Sui Wallet and absorbed features from Stashed in April 2025.

Since then, Mysten Labs has positioned it as a full-service front door to Sui. The wallet already offers in-app swaps, staking, and seedless onboarding through zkLogin.

Seedless onboarding deserves a quick explanation. Most crypto wallets ask users to write down a seed phrase, a list of words that acts as the master key to their funds. Lose it, and the money is gone. zkLogin is designed to let people set up a wallet without managing that phrase themselves.

Slush runs as a browser extension and as mobile apps on both iOS and Android. So the new deposit flow lands across every surface where users already interact with the wallet.

Why the first deposit matters so much Onboarding friction is one of crypto’s most stubborn problems. A person might hear about a Sui app, download a wallet, and then hit a wall the moment they need tokens to do anything.

The Halliday integration targets exactly that moment. If a user can tap Apple Pay and end up holding USDC on Sui, the gap between curiosity and actual usage shrinks dramatically.

For existing crypto holders, the cross-chain support addresses a different pain. Someone with assets sitting on another network no longer has to route through a centralized exchange or a standalone bridge to try out Sui. The wallet does the routing.

What this means for Sui and its users The risks are worth keeping in view. Automating bridging and swapping concentrates trust in the integration doing its job correctly. Users who once saw every step now see only the start and the end, which is convenient right up until something goes wrong in the middle.

Fiat on-ramps also typically come with their own fees and verification steps, and users should check the costs presented before confirming a purchase.

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

At 04:23 UTC on October 6, OpenETF introduced a testnet system that turns Hyperliquid portfolios into funds with wallet-held share tokens. The current deployment uses test assets with no value, and the documentation says real funds have no place in it.

The product gives each fund a name, symbol, public terms and an ERC-20-compatible share token. A manager trades the portfolio on Hyperliquid while investors hold the shares in their own wallets. The first release accepts subscriptions in $USDC at net asset value, with a minimum subscription of 100 $USDC unless the manager sets a higher floor.

How the fund spans Hyperliquid Each fund is a vault that operates across HyperCore and HyperEVM. The vault contract on HyperEVM issues shares, prices subscriptions and redemptions, and pays holders. The same vault acts as the trading account on HyperCore, where it holds and trades the portfolio. The contract reads HyperCore directly, so the docs say a subscription or redemption uses on-chain portfolio data in the same transaction.

That structure separates ownership from trading authority. Investors keep the share tokens. The manager directs trading but never receives the vault’s trading key and has no withdrawal path through the contract or OpenETF’s execution service. This does not remove manager risk. A manager, or an attacker who gains trading authority, can still damage the fund through losing or abusive trades.

OpenETF also sits in the execution path. Its shared service checks every order against the fund’s rules before signing it. Trading therefore depends on that service. The same dependency currently applies when the system prices new redemptions and raises the cash needed to pay them. The planned Mandate layer, which would enforce each manager’s published trading limits on every order, is still marked as coming soon.

Managers can create a fund without approval or a creation fee. A manager must buy at least 100 $USDC of the same shares sold to investors and select a commitment ratio of at least 5%. The manager cannot reduce their holding below that ratio. Eligible portfolios can use Hyperliquid’s main exchange perpetuals, eligible spot markets and admitted HIP-3 markets. The docs state that there is no exposure cap for an individual supported market.

Subscriptions, fees and exits Investors subscribe and redeem in $USDC at net asset value. Redemptions can be requested at any time without a lock-up, minimum size or manager approval. Shares transfer between wallets with their redemption rights. Every subscription, redemption and daily accounting point leaves a receipt that users can recompute, while each fund has a Passport containing sourced facts about its terms and history.

A redemption can still take time. OpenETF’s service may need to unwind positions and raise cash on HyperCore before moving it to HyperEVM for payment. Trading losses or market conditions can also reduce the amount ultimately paid.

For a holder, the absence of manager approval removes one discretionary exit gate, but it does not make redemption automatic or immediate. The execution service still prices the request and turns portfolio positions into cash. A transferable share also carries the redemption right to its new wallet, so custody of the token determines who can present that claim. Users therefore need to assess both the manager’s strategy and the platform dependencies before treating the share like an immediately redeemable balance.

The testnet applies an exit adjustment fee to each priced redemption portion except the final shares leaving a fund. The fee starts at 0.1%, adds 0.05% for each unit of notional leverage, and is capped at 1%. It stays in the fund for remaining holders rather than going to the manager or OpenETF.

Managers choose a performance fee from 0% to 50% of pooled profit, with a 20% default, and a management fee from 0% to 2% a year, with a 0% default. Both rates freeze when the fund issues shares. That makes the terms visible before a subscription, but it does not protect an investor from leverage, thin markets or a poor strategy.

The fee design separates compensation for the manager from the cost assigned to an exiting holder. Performance fees settle yearly against pooled profit, while management fees accrue as an annual rate. The exit adjustment is different: it stays inside the fund and rises with notional leverage until it reaches the 1% cap. A prospective holder can inspect those fixed manager rates before subscribing, then compare them with the portfolio’s market exposure and the extra cost that leverage can add at redemption.

What changes from Hyperliquid vaults OpenETF presents the product as a different wrapper around managed Hyperliquid strategies. In its comparison, a legacy Hyperliquid user vault records an internal $USDC balance, charges a 10,000 $USDC creation fee and imposes a one-day lock after a deposit. OpenETF instead gives the investor a transferable share token, charges no creation fee and has no redemption lock-up. The manager starts with 100 $USDC of their own capital.

The share token opens another route for integrations because wallets and applications can read it as a standard token. Collateral use and deeper integrations remain roadmap items rather than current functions. The roadmap also lists allowlisted subscriptions, AI-assisted fund creation, HIP-4 outcome markets, HyperEVM DeFi positions and funds holding other OpenETF funds.

The main user trade-off is visible in the control model. A manager cannot simply withdraw the portfolio, yet investors rely on OpenETF’s execution service, Hyperliquid and $USDC. They also bear the strategy’s trading losses and may wait while positions are unwound for a redemption. The docs describe the deployment as testnet only and do not give a dated mainnet launch. The next unresolved milestone is when OpenETF will open the system to assets with value and whether the Mandate controls will be live before that happens.

The French National Assembly Finance Committee has voted in favor of taxing Bitcoin-to-stablecoin swaps as part of the proposed 2027 budget. This amendment, yet to become law, would treat these swaps as taxable events, even if the conversion does not involve a direct cash-out to euros or other fiat currencies. The proposal marks a shift from the current system, which typically defers taxation on crypto-to-crypto exchanges until conversion into fiat currency. The move is seen as an effort to regulate the growing cryptocurrency market within France.

Market participants appear to interpret this development as introducing regulatory uncertainty, which is likely to have an impact on Bitcoin’s price outlook. Current pricing in prediction markets suggests a decrease in the perceived likelihood of Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by the end of 2026. The odds reflect a cautious stance among market participants, who are weighing the potential implications of this regulatory change on the broader cryptocurrency market.

Key Takeaways The French finance panel’s vote suggests potential regulatory changes, adding uncertainty to the crypto market. Pricing in prediction markets indicates a decrease in the likelihood of Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by year-end 2026. The proposed tax introduces a shift from previous deferral practices, potentially affecting investor sentiment. What to Watch Market observers will be monitoring the next steps in the French legislative process, as further parliamentary approval is required for the amendment to become law. Any developments that solidify or modify this proposal could influence market perceptions and pricing. Additionally, reactions from major market players and potential adjustments in international markets could further affect Bitcoin price predictions.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 0.7% — — View market → December 31 1.4% — — View market → December 31 2.1% — — View market → December 31 2.9% — — View market → December 31 6% — — View market → January 1 2027 27.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 4% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 1% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.2% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.8% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 11.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 10.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.7% — — View market → January 1 2027 7.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 1% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.2% — — View market → January 1 2027 39.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 37.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 20.5% — — View market →

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Meanwhile, the first life insurer licensed to operate entirely in Bitcoin, has raised $37.5 million in new funding led by Bain Capital Crypto, according to the company’s announcement. The Bermuda-based insurer, which counts Sam Altman among its backers, said the round takes its total funding past $180 million as demand for Bitcoin-denominated life insurance grows among wealthy families outside the United States.

The round was led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from existing investors Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital. It follows a surge in international demand for the firm’s policies, particularly across Asia, Europe and the Middle East amid broader macro instability.

What the New Capital Backs Meanwhile plans to direct the funding toward its BTC Life 1-Pay policy, a single-premium whole life product built for high-net-worth clients outside the US that launched in early 2026. It is the company’s second product line after BTC 10-Pay, which is designed for US taxpayers. Since launch, Meanwhile has signed 15 brokers serving wealthy families, including in the insurance hubs of Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland, with partners such as Lioner and Apeiron Group.

How Bitcoin Life Insurance Works A client pays one premium in Bitcoin and receives a guaranteed death benefit in Bitcoin for life. The policy’s value grows in Bitcoin, and after the first year the owner can borrow up to 90% of it with no repayment schedule and no margin calls. Policies can be owned by individuals, trusts or companies, making them a fit for estate planning as institutional adoption of Bitcoin broadens.

Meanwhile’s balance sheet, reserves and audited financial statements are all denominated in Bitcoin, and all policyholder Bitcoin is held with regulated institutional custodians. “Wealthy families around the world already hold Bitcoin. What they haven’t had is a regulated way to pass it on,” said Zac Townsend, co-founder and chief executive of Meanwhile.

What Happens Next The company said net long-term underwriting income has already passed last year’s total and is on track to more than double in 2026. Meanwhile Insurance Bitcoin (Bermuda) Limited holds the first Class IILT license granted by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, received in July 2024 after two years in the regulator’s sandbox. “Meanwhile owns every layer of a regulated life insurer and builds it like an AI-enabled startup,” said Stefan Cohen, a partner at Bain Capital Crypto. The raise also lands as institutional capital keeps flowing into Bitcoin products, from spot Bitcoin ETF inflows to new tokenized offerings.

AUTHOR

Jide Idowu is a skilled freelance writer with expertise in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and digital finance. Known for his ability to break down complex topics into clear, engaging content, Jide crafts articles, blog posts, and analyses that resonate with both beginners and seasoned professionals. His work spans a wide range of subjects, from emerging crypto trends to in-depth explorations of blockchain innovations. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for educating readers, Jide is a reliable voice in the rapidly evolving world of digital assets.

Cryptocurrency researcher SMQKE has released a detailed regulatory timeline for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) concerning official rulemaking for digital assets. The schedule indicates that joint rulemaking will take place between late 2026 and 2027, with full implementation targeted for early 2027. This development signals an important countdown for exchanges and XRP holders as regulatory deadlines approach.

The regulatory timeline and phased implementationAccording to SMQKE’s overview, the legislative process starts with a Senate Committee Markup initially projected for March 2026, followed by a full Senate vote expected in April or May 2026. If approved, the bill would proceed to the President’s desk, with a potential signing in June 2026.

A presidential signature would initiate a Provisional Registration period. During this stage, crypto exchanges can register with the CFTC to avoid enforcement actions, positioning themselves for compliance before the regulations take full effect. Two main dates stand out on the timeline: the start of the Joint Rulemaking Period, projected for late 2026 through 2027, and the conclusion with full implementation in early 2027. At that point, a grace period of 18 months will end, requiring complete compliance from all platforms operating in the US digital asset market.

“Late 2026 to early 2027 marks a critical phase, with the SEC and CFTC finalizing joint rules on token classification and custody. The grace period concludes with full implementation, requiring all platforms to achieve full regulatory compliance.”

EventProjected DateMain ImpactSenate VoteApril–May 2026Bill advances to PresidentPresidential SigningJune 2026Exchanges begin Provisional RegistrationJoint Rulemaking PeriodLate 2026–2027Regulatory rules finalizedFull ImplementationEarly 2027Mandatory compliance for all platformsLegislative setbacks and agency actionSMQKE’s timeline assumed the smooth passage of the CLARITY Act, a significant piece of legislation aimed at clarifying regulations for digital assets. However, the bill failed a Senate cloture vote on September 15, falling short by 11 votes, with every present Democrat voting against it.

Despite the setback, regulatory authorities continued moving forward using their existing legal powers. SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced that the agency would proceed within its statutory bounds. The CFTC issued a similar statement.

Following the failed vote, the SEC introduced the Innovation Exemption on September 17, establishing a conditional five-year framework allowing tokenized stock trading under specific criteria. On the same day, the CFTC extended a no-action position for passive software providers engaged with digital assets. The SEC also issued a proposal regarding crypto custody for investment advisers at the start of October.

This policy approach emphasizes regulatory guidance and exemptions in the absence of clear statutory changes, with the agencies gradually building a framework for compliance across the sector.

Mini dictionary: SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) are the two primary US federal agencies responsible for regulating securities and derivatives markets, respectively. Their joint rulemaking is a process where both regulators create harmonized rules for the oversight of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.

XRP’s role in the upcoming regulatory waveXRP stands among sixteen digital assets classified as commodities following a joint SEC and CFTC interpretation finalized in March 2026. The regulatory framework emerging during the upcoming rulemaking window will directly affect how exchanges and institutional participants handle XRP, especially in terms of custody and classification requirements.

With the failure of the CLARITY Act, more responsibility now rests with regulatory agencies rather than lawmakers. The late 2026 to early 2027 period has become the focal point as agencies advance their rules using existing statutory authority.

Regulatory agencies continue to shape the digital asset landscape by issuing exemptions, proposals, and interpretations in the absence of new legislation, underscoring the importance of the upcoming joint rulemaking period for assets such as XRP.

Spot $XRP exchange-traded funds have staged a modest comeback this week, posting net inflows of $11.31 million despite recording positive flows on just two of the week's trading sessions so far, according to @BSCNews.

ETFs Absorb a Growing Share of XRP Supply The recovery adds to a broader accumulation trend that has gathered pace throughout 2026. That figure reflects steady institutional demand since the funds launched in late 2025, even as weekly inflow volumes have fluctuated considerably.

The supply angle is equally striking. The funds now hold roughly 1.79% of $XRP's total supply, meaning ETFs collectively control close to one in every 50 tokens in existence.

Flow activity has not been evenly distributed across issuers. That kind of divergence between individual products has become a recurring pattern as investors rotate between the competing vehicles.

Context: A Strong Year for XRP ETF Accumulation This week's inflows come after a landmark period for the product class.

Despite the positive fund flows, price action has not always followed.

Still, the structural picture points to tightening supply. As ETFs lock up an ever-larger portion of circulating tokens, the available float for spot market trading continues to shrink, a dynamic that analysts have flagged as a potential price catalyst if demand accelerates.

Sources:
TokenPost: U.S. Spot XRP ETFs Hold $1.697 Billion as Inflows Lose Momentum
TokenPost: XRP Spot ETFs Record $4.7439 Million in Weekly Net Inflows
Startup Fortune: XRP Climbs Toward $1.52 as Spot ETFs Post Their Biggest Inflow Week of 2026

19h05 ▪ 5 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

An Ethereum whale suffered the liquidation of 28716 ETH, valued at 69.69 million dollars, during the market crash on October 9. This amount represents the value of the closed position, while its realized loss would be close to 4.48 million dollars.

In brief An Ethereum whale sees 28716 ETH, worth 69.69 million dollars, liquidated after the price dropped to 2420 dollars. The trader records an estimated realized loss of 4.48 million dollars. Thirty minutes after its liquidation, the whale injects 10 million USDC and opens a new position on 9580 ETH. A drop of ether below 2300 dollars could lead to further forced closures. Crypto liquidations reach 1.19 billion dollars in 24 hours, including 356 million on Ethereum. The Ethereum whale loses part of its position The trader used three addresses on Hyperliquid to maintain significant leveraged positions. Spotted on October 7, they then controlled about 352 million dollars of long bets on bitcoin and ether.

The total included 1140 BTC and 98090 ETH. The positions had been opened about two weeks earlier, at average prices near 82205 dollars for bitcoin and 2604 dollars for ether. They still showed an unrealized gain of 2.66 million dollars before the acceleration of the drop.

The key figures allow to distinguish exposure and real loss :

Hyperliquid liquidated 28716 ETH, valued at 69.69 million dollars ; The realized loss on this portion would reach about 4.48 million dollars ; The trader added 10 million USDC thirty minutes later ; He opened a new long bet on 9580 ETH ; This new position represented about 23.26 million dollars ; His remaining positions reached 78955 ETH after the operation. On-chain tracking Lookonchain states that the whale “continues to bet on ETH upside”. This observation describes its visible positioning, but does not reveal its identity nor any possible hedges held on other platforms.

A new position opened thirty minutes later The price of ether dropped to about 2420 dollars overnight. This fall reached the liquidation thresholds of two portions of the position, located around 2446 and 2424 dollars.

Thirty minutes after these forced closures, the trader transferred 10 million USDC as new margin. He then bought 9580 ETH futures around 2428 dollars, just a few dollars above the level that had just triggered his liquidation.

His total exposure remained close to 288 million dollars after this new commitment. It included about 195 million dollars in long ether positions and over 93 million dollars on bitcoin.

The two main addresses held respectively nearly 39964 ETH at an average entry price of 2647 dollars and 38991 ETH around 2531 dollars. They showed a combined unrealized loss of several million dollars at the time of the snapshot.

This new risk-taking does not prove that the trader correctly anticipates a rebound. It may also be part of a broader strategy, impossible to reconstruct solely from the visible positions on Hyperliquid.

Further liquidations possible below 2300 dollars The next liquidation thresholds are around 2299 and 2286 dollars. With ether close to 2486 dollars, they are about 8% below the current price.

A decline to these levels could lead to new forced closures. Their scale will depend on margin additions, voluntary reductions, and loss evolution. The thresholds shown on Hyperliquid may therefore change before the market reaches them.

The two positions are also distributed across several addresses. Crossing a first threshold would not necessarily mean immediate liquidation of all 78955 ETH.

The public nature of the platform facilitates tracking these bets. However, it also encourages overinterpretations: a major address is not always an isolated investor. It may belong to a fund, a market maker, or an entity that offsets its risk elsewhere.

Ether dominates the wave of liquidations This whale was hit during a widespread purge of derivatives markets. About 1.19 billion dollars of crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, including more than one billion in long bets.

Ether accounted for nearly 356 million dollars in liquidations, ahead of the 298 million recorded on bitcoin. This imbalance remains notable since Ethereum’s market cap is less than one fifth that of bitcoin.

Relative to their market cap, liquidations on ether were about six times more significant. Traders had accumulated leverage while the market moved within a tight range. Breaking the supports then triggered successive automatic sell-offs.

The bet of this whale therefore illustrates less a conviction to follow than a risk inherent to leverage. Even a rebound of ether can improve its margin, but an additional 8% drop would put its positions back under pressure.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

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.

Table of contents

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued rules allowing local asset managers to launch exchange-traded funds tracking Bitcoin and Ethereum, clearing the way for the country’s first domestically listed crypto ETFs. The regulator’s announcement says the notifications take effect October 16.

The funds must be passive vehicles that track a single cryptocurrency and hold at least 80% of their net asset value in that asset over each accounting year. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the only eligible assets in the initial phase, and the funds can trade only on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

What the New Rules Require Crypto ETF custodians must be digital asset custodians regulated by Thailand’s SEC. Asset managers seeking to launch a fund must show adequate organizational readiness, and they may outsource digital asset investment management only to licensed digital asset fund managers. Brokers cannot lend clients money to buy the funds, mirroring the existing ban on lending for direct crypto purchases.

Investors will have to acknowledge that they understand the product’s risks before trading, and securities firms must emphasize appropriate asset allocation. Digital asset custodians and other qualified operators can also register as mutual fund supervisors for crypto ETFs.

A New Route for Thai Investors The change gives Thai investors a domestic option instead of relying on foreign products or direct exchange trading. Until now, Thailand permitted only institutional and wealthy investors to buy foreign crypto ETFs. The SEC also amended its rules so mutual funds and private funds can invest in Thai crypto ETFs, an option previously limited to foreign funds.

The move extends a broader digital-asset policy push in Thailand, which has one of the world’s highest rates of crypto ownership per capita.

What Comes Next In the initial phase, the SEC will not allow depositary receipts referencing foreign crypto ETFs, or brokers to facilitate foreign-ETF purchases for non-institutional clients. The framework follows public hearings held between April and September, which the regulator said drew majority support.

The approval adds Thailand to a growing list of markets expanding crypto ETF offerings, though no fund has yet filed to launch and the first Thai Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF has no confirmed debut date.

AUTHOR

Blockchain analyst specializing in the regulatory impact of government policies on the crypto industry. Known for his thorough research and clear, engaging writing, Emmanuel provides insightful analysis on the latest trends, market shifts, and emerging crypto innovations. His work aims to educate and inform both novice and experienced readers, offering expert perspectives on the fast-evolving world of digital assets. With a passion for staying ahead of the curve, Ogwu is a trusted voice in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

Enterprise Payroll Moves On-ChainThe @StellarOrg network is quietly becoming a backbone for corporate payroll infrastructure. More than 20 multinational corporations have deployed payroll operations on Stellar, routing employee and contractor payments through non-custodial smart rails that bypass legacy banking intermediaries.

The clearest sign of that momentum came in September 2026, when Zebec Network, the Stellar Development Foundation, and @MoneyGram jointly announced the integration of MoneyGram Ramps into Zebec's enterprise payroll platform on Stellar. The integration establishes MoneyGram as the first fiat off-ramp available through Zebec's Stellar network payroll experience, giving employees and contractors a direct path from stablecoin payroll to local currency through MoneyGram's global payments network.

Zebec's deployment on Stellar enables employers to run payroll, contractor payments, and benefits disbursements in stablecoins. Recipients can receive funds into digital wallets as payroll accrues, and choose to retain digital value, spend through supported card products, or access funds in local currency through participating MoneyGram locations.

Cash Out Without a Bank Account @Circle $USDC is accessible on Solana and Stellar at 480,000 or more MoneyGram locations across 170 or more countries and territories. That reach is central to what makes the arrangement practically meaningful for enterprises. Workers in markets with low banking penetration can now receive stablecoin payroll and convert it to physical cash at a local MoneyGram outlet, no commercial bank account required.

The addition of a global fiat off-ramp addresses a critical part of enterprise adoption: enabling recipients to not only receive stablecoin payments, but also to access their earnings in cash for everyday transactions.

According to Stellar's own fintech solutions page, MoneyGram has enabled cash-to-USDC conversion across 170 countries with over $30 million in volume, while a global payroll platform processes $1.2 billion annually via Stellar, with nearly half of all stablecoin payouts reaching 250,000 or more recipients across seven continents.

The arrangement also carries wider structural significance. By threading enterprise accounting directly into MoneyGram's physical agent network, @StellarOrg has effectively connected on-chain corporate finance to real-world financial outposts in markets that traditional payroll providers have long struggled to serve efficiently. Platforms operating on this infrastructure claim to save companies 20 to 25 percent on cross-border payouts.

Sources:
Zebec: Zebec and MoneyGram Expand Enterprise Payroll with Global Fiat Off-Ramp Access on the Stellar Network
MoneyGram Ramps: Stablecoin On/Off-Ramps for Wallet Partners
Stellar.org: Cutting Cross-Border Payroll Costs by 20-25% with Airtm

Zcash price has started recovering from its recent selloff, with easing selling pressure on shorter timeframes raising the possibility of a move back toward $1,300.

Summary

Zcash price recovered above $1,200 after recent losses, with easing selling pressure raising the possibility of a move toward $1,300. Developers are targeting January for quantum resistant payment support, while institutional interest in ZEC continues through ETF developments. ZEC remains above its 50 day EMA near $1,185, although the 20 day EMA at $1,337 continues to act as resistance. The 4 hour MACD remains negative, but its contracting histogram and a CMF recovery to negative 0.03 suggest that selling pressure is easing. A sustained move above $1,250 could bring $1,300 into focus, while a break below $1,185 risks another decline toward $1,100. ZEC was trading near $1,213 on October 9, up approximately 2.2% on the daily session, after recovering from an intraday low of $1,183.24. The token had fallen toward $1,100 during the previous session, following several days of losses that erased part of its September rally.

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency remained more than 25% below its late September peak near $1,670. However, buyers returned after the latest decline, lifting ZEC above $1,200 as traders assessed upcoming network developments and institutional interest in the asset.

The recovery coincided with an improvement in short-term momentum indicators. Selling pressure has eased considerably since the latest downturn, although ZEC has yet to recover several important resistance levels.

Zcash developers target quantum-resistant payments in January One development attracting attention to Zcash is a proposal to introduce quantum-resistant signature support for transparent transactions.

According to developers working on Zakura, a software implementation used to validate Zcash transactions, plan to introduce post-quantum signature instructions in January.

The proposed changes would allow the network to verify hash-based signatures designed to withstand attacks from sufficiently powerful quantum computers. January remains a development target, with no confirmed network activation date.

Initial protections would focus on transparent transactions, which account for a substantial portion of ZEC holdings.

Around 11.96 million of the approximately 16.98 million ZEC issued were held in transparent addresses as of October 8, representing roughly 70% of the supply.

Shielded transactions, which conceal information about senders, recipients and transferred amounts, would require separate protections because they use different cryptographic mechanisms.

The development followed warnings from Ethereum researcher Justin Drake about potential risks to existing cryptocurrency cryptography from future advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Zakura developers have separately introduced an experimental private lookup feature that allows wallets to check balances without revealing which addresses belong to the same user. The feature is available through the Vizor wallet’s private queries setting.

Zcash’s next major network upgrade, NU7, remains another event on the project’s development calendar. The proposed schedule includes an October 20 activation decision and a November 5 mainnet target, subject to confirmation.

Institutional interest provides another potential catalyst Institutional investment developments have provided another source of attention for ZEC despite the recent correction.

Winklevoss Asset Services filed an S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 6 for a proposed spot Zcash exchange-traded fund.

The filing included a nonbinding indication of interest from Winklevoss Capital to purchase up to $100 million worth of shares.

A spot ETF could provide investors with exposure to ZEC through a regulated investment product without requiring them to hold the cryptocurrency directly. However, the proposed fund remains subject to regulatory review, and the indication of interest does not represent a completed investment.

Existing Zcash investment products in Europe have already provided another route for institutional and professional investors seeking exposure to the cryptocurrency.

The latest filing comes as Zcash continues to attract interest in privacy-focused blockchain transactions and technologies designed to protect sensitive financial information.

Nevertheless, neither the proposed ETF nor the network upgrades establishes that institutional buying caused the October 9 price recovery. The immediate improvement in ZEC’s trading indicators provides a clearer basis for assessing whether the rebound can continue.

Grayscale’s existing Zcash investment product provides more context for institutional demand. As crypto.news previously reported, the asset manager converted its Zcash Trust into a US-listed spot ETF on August 25, with approximately $304 million in assets under management at launch.

However, institutional flows have not remained consistently positive. The fund recorded $93.56 million in net outflows during the week ended October 2, including withdrawals of $30.25 million on September 30 and $26.93 million on October 2.

On the development side, Zcash’s NU7 upgrade entered testnet on October 4. The proposed changes would reduce target block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds and introduce a mechanism that allocates part of transaction fees toward future block rewards.

Developers are expected to review the testnet results on October 20 before deciding whether to proceed with the proposed November 5 mainnet activation.

ZEC price analysis ZEC’s daily price structure remains bullish over the longer term, but the latest correction has pushed the cryptocurrency below its shortest major moving average.

The token was trading near $1,213 after recovering from an October 8 selloff that briefly took prices toward $1,100. The decline followed a rally that carried ZEC above $1,600 in late September.

On the daily timeframe, ZEC has fallen below its 20-day exponential moving average at $1,337.05. However, it remains above the 50-day EMA at $1,184.74, the 100-day EMA at $963.72 and the 200-day EMA at $740.22.

ZEC/USDT 1-day price chart. Source: crypto.news The moving averages remain arranged in bullish order, with the 20-day EMA above the 50-day, followed by the 100-day and 200-day averages. The recent decline has therefore weakened short-term price performance without reversing the longer-term moving average structure.

ZEC’s immediate support sits near the 50-day EMA at $1,185, where the latest daily candle has recovered after briefly trading below that level.

If buyers defend this area, the price could move toward $1,250 before attempting to reclaim $1,300. A sustained recovery above $1,300 would bring the 20-day EMA near $1,337 into focus, followed by the $1,400 resistance region.

However, a daily close below $1,185 would weaken the recovery attempt and expose the recent low near $1,100. Further losses could take ZEC toward the psychological $1,000 level, followed by its 100-day EMA near $964.

The daily Aroon indicator provides a separate reading of recent trend activity. Aroon Up stands at 92.86%, while Aroon Down is at 7.14%, indicating that the most recent 14-session high is considerably more recent than the corresponding low.

The high Aroon Up reading indicates that the preceding bullish trend still has influence within the indicator’s lookback period. However, ZEC’s position below its 20-day EMA means the reading has not yet translated into a recovery of the latest price losses.

On the 4-hour timeframe, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence indicator remains negative, although its latest readings suggest that selling momentum is easing.

ZEC/USDT 4-hour price chart. Source: crypto.news The MACD line stands at -36.27, below the signal line at -33.19, while the histogram reads -3.08.

Both lines remain below zero, confirming that bearish momentum continues to dominate the shorter timeframe. However, the histogram has begun contracting after a period of larger negative readings, while the MACD line has started turning upward.

A bullish crossover between the MACD and signal lines would provide stronger evidence that the rebound is gaining momentum. If accompanied by a move above the recent 4-hour high near $1,240, ZEC could attempt to recover $1,250 and subsequently $1,300.

The Chaikin Money Flow indicator has recovered to -0.03 on the 4-hour chart after falling toward -0.20 during the latest selloff.

The recovery toward the zero line indicates that selling pressure has moderated considerably. However, the indicator remains slightly negative, meaning buying pressure has not yet become dominant over the measured period.

A sustained move above zero would strengthen the case for a recovery toward $1,300, particularly if the MACD completes a bullish crossover and ZEC maintains support above $1,185.

Conversely, another decline in CMF alongside a widening negative MACD histogram would suggest renewed selling pressure. Under that scenario, a break below $1,185 could lead to another move toward $1,100, with the 100-day EMA near $964 remaining the next major moving average support if $1,000 fails.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Aave’s active loans rose 8.1% to $12.6 billion. V4 deposits nearly doubled in September. Crypto payments and tokenized equities are driving expansion. Protocol revenue remains 66.6% below last year. Aave is attempting to build new sources of borrowing demand through cryptocurrency-backed payments, tokenized equities and institutional credit, even as its established lending business remains substantially smaller than a year ago.

The decentralized lending protocol recorded its third consecutive month of growth in September, with total value locked (TVL) averaging $31.4 billion and outstanding loans reaching $12.6 billion, according to Token Terminal’s September 2026 report, shared in X.

Yet the recovery remains uneven. Deposits increased 13.9% from August, while active loans grew 8.1%, leaving both measures more than 55% below their September 2025 levels.

At the same time, Aave V4 is expanding into markets that connect blockchain lending with consumer spending and traditional financial assets.

The strategy could broaden Aave’s borrower base beyond cryptocurrency traders, but its success will depend on whether those integrations generate sustained credit demand and interest income.

Aave’s Recovery Reveals a More Concentrated Lending Market Aave maintained its position as the largest onchain lending protocol in September, accounting for 47% of outstanding loans across projects tracked by Token Terminal. Its $12.6 billion loan book was more than twice the size of its nearest competitor, although its market share remained 17.4 percentage points below the previous year’s level.

The protocol’s average total value locked (TVL) reached $31.4 billion, increasing 13.9% from August and marking a third consecutive monthly gain. The recovery followed a prolonged contraction that reduced TVL from nearly $70 billion in September 2025 to approximately $23 billion in June 2026.

ave’s TVL increased for a third consecutive month in September, but remained 55.2% below its year-earlier level. Source: Token Terminal. The latest increase brings deposits back above $30 billion for the first time since April. Nevertheless, the protocol has recovered only part of the capital lost during the first half of the year, leaving its lending markets substantially smaller than in 2025.

Ethereum continued to anchor Aave’s liquidity, accounting for 83.1% of September TVL, equivalent to approximately $26.1 billion. Its dominance has persisted despite the protocol’s expansion across other networks, including Base, Arbitrum and OP Mainnet.

Ethereum remains the backbone of Aave’s liquidity despite the growing presence of newer networks such as Base, Arbitrum and OP Mainnet. The concentration is also evident in borrowing activity. Wrapped Ether (WETH) represented 39.8% of outstanding loans, followed by Tether (USDT) at 22.8% and USD Coin (USDC) at 22.6%.

While newer blockchain deployments are creating additional opportunities for specialized lending, Aave’s overall performance remains heavily influenced by activity on Ethereum.

A separate view from DefiLlama illustrates the recovery at a daily frequency. Its data shows a sharp TVL decline in late April and early May, followed by stabilization during June and July. A more pronounced rebound began in August and continued into September.

Aave’s TVL has recovered significantly since its April low, approaching $18 billion in October. The daily fee series offers an additional perspective. Although TVL has improved since the summer, fees have not shown a similarly pronounced recovery, indicating that the return of liquidity has yet to produce a comparable increase in fee-generating activity.

DefiLlama reports lower absolute TVL figures than Token Terminal, so the two datasets should not be treated as directly interchangeable. Both, however, illustrate the same broad trajectory: a steep contraction followed by a partial recovery.

That distinction sets up Aave’s next challenge. The protocol is rebuilding its liquidity base, but stronger borrowing demand will be needed to translate that capital into sustained lending revenue, particularly as Aave V4 expands into consumer payments and tokenized financial assets.

Consumer Credit Becomes a Growth Engine for Aave V4 The strongest expansion occurred in Aave V4, the protocol’s newer lending architecture.

Average deposits reached $1 billion in September, increasing 92% from August, while outstanding loans rose 84.4% to $301.2 million.

By month-end, deposits had climbed to a record $1.3 billion and active loans reached $402.7 million.

Much of the expansion came from Ether.fi Cash, a payment card that allows users to borrow stablecoins against cryptocurrency holdings rather than selling their assets to fund purchases.

Its Borrow Mode operates through a dedicated Aave V4 instance on OP Mainnet.

For customers, the arrangement provides spending liquidity while retaining exposure to eligible collateral. For Aave, each qualifying borrowing transaction creates activity within its lending infrastructure.

The Ether.fi Cash instance averaged $279.1 million in deposits during September, nearly tripling in its first full month.

Its influence extended to user activity.

Monthly active addresses across Aave increased 58% to 143,400, the highest level since February. OP Mainnet accounted for 43.7% of that activity, largely because of transactions associated with Ether.fi Cash.

The integration demonstrates how lending protocols can reach customers through financial applications without requiring them to interact directly with decentralized finance interfaces.

However, the reported user metric counts active blockchain addresses rather than verified individuals. Automated activity and multiple addresses controlled by the same user can affect the total.

The longer-term opportunity lies in converting payment activity into recurring borrowing balances, rather than relying exclusively on trading-related leverage.

Aave V4’s hub-and-spoke architecture supports this approach by connecting shared liquidity pools to specialized borrowing markets with separate risk parameters.

That structure allows partners to develop dedicated lending products while drawing on Aave’s broader liquidity infrastructure.

Tokenized Equities Bring Traditional Assets Into Lending Aave’s expansion is not limited to consumer payments.

On September 25, Coinbase Tokenized Stocks became available through an Aave V4 Equities Hub on Base, allowing eligible users outside the United States to borrow USDC against seven tokenized equities.

The supported assets include tokenized representations of Apple, Nvidia and Tesla shares.

This introduces a securities-backed lending model into Aave’s onchain infrastructure.

Instead of selling eligible equity exposure to obtain liquidity, a borrower can use tokenized holdings as collateral for a stablecoin loan.

The integration potentially opens a new source of demand from investors whose portfolios extend beyond cryptocurrencies.

However, tokenized equities introduce operational risks that differ from those associated with continuously traded digital assets.

Traditional stock exchanges have defined trading hours, while cryptocurrency lending systems operate around the clock. Differences in market liquidity, pricing availability and redemption arrangements can complicate collateral valuation during periods of volatility.

Aave’s ability to manage those risks will be important as the Equities Hub begins its first full month of operation in October.

September also brought a V4 deployment on Arc, Circle’s blockchain built around USDC.

Launched on September 16, the Arc market averaged $91.1 million in deposits during its first two weeks.

Together, the Base and Arc deployments broaden V4’s reach into stablecoin infrastructure and tokenized financial assets.

Institutional Lending Moves Beyond Onchain Custody Aave is pursuing a separate opportunity in institutional credit through its Horizon market and a proposed custody-based lending model.

Horizon, which supports borrowing against tokenized real-world assets, averaged $396 million in deposits during September, an increase of 6.5% from August.

Outstanding loans grew faster, rising 17.2% to $135 million.

On an annual basis, Horizon’s deposits increased 216.9%, while borrowing expanded 384.7%, making it one of Aave’s faster-growing specialized markets.

The figures suggest increasing demand for stablecoin borrowing against tokenized collateral, although Horizon remains small relative to Aave’s established markets.

Aave Labs has also proposed Custodied Collateral Lending, which would allow institutions to borrow stablecoins against assets held with a regulated custodian such as Anchorage.

The proposal addresses a constraint that can prevent traditional financial institutions from participating in decentralized lending.

Institutional investors may be subject to custody requirements that restrict transferring securities or other assets into onchain smart contracts.

Allowing eligible collateral to remain with a regulated custodian could make blockchain-based borrowing accessible without requiring institutions to abandon their existing custody arrangements.

However, the model would depend on reliable collateral verification, enforceable legal claims and procedures for managing defaults.

The proposal remained under governance discussion in early October and has not yet become an operating lending market.

Aave Labs has also outlined plans for a dedicated V4 real-world asset hub on Avalanche.

The Revenue Test: Can New Markets Restore Lending Income? Aave’s expansion comes against a difficult financial comparison.

The protocol generated $36.5 million in fees during September, up 7.5% from August but down 65.7% year over year.

Aave’s fee generation has remained below its late-2025 levels, despite a modest recovery in recent months. Interest paid by borrowers accounted for $36.1 million, or 99% of total fees.

The Aave DAO retained $5.2 million in revenue, an increase of 4.4% from August but a 66.6% decline from September 2025.

The distinction matters because total fees are not equivalent to protocol earnings.

Borrowers pay interest to access liquidity, most of which goes to depositors. The DAO retains a portion as revenue.

As a result, additional deposits can increase the capital available for lending without producing proportional revenue growth.

Aave’s newer integrations could improve that relationship if they attract borrowers who maintain outstanding loans and consistently pay interest.

For now, V3 remains the dominant contributor to lending activity, with approximately $12.3 billion in average active loans during September.

V4’s $301.2 million average loan book is growing rapidly but remains a relatively small portion of the total.

The protocol’s treasury averaged $161 million, increasing 22.6% from August. Because the treasury includes AAVE holdings, its reported dollar value is also sensitive to changes in the governance token’s market price.

Meanwhile, AAVE’s market capitalization averaged $2.2 billion, rising 32.6% month over month while remaining 53.7% below its year-earlier level.

GHO Growth Adds Another Dimension Aave’s native stablecoin, GHO, continued expanding despite the weaker annual lending figures.

Its average market capitalization reached $679.1 million in September, increasing 2.6% from August and 127.4% year over year.

The increase marked a fifteenth consecutive month of growth.

Aave’s savings product, sGHO, also benefited from an increase in the Aave Savings Rate from 4.25% to 4.50% annual percentage rate in August.

The rate remained unchanged following the October 2 update.

GHO’s expansion strengthens Aave’s stablecoin ecosystem and creates another connection between lending markets, liquidity provision and savings products.

However, growth in circulating stablecoin supply should not be confused with an equivalent increase in protocol revenue.

The economic contribution depends on how GHO is issued, used and integrated across Aave’s markets.

What Matters After September? Aave’s next stage of development will depend on three areas:

Consumer borrowing: Whether Ether.fi Cash produces sustained loan balances beyond its initial expansion. Tokenized collateral: How much borrowing demand emerges from the new Equities Hub on Base. Institutional credit: Whether the proposed custody-based model progresses through governance and attracts participants. The September report shows improving lending activity alongside the emergence of new products that could broaden Aave’s customer base.

Yet the financial figures also establish a clear limitation: the protocol’s recent growth has not restored the borrowing volumes or revenue recorded a year earlier.

Aave V4 provides a route into consumer payments and traditional financial assets, but those markets still need to demonstrate their economic contribution.

For investors and protocol participants, the more important indicators will be sustained growth in outstanding loans, capital utilization and interest-derived revenue rather than deposits or address activity alone.

Alex is a financial markets journalist and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, and he's spent close to ten years trying to answer one stubborn question: what's really driving this? It started in 2016, when Bitcoin refused to make sense to him - and rather than shrug, he stayed with it until it did. That patience became his method. He's less interested in what an asset is doing today than in the plumbing behind it: how liquidity flows, where risk hides, what a chart is quietly telling you that the headline isn't. That lens eventually stretched well past crypto into traditional markets, because the same forces - fear, leverage, incentives, timing - show up everywhere once you know how to look. Most coverage, in his view, insults the reader by stopping at the surface. Price up, price down, moving on. He'd rather leave someone genuinely understanding a move than merely informed that it happened. His path into markets ran through a Tourism degree at New Bulgarian University - proof, maybe, that curiosity beats credentials. With more than 200 deep analyses and over 10,000 articles behind him, he still walks away from most trading days having learned something he didn't know that morning.

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Hedera Logs 807,383 Transactions in a Single Day@Hedera recorded 807,383 transactions on October 8, pushing its real-time throughput to an average of 9.35 transactions per second (TPS). Onchain data shows this was the highest transaction rate for the network in the prior seven days, representing a 152% recovery from a low of 3.7 TPS recorded on October 3.

The daily figure sits above the Q1 2026 average of roughly 708,500 transactions per day, which itself marked a 25.8% quarter-on-quarter increase. The latest print suggests activity on the network has continued to build into Q4.

Context: How Hedera's Performance Stacks UpHedera operates on a hashgraph consensus mechanism rather than a conventional blockchain. Its directed acyclic graph structure means throughput is limited primarily by available bandwidth, not by the architecture itself, giving it a meaningful design advantage over networks where block structure creates a fundamental ceiling.

The current throttle of 10,000 TPS for cryptocurrency transactions on Hedera is a governed limit, not a technical ceiling. Short bursts have already hit 16,000 TPS in production. Against that backdrop, a real-time average of 9.35 TPS reflects everyday organic demand rather than a stress test, and the week-on-week recovery points to a rebound in regular network usage.

Daily transactions on Hedera climbed 25.8% quarter-on-quarter in Q1 2026, averaging 708,500 per day. The October 8 reading of 807,383 comfortably clears that benchmark. The network's transaction mix has historically been led by its Crypto Service, which accounted for 68.4% of Q1 activity, followed by Smart Contracts at 19.7% and Consensus at 8.6%.

Hedera's native token $HBAR is used to pay fees on every transaction processed across these services, meaning sustained activity growth has a direct link to token utility demand.

Sources:
Hedera Hashgraph Statistics 2026: HBAR Network Growth, CoinLaw
Verified Throughput: Why Production Reality Matters More Than Theoretical Maxima, Hedera

Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures and widely recognized for his role on Shark Tank, publicly voiced his support for Avalanche at the Avalanche Summit NY 2026. In a recorded segment shared by the official @Avax account, O’Leary stated his belief in AVAX, highlighting a growing trend of major US corporations recognizing the platform’s advantages.

Institutional Attention on AvalancheThis endorsement from an influential investor marked a significant moment for Avalanche, pushing its reputation as an enterprise-focused blockchain to new heights. O’Leary, who has been active in the crypto market since 2021 and has invested in infrastructure and custody firms, drew attention to shifting institutional interests.

Amplified through Avalanche’s official social channels, O’Leary’s remarks linked AVAX directly to the theme of increasing corporate adoption. Key figures shaping this evolution include Ava Labs, the lead development organization behind Avalanche, and the Avalanche Foundation, which steers ecosystem growth. There is also a rising interest among enterprise clients exploring Avalanche’s customizable Layer-1 solutions, previously referred to as subnets.

Avalanche’s ecosystem now encompasses a range of stakeholders, including AVAX investors, C-Chain developers, institutional desks evaluating Layer-1 networks, exchanges like Coinbase and Binance facilitating price discovery, and custodians such as Coinbase Prime and Anchorage Digital. O’Leary offered a broader view of current industry trends:

I’m back buying crypto, but I was wrong to think Ethereum would dominate. I see more fragmentation until the wind turns and a major stock exchange selects a blockchain for its core infrastructure.

O’Leary’s comments placed Avalanche at the center of the enterprise blockchain conversation as financial institutions reconsider their technological strategies.

Enterprise Use Cases and Metrics ShiftAvalanche’s positioning now reflects a transition from retail-led narratives toward institutional adoption, where enterprise functionalities and corporate integration are key priorities. The platform enables businesses to create permissioned blockchains, utilize interoperable connections to C-Chain, customize gas tokens, and define validator permissions.

The merits of Avalanche are well understood among technologists at S&P 500 companies who recognize the importance of building scalable infrastructure.

The Avalanche Summit 2026 spotlighted tokenization as a transformative sector, with Ava Labs President John Wu revealing that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) had spent over a year testing Avalanche’s technology for its tokenization initiatives. This reflects ongoing due diligence by major institutions considering blockchain solutions.

For investors and industry analysts, key metrics are changing. While Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have broadened access to digital assets, institutional-grade tokenized assets do not yet share the same infrastructure. Avalanche has carried out pilot projects with companies such as JPMorgan Onyx, Citi, Intain, and Deloitte, signaling continued enterprise experimentation.

Performance evaluations now include USDT and USDC supplies on Avalanche’s C-Chain, active Layer-1 deployments, and developer activity, as tracked by organizations like DefiLlama, Token Terminal, and Messari.

O’Leary further set a $1 million Bitcoin price milestone as a target related to quantum computing risks (or “Q-Day”), highlighting the increasing importance of security for Layer-1 chains such as Avalanche, Ethereum, and Solana.

Mini dictionary: Quantum risk (Q-Day), in the context of cryptocurrency, refers to the potential threat posed by advances in quantum computing to blockchain security. Quantum computers could, in theory, break current cryptographic systems, prompting the industry to prepare post-quantum security measures.

Outlook for AVAX PriceFor those tracking AVAX price, the key focus areas now include enterprise adoption rates, stablecoin liquidity on the Avalanche platform, production use cases for institutional Layer-1s, and the platform’s ability to sustain or increase total value locked in DeFi.

The transformation from initial pilot deployments to large-scale, live blockchain integration—especially by institutions like the NYSE or Nasdaq—would represent a major milestone and could shift leadership among competing Layer-1 networks. Yet, sectoral leadership remains distributed: Ethereum continues as the dominant DeFi platform, Solana maintains retail volumes, while modular networks keep competing for corporate interest.

NetworkDeFi DominanceRetail VolumesEnterprise InterestEthereumHighMediumGrowingSolanaMediumHighEmergingAvalancheMediumMediumRisingAny progress regarding regulatory clarity from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on tokenized securities and future market structure laws will influence the pace at which enterprise adoption grows. While O’Leary’s endorsement does not alter Avalanche’s fundamentals instantly, it emphasizes institutional validation as a new driver for AVAX price perceptions.

Moving forward, the sustainability of AVAX price appreciation may depend less on viral moments and more on whether enterprise adoption translates into sustained on-chain activity, higher transaction fees, and strategic institutional allocations.

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) ETFs pulled in $8.17 million Thursday, the only one of four major spot crypto ETF categories to post net inflows that session.

How XRP Broke From the PackSoSoValue data showed Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH)and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) funds collectively lost $319.99 million Thursday, while XRP funds added money:

The divergence held through the whole week, with XRP ETFs adding $11.31 million over the first four trading days while the other three categories combined shed $1.21 billion.

Ethereum logged its eighth straight session of outflows, and Solana extended its own losing streak to four sessions.

Franklin’s XRPZ (NYSE:XRPZ) accounted for the entire $8.17 million gain Thursday, while the other four XRP funds posted zero net flows, pointing to demand concentrated in one issuer rather than spread across the category.

Bitcoin’s selloff centered on Fidelity’s FBTC (NYSE:FBTC), which lost $197.09 million, roughly 81% of the category’s total outflow. 

BlackRock’s ETHA (NASDAQ:ETHA) led Ethereum withdrawals at $71.12 million, while Bitwise’s BSOL (NYSE:BSOL) lost $5.26 million in Solana, outweighing inflows into two competing funds.

XRP ETFs are now on track for a 13th straight week of net inflows, having added $11.31 million through Thursday. 

Friday’s numbers remain pending, and outflows would need to match that full amount to erase the week’s gain.

What the Charts Say About a BounceTrader Cryptoinsightuk said Thursday, as Benzinga reported, that XRP’s aggregated open interest fell 4.6% in token terms and 8.6% in dollar terms, a sharper drop than the price move itself suggests, pointing to leveraged positions getting closed out. 

Rising spot trading volume hints buyers may be stepping in despite the broader selloff, even as funding rates turned negative, showing more traders positioned for further downside.

Cryptoinsightuk flagged a bullish RSI divergence on the four-hour chart, where XRP prints a lower low while RSI forms a higher low, a signal that selling pressure may be fading. 

The trader expects a potential entry near the lower end of XRP’s range, though a brief liquidity sweep below support remains possible.

Where XRP Stands TechnicallyXRP trades flat at $1.38, after breaking below its rising trendline from August’s $1 low. 

That trendline now caps price as resistance, with XRP stuck below its 20-day EMA at $1.4555 and hovering right at its 200-day EMA near $1.3788.

Key levels for XRP: $1.40 to $1.46: resistance zone, 50-day and 20-day EMAs $1.34: 100-day EMA, deeper support Photo via Shutterstock

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© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Tether has blacklisted four THORChain vault addresses on the Tron network, freezing approximately 1.45 million USDT in the process. The move, made on October 9, 2026, knocked THORChain’s Tron-based cross-chain swaps and liquidity-provider operations offline almost immediately.

According to THORChain co-founder Chad Barraford, the team received no advance communication from Tether before the freeze. One morning the vaults worked. Then they held tokens that could no longer move.

What actually got frozen THORChain is a cross-chain swap protocol. It lets users trade native assets across different blockchains, such as Bitcoin for USDT on Tron, without wrapping them or handing them to a centralized exchange.

The vaults hold the pooled assets that make those swaps possible, which is why freezing four of them stops activity cold.

With the Tron vaults blacklisted, the approximately 1.45 million USDT sitting inside them cannot be transferred. As a result, THORChain suspended Tron swaps and the related liquidity-provider functions.

THORChain currently secures around $47.9 million in total liquidity across all assets, according to recent explorer data. The frozen USDT is a small slice of that total, but it sits on a route that users rely on for stablecoin access.

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THORChain has not yet released a full account of the incident or a timeline for restoring service. That leaves liquidity providers on the Tron side waiting to learn what happens to their positions.

How Tether can do this at all Tether’s TRC-20 contract on Tron includes a function called addBlackList. When Tether calls it on an address, that address can no longer send USDT. Similar blacklist capabilities exist in Tether’s contracts on Ethereum.

Tether uses this power regularly, frequently in response to law enforcement requests. Over its history, the company has blacklisted more than 11,000 addresses across multiple chains, immobilizing billions in value.

What makes this case different is the target. Most freezes hit wallets tied to individual bad actors. This one hit shared infrastructure belonging to a protocol that serves many users at once.

The Bitget shadow In late September, THORChain made a controversial decision not to block addresses connected to the $387.5 million Bitget hack.

The source material does not establish whether Tether’s freeze is connected to the Bitget episode. What is clear is that the order of events is uncomfortable for THORChain: first it declined to censor, then a centralized issuer froze its vaults.

What this means for THORChain and DeFi The immediate stakes fall on Tron-side liquidity providers. Their capital sits in pools that are now partly frozen, with no announced recovery plan.

For THORChain itself, the incident exposes a structural weak point. A protocol can refuse to censor at its own layer and still be censored at the asset layer. If the token you hold has an issuer with a blacklist, your neutrality only goes as far as that issuer’s patience.

USDT moves through decentralized rails, but control over whether it moves at all stays with Tether.

The things to watch now are concrete. Will THORChain release a recovery timeline for Tron swaps? Will Tether explain the basis for the freeze or reverse it?

For now, about 1.45 million USDT sits frozen in four vaults, and a protocol designed to route around gatekeepers is learning exactly where the gate is.

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

The Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have committed over $50 million to building out the Aptos ecosystem. The money is aimed at a specific bet: onchain markets fit for institutions, and AI agents that trade faster than any human could.

The pledge, announced in May 2026, covers first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure, and a dedicated fund for trading and AI partnerships. That is a narrower target than the usual “we’re funding builders” press release.

Where the money is going The commitment splits across four buckets. Aptos will build its own products, fund research, upgrade core protocol infrastructure, and back partners working in trading and AI.

The goal ties those pieces together. Aptos wants institutional-grade markets onchain, plus autonomous AI systems that can carry out complex transactions at machine speed.

Picture a stock exchange where some of the most active traders are software programs. They never sleep, never get bored, and never need a lunch break.

Aptos is already shipping toward that vision. Aptos Labs launched Decibel, an onchain order book exchange for perpetuals and spot trading, on Aptos mainnet in February 2026.

Perpetuals, or “perps,” are futures contracts with no expiry date. Traders can hold a leveraged position indefinitely, which is why they dominate crypto trading activity.

Decibel has since passed $1 billion in cumulative trading volume. Every trade on the platform burns APT, the network’s native token, permanently removing a slice of supply.

That turns exchange activity into a deflationary pressure on the token. More trading means more APT taken out of circulation, a design choice that links product usage directly to tokenomics.

The infrastructure upgrades The other headline product is Shelby, a decentralized hot storage protocol designed for AI agents. Hot storage means data that is kept ready for instant access, rather than archived somewhere slow and cheap.

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AI agents need that kind of storage. An agent that has to wait for its data is an agent that misses the trade.

Aptos also laid out a list of planned infrastructure upgrades. These include encrypted mempools, FIX and CCXT connectivity, and confidential perps trading.

A mempool is the waiting room where transactions sit before they are confirmed. Encrypting it hides pending orders from prying eyes, which can help protect traders from being front-run by bots that spot their moves early.

FIX is the messaging standard traditional financial firms use to talk to trading venues. CCXT is a widely used library that connects trading software to crypto exchanges.

Supporting both means a hedge fund or a quant shop could plug into Aptos using tools it already runs. Institutions rarely rebuild their tech stack to try a new venue, so meeting them where they are matters.

Confidential perps trading follows the same logic. Large traders generally prefer not to broadcast their positions to the entire market.

The numbers behind the bet The announcement landed alongside some healthy network metrics. The stablecoin market cap on Aptos reached an all-time high of $1.93 billion, representing nearly 10x growth since late 2024.

Real-world assets, or RWAs, hit $1.2 billion on the network. RWAs are traditional financial instruments, like funds or credit products, that have been turned into tokens on a blockchain.

The institutional names are notable. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global are among the firms deployed on Aptos.

Those are not companies known for experimenting with weekend side projects. Their presence gives Aptos a credible pitch when it talks about institutional-grade markets.

Aptos launched in 2022. Since then, the Aptos Foundation has committed over $150 million in grants to support builders in the ecosystem.

The new $50 million-plus commitment reads differently from that earlier grant activity. Broad grant programs spray funding across many teams, while this round points capital at specific protocol-level priorities and a defined thesis.

Plenty of Layer 1 blockchains have tried the grant-heavy approach to bootstrap activity. Results tend to vary, and a focused bet on trading and AI is a clearer statement of what Aptos wants to be known for.

What this means for Aptos and its users For APT holders, the most direct mechanism is Decibel’s burn. If the exchange keeps growing, trading volume becomes an ongoing source of supply reduction, though the actual effect depends on how much activity the venue sustains.

For institutions, the pitch is about plumbing. FIX and CCXT connectivity, encrypted mempools, and confidential trading address practical objections big firms raise about trading onchain, namely compatibility, front-running, and privacy.

The stablecoin and RWA figures matter here too. Stablecoins are the settlement cash of onchain markets, and $1.93 billion gives traders and agents a meaningful pool of liquidity to work with.

The AI angle is the more speculative part of the story. Autonomous agents executing trades at machine speed is a compelling idea, but it requires infrastructure like Shelby to work reliably at scale before it becomes a real source of volume.

Competition is the other factor to watch. Aptos is far from the only chain courting institutional traders and AI developers, and differentiation will come down to execution rather than funding announcements.

The things worth tracking from here are concrete. Watch whether Decibel’s volume keeps climbing past its $1 billion mark, whether encrypted mempools and confidential perps actually ship, and whether more asset managers follow BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global onto the network.

Money committed is a starting point. The real test for Aptos is whether the products it funds attract the traders, human and otherwise, it is clearly designing for.

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

A crypto trader lost 80 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $6.6 million, in a single transfer on Friday. The coins had sat for 10 days on a new Ledger hardware wallet, a device sold to keep crypto safe offline.

Blockchain tracker Lookonchain says he bought the device from CryptoBilis. Hours after the theft, Ledger told that Southeast Asian reseller to halt sales while it investigates lost funds.

How 80 Bitcoin Left a 10-Day-Old Ledger WalletLookonchain said the trader bought the coins about four months ago at roughly $65,000 each. That came to around $5.2 million.

Public Bitcoin records on mempool show all 80 BTC reached his wallet on September 29. They left in one transfer at 05:54 UTC on October 9.

With Bitcoin price trading above $83,000, Lookonchain put his paper profit at $1.38 million before the coins disappeared.

The same block of transactions carried at least six other large transfers into addresses that blockchain analysts link to the drain.

How Big the Ledger Drain Is, and What Ledger Has SaidLedger has paused the reseller’s sales and told recent buyers not to set up their devices. It has not said whether any devices were tampered with.

Estimates of the total keep rising. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham put losses above $80 million and said the cause is unconfirmed.

MistTrack, the tracking service of security firm SlowMist, offered a higher figure, possibly reaching $90 million. MistTrack also said Tether, which issues the USDT dollar-pegged stablecoin, froze USDT at addresses linked to the theft.

Tether can block its tokens from moving.

Hardware wallet makers have faced repeated scares this year. In August, a Coldcard firmware bug let thieves drain about $70 million in Bitcoin. Ledger said it will share updates as its investigation progresses.

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Bitcoin rebounded above $82,000 on Friday, October 9, recovering from a 24-hour low near $80,496 after President Donald Trump said the United States would not strike Iran before the November 3 midterm elections. BTC traded around $82,488 at the time of writing, down about 0.6% over 24 hours with a market cap near $1.66 trillion, according to CoinDesk market data.

Trump made the pledge in a Truth Social post published at 12:17 p.m. ET on Thursday, describing talks with Iran as “productive” while insisting the U.S. blockade would “remain in full force and effect.” The statement removed the immediate threat of renewed military escalation that had lifted WTI crude from roughly $89 toward $93.20 a barrel and pushed bitcoin toward $80,300.

Why Bitcoin Rebounded Above $82,000 The turnaround followed about 24 hours of selling that began after reports that the Pentagon had instructed U.S. Central Command to prepare for resuming major combat operations in Iran. Those reports lifted oil and pressured risk assets, and bitcoin’s decline accelerated as leveraged long positions were flushed across the market, with more than $356 million in ether positions liquidated over 24 hours.

Selling ran out of steam near $80,300 once Trump’s post landed, and bitcoin steadily climbed back through $82,000. Ether, XRP and solana trimmed their losses alongside it, though the recovery stayed modest: bitcoin remained down about 2.4% over seven days and 5.8% year to date at the time of writing.

The oil reversal followed the same script. After rising from $89 toward $93.20, WTI crude fell back to roughly $90.69 a barrel, easing one of the clearest macro headwinds behind Thursday’s crypto sell-off.

Bitcoin Price Today: Key Levels to Watch Analysts are treating $81,000 as immediate support and $82,000 as the first resistance to reclaim. Giottus CEO Vikram Subburaj told CoinDesk that a break below $81,000 could send bitcoin toward $80,000 and then the more significant on-chain support near $77,200, while a recovery above $83,300 and then $85,500 would need stronger ETF inflows. BitDelta’s Purvang Mashru called $82,000 the key resistance, adding that a sustained reclaim with ether above $2,500 would stabilize the setup, whereas a break below $80,316 would raise downside risk.

Bitcoin’s 24-hour range spanned roughly $80,496 to $83,150, leaving the rebound short of reclaiming Thursday’s levels and keeping traders in a wait-and-see posture ahead of the midterm election.

Bitcoin had already slipped below $83,000 on Thursday as multi-decade-high Treasury yields, oil above $100 and spot ETF outflows converged, leaving the market exposed to the Iran headline before Friday’s rebound.

Bitcoin’s role is not limited to exchanges and ETFs. It is also a standard deposit option at online crypto casinos, and BlockchainReporter’s ranked crypto casino reviews compare these platforms on payout speed, licensing, and bonus terms.

The Bunker Mode Fears That Amplified the Drop A second, more technical concern compounded Thursday’s selling. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake had floated a “bunker mode” idea — a precautionary migration of crypto holdings to fresh addresses — if AI-accelerated mathematics were to weaken the elliptic-curve cryptography securing Bitcoin and Ethereum. The AI-signature warning drew sharp pushback: Coinbase’s top cryptographer Yehuda Lindell called the concerns “FUD,” Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi described them as a “very sober call,” and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the risk is real but pointed to lattices rather than elliptic curves.

For now, the market’s recovery suggests traders treated Trump’s Iran statement as the more immediate catalyst, with the cryptography debate unresolved but not yet priced as an imminent threat.

Frequently Asked Questions What is the Bitcoin price today? Bitcoin traded near $82,488 on October 9, 2026, down about 0.6% over 24 hours, after rebounding from a session low near $80,496.

Why did Bitcoin rebound on October 9? President Donald Trump said the U.S. would not strike Iran before the November 3 midterm elections, easing geopolitical fears that had pushed oil higher and risk assets lower.

What is Bitcoin’s support level right now? Analysts are watching $81,000 as immediate support, with a break below roughly $80,300 potentially opening the path toward $80,000 and the on-chain support near $77,200.

What is Bitcoin’s resistance level right now? $82,000 is the first resistance to reclaim. A sustained move above it with ether above $2,500 and narrower altcoin losses would stabilize the setup, according to analysts.

Could Bitcoin fall again below $80,000? A break below $81,000 could take bitcoin toward $80,000, and a drop below $80,316 would increase downside risk, though Friday’s rebound has so far held above those levels.

Bitcoin price data and analyst commentary are sourced from CoinDesk as of October 9, 2026.

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Mysterious crypto writer with expertise in blockchain, offering deep insights that captivate and intrigue readers. With a unique ability to uncover hidden insights and trends, Samuel delivers in-depth analysis and thought-provoking content that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. His writing style is engaging and informative, blending technical knowledge with a sense of intrigue, making complex crypto topics accessible to both newcomers and seasoned industry professionals. Samuel’s work continues to capture the attention of the crypto community, solidifying his reputation as a trusted voice in the space.

Borrowing money usually costs money. On Starknet, borrowers are now being paid to do it, at least partially.

Vesu, a lending protocol on Starknet, lets users borrow against BTC and earn STRK rewards on those loans. The rewards for borrowers were announced on October 8, 2026. They are meant to lower the net cost of borrowing for users who come in through the Sats Terminal frontend.

How the Vesu rewards work Vesu operates as a modular, permissionless lending market. Its pools can be set up for different assets and risk profiles instead of everything sharing one giant bucket.

The tokens eligible for both collateral and rewards are WBTC, LBTC, SolvBTC, tBTC, and strkBTC. Each one is a tokenized version of Bitcoin, which is how BTC shows up on networks it was never built to run on.

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Borrowers who take out stablecoins against that BTC collateral can claim STRK rewards every week.

Sats Terminal is the user-facing layer. It gives borrowers a simpler interface for setting up BTC-backed loans. During reward periods, loans taken through Sats Terminal can carry effective net APRs that sit near zero or even dip into negative territory.

If the STRK a borrower collects is worth more than the interest they owe, the loan effectively pays them. The rewards arrive in STRK, so their actual value depends on what the token is worth when a borrower claims it.

The 100 million STRK backdrop The Starknet Foundation has set aside 100 million STRK for its BTCFi Season program, which is built to encourage onchain Bitcoin activity, borrowing included.

Vesu V2 launched around October 2025, adding curated pools for BTC collateral and expanding the lending capacity available to Starknet’s BTCFi users.

What this means for borrowers and Starknet For borrowers, the cost math is the obvious draw. A loan with a near-zero or negative net rate is unusual in almost any market.

It is also subsidized, and subsidies are temporary by design. The cheap borrowing window lasts only as long as the reward periods run and the STRK keeps flowing.

Reward value is the other moving piece. A negative net APR calculated today is only as good as STRK’s value on claim day, which makes the headline rate a snapshot rather than a guarantee.

The near-term signals to watch are straightforward. Watch whether Vesu’s volumes and total value locked climb during the reward periods, how quickly the 100 million STRK allocation is put to work, and whether borrowing activity holds up when the incentives eventually wind down.

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

7h05 ▪ 3 min read ▪ by Ariela R.

Summarize this article with:

According to data published by DefiLlama on October 9, 2026, Pump.fun generated $18.64 million in crypto protocol revenue over seven days. Earlier, a study conducted by Coin Metrics reveals that 81% of memecoins have lost at least 90% of their value since their peak. The crypto token launch platform on Solana charges fees on every trade, whether the crypto asset rises or not. According to our calculations, it retains about one third of that.

In brief $18.64M in revenue over seven days, $60.7M in 30 days (DefiLlama, October 9, 2026). 81% of the 150 memecoins studied have lost at least 90% since their peak (Coin Metrics, October 6, 2026). $478M cumulative buybacks of the PUMP token, then burned (Pump.fun, October 6, 2026). Why does the crypto platform Pump.fun make money when memecoins fall? Because Pump.fun is paid on every crypto transaction, not on the token value. Over seven days, traders paid $52.5 million in fees. The protocol kept $18.64 million, or 36% (Cointribune calculation based on DefiLlama data).

Note that a crypto trader who sells a token at a loss to buy another generates new fees.

For its part, Pump.fun announces in a newsletter published on October 5, 2026, $16.32 million in protocol fees from September 28 to October 4. This represents a 20% increase in one week.

What does the Coin Metrics study reveal about memecoins? Recently published crypto data by Coin Metrics clearly show:

81% of the 150 memecoins analyzed have lost at least 90% from their all-time high; only 5 digital assets have recovered it. Recovery essentially does not occur.

However, beware! This figure does not measure losses of crypto traders nor all Pump.fun tokens. The sample only includes assets listed on centralized platforms, which overestimates a token launch’s lifespan.

Do memecoin holders benefit from gains of the crypto platform Pump.fun? Not automatically. Since September 12, new tokens can redistribute their fees to holders with more than $20, without guaranteeing compensation for a declining token. The Pump.fun crypto platform devotes 50% of its revenue to buybacks and burning of PUMP. A recent publication shows the protocol has actually been overtaken by a social trading app.

Even PUMP (like TRUMP and PENGU) is worth less than at its launch on crypto exchanges, according to Coin Metrics.

One thing is certain: Pump.fun’s revenues follow the rotation of crypto traders, not the rise of already launched tokens. The next dated test: Pump.fun’s weekly newsletter, expected around October 12, 2026. It will indicate if the $16.32 million for the week ending October 4 is confirmed.

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Ariela R.

My name is Ariela, and I am 31 years old. I have been working in the field of web writing for 7 years now. I only discovered trading and cryptocurrency a few years ago, but it is a universe that greatly interests me. The topics covered on the platform allow me to learn more. A singer in my spare time, I also cultivate a great passion for music and reading (and animals!)

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.