In brief
Nine blockchain organizations launched the Quantum Alliance, an open standards body to define what “quantum-ready” means and create a common way to test and verify quantum-resistance claims across networks, wallets and infrastructure.
The group warns that elliptic-curve signatures leave roughly 6.04 million BTC (~30% of supply) quantum-exposed, citing forecasts pointing toward the late 2020s.
Modeled on the IETF, it will work in four groups—migration, zero-knowledge systems, wallet security and cross-chain compatibility.
A group of crypto companies is trying to settle one of the industry’s murkiest questions: what it actually means for a blockchain network to be safe from quantum computers.
Executives from nine organizations launched the Quantum Alliance on Thursday, an open standards body that will set criteria for judging quantum-resistance claims and create compatibility rules for networks as they migrate to new cryptography.
Myriad: How high will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction.The founding contributors span base-layer protocols, privacy networks, rollups, hardware wallets and security auditing, including Quantus, Postquant Labs, Midnight Foundation, Keystone, Abelian and security firm Hacken.
Modeled on the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Alliance said proposals will advance on public evidence and working implementations rather than corporate size or token holdings, and everything it produces will be published openly.
Its work will run in four groups: blockchain migration, post-quantum zero-knowledge systems, wallet security and cross-chain compatibility. “In the future, ‘post-quantum cryptography’ will just be called ‘cryptography’ and everything else will be in a museum,” said Quantus founder and CEO Christopher Smith.
The problem it’s tackling is that there’s no agreed definition of “quantum-ready,” and no standard way to test one. A network can call itself quantum-resistant today with no shared understanding of what the claim covers or what evidence should back it, a gap the Alliance was formed to close.
The stakes are familiar to anyone following the beat. Nearly every major blockchain secures accounts with elliptic-curve signatures, and once an account’s public key is exposed on the ledger, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could theoretically reverse-engineer the private key and seize the funds.
The same cryptography guards stablecoin minting keys, bridges, oracles, and governance contracts, meaning one cracked privileged key could cascade across platforms. By the Alliance’s count, roughly 6.04 million BTC, about 30% of supply, sit quantum-exposed at rest.
The timelines keep tightening. The Quantum Alliance cites a cluster of recent forecasts pointing toward the late 2020s, including a model co-built by two Alliance contributors that flags March 2028 as an early window, and a Google Quantum AI study that slashed the estimated qubits needed to break Bitcoin’s cryptography to under 500,000.
No machine can do it yet. Google has also chipped away at key quantum bottlenecks, while figures like famed investor Kevin O’Leary have flagged the quantum threat as a catch hanging over Bitcoin’s long-term case.
The newly formed Quantum Alliance joins a widening industry scramble to address the risk. Coinbase recently urged Bitcoin developers to start the quantum migration now, suggesting preparations could take years. Meanwhile, a consortium backed by BlackRock, Strategy, and Coinbase has committed $15 million to the problem.
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Bitcoin is hovering near $81.5K as repeated tests of nearby demand keep buyers under pressure. The broader ascending structure remains intact, but fading rebounds suggest that a stronger response is needed to prevent a deeper correction.
Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart On the daily timeframe, BTC has continued to retreat following its rejection from the $85.5K–$90.5K supply zone. Recent candles show lower highs and repeated probes toward $80K, indicating that buyers have struggled to regain momentum after the initial selloff.
The price is now approaching the ascending channel’s midpoint around $79K–$80K. This trendline represents nearby structural support, while the highlighted $75K–$78K demand zone remains the main daily defense below. Holding these areas would preserve the broader recovery structure, although it would not immediately reverse the recent bearish sequence.
To improve the outlook, Bitcoin needs to reclaim the recent rebound highs around $83K–$84K before challenging the $85.5K–$90.5K resistance zone again. Conversely, sustained weakness beneath $80K would increase the likelihood of a move toward $78K and potentially the lower boundary of demand near $75K.
BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart The 4-hour chart places Bitcoin just above the marked buyers’ decision point at $80K–$81.3K. This demand zone overlaps with the rising channel’s lower boundary and has attracted several buying responses. However, successive rebounds have failed to recover the previous highs, leaving the short-term structure vulnerable.
A sustained recovery above $82.5K–$83K would provide an initial sign of improving demand, followed by the recent resistance area around $84K. Beyond that, the sellers’ decision point at $85.5K–$86.7K remains the main barrier. Reclaiming this zone would weaken the corrective scenario and bring the highs near $87K back into focus.
Conversely, a decisive break below the $80K demand boundary and ascending trendline would undermine this support confluence. Such a development could extend the decline toward the next highlighted demand zone around $74.8K–$76.3K. The current area therefore remains pivotal, with buyers needing stronger follow-through to turn repeated defenses into a meaningful recovery.
Sentiment Analysis The Realized Price UTXO Age Bands chart tracks the average on-chain cost basis of coins grouped by age. Bitcoin, currently near $81.7K, remains above the realized prices of the 1-to-3-month and 3-to-6-month cohorts, positioned around $70.5K and $69.5K, respectively. These younger cohorts remain in aggregate unrealized profit despite the correction.
However, the price remains below the 6-to-12-month cohort’s realized price near $87K and the 18-month-to-2-year cohort’s level around $91K. These cost bases form overhead reference points, with the former overlapping the technical supply zone. Holders approaching breakeven during a rebound could introduce selling pressure, although the metric alone does not confirm that they will sell.
The chart also shows the 1-to-3-month realized price rising while the 3-to-6-month measure declines, bringing both toward the $70K region. This identifies a concentration of younger-holder cost bases well below the current price, rather than immediate support for the present consolidation.
For now, the $87K–$91K cost-basis region remains an important hurdle for a broader recovery. Sustained acceptance above it would return these older cohorts to aggregate unrealized profit, while continued rejection would leave the overhead resistance intact.
Disclaimer: Information found on CryptoPotato is those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of CryptoPotato on whether to buy, sell, or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use provided information at your own risk. See Disclaimer for more information.
Bitcoin was sold to many early adopters as digital cash that nobody could trace. The CIA’s second-in-command would like a word.
CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said in a May 1, 2025 podcast interview that Bitcoin is not truly anonymous, and that US intelligence uses it to collect information on adversaries. For anyone still treating the network as a privacy cloak, that is an awkward thing to hear from a spy agency.
What Ellis actually said Ellis described Bitcoin as “pseudonymous” rather than anonymous. The difference matters more than it sounds.
On Bitcoin, activity is tied to addresses rather than legal names. Ellis’s point is that the gap between an address and a real person can be closed, and authorities are working to close it.
According to Ellis, that gap is what lets US authorities follow illicit activity connected to adversaries. He named drug cartels and terrorist organizations as examples of the groups whose crypto use can be tracked.
“We can disrupt our adversaries’ use of it and we can use these technologies to collect more intelligence.”
That one sentence covers two separate jobs. One is defensive: interfering with how hostile groups move money. The other is offensive: treating the transactions themselves as a source of intelligence.
Ellis also placed Bitcoin inside a broader technology competition with countries like China. In his framing, crypto is one more front in a contest over which nations master emerging tech.
He also pointed to growing institutional adoption and offered a blunt assessment: “Bitcoin is here to stay.”
How we got here Ellis was sworn in as CIA Deputy Director on February 10, 2025. His podcast remarks came less than three months into the job.
The views are not new inside the intelligence community. Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell praised blockchain analytics tools like Chainalysis in a 2021 analysis, crediting them with helping efforts against illicit finance.
The CIA also works with law enforcement to trace illicit payments made with digital assets. Ellis’s comments put a more public face on that cooperation.
Blockchain analytics firms essentially do pattern recognition at scale. They cluster addresses, map flows between them, and flag links to known entities, turning a stream of pseudonymous transactions into something closer to a readable map.
What this means for Bitcoin holders and the market The most direct implication is for privacy expectations. Anyone who assumed Bitcoin transactions were invisible to governments now has a CIA official stating plainly that they are not.
For bad actors, the message is sharper. A senior official is publicly signaling that the agency treats their transactions as an intelligence feed.
The CIA’s framing of Bitcoin as a national security tool may lift institutional confidence and potentially strengthen its standing with the public and regulators. An asset the intelligence community expects to persist, and is actively building capabilities around, is harder to dismiss as a passing fad.
The China framing deserves attention too. Once a technology gets folded into great-power competition, policy around it tends to be shaped by security priorities as much as by financial regulators.
The practical takeaway for market participants is to separate two questions that often get blurred. Whether Bitcoin is here to stay, as Ellis put it, is one question, and whether using it is private is another, and the CIA’s answer to the second is clearly no.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
AI agents can now order a Bitcoin mix. Flash Mixer, launched this year, has added an MCP server, the plug-in standard that AI apps such as Claude Desktop use to call outside tools.
In an October 15 report, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said it is the first mixer it has found doing so.
Read Flash Mixer’s own setup guide, though, and the agent turns out to need a human at both ends. The access key is issued only after its owner places a manual order on the website and pays for it. Even with the key, the guide’s sample workflow hands the decisive step back to a person: “user sends BTC.”
AT A GLANCE
What it is: A Bitcoin mixing service launched in 2026, reachable by website, Telegram bot, Tor, and now MCP.
What’s new: Five tools that let an AI agent check fees, create mixing orders and track payouts.
What still needs a person: Getting the access key, and sending the bitcoin.
What nobody knows yet: How much, if anything, agents have mixed through it.
What can an agent actually do with it?
Flash Mixer’s integration guide on GitHub lists five tools. One returns the current pool limits, fee ranges and payout delays. A second works out how much bitcoin to send to receive a given amount. A third creates the order: the agent chooses the standard or premium pool, a fee percentage, and one or two payout addresses, each with its own delay of up to 72 hours. The last two check whether the deposit has arrived and how the payouts are progressing.
The guide includes ready-made configuration for Claude Desktop and PyCharm’s AI Assistant. Every order comes back with its own deposit address and an order ID. There are no customer accounts, so that ID is the only handle anyone has on the order.
1Check limits and fees. The agent reads the current pool settings and BTC/USD rate.
2Calculate the amount to send. Fees are added on top of what the payout addresses should receive.
3Create the order. Flash Mixer returns a fresh deposit address and an order ID.
4Someone sends the bitcoin. None of the five tools can do this. The guide leaves it to the user.
5Track the payouts. The agent polls the order until both payouts complete.
Why can’t the agent just pay?
Nothing in the toolset can sign a Bitcoin transaction. The server never touches a wallet. It hands back an address and waits for coins to arrive.
Getting connected in the first place also takes a human. According to the guide, the MCP key appears once on the status page of a paid manual order, after the deposit reaches three confirmations, and isn’t shown again. So the first mix through Flash Mixer is done by a person, not a model. The documentation is rough in places: its closing notes describe ordering and status checks as “no-key capabilities,” contradicting the authentication section a few screens earlier.
The footprint is small so far. When we checked the GitHub repository on October 17, it had 18 stars and four forks. There is no public data on how many orders have come through the MCP route.
So where is the gap?
In the agent’s wallet. Flash Mixer doesn’t need a payment integration of its own. An agent that has the Flash Mixer tools and a wallet that will pay any address already has everything it needs: step three produces an address, and the wallet pays it.
That deposit address is new for every order. A wallet that blocks known mixer addresses won’t recognise it, because nobody has seen it before. The rule that does stop the payment works the other way round: the agent may only pay addresses on an approved list, and anything new goes to a person.
Spending caps alone don’t close the gap. MoonPay’s PayBox for ChatGPT and Claude lets users approve each payment or let an agent spend on its own within set limits, according to its launch announcement. A limit decides how much an agent can spend. A small payment to a brand-new mixer address fits under almost any cap.
If you’ve given an agent a wallet
Let it pay only addresses you’ve approved. A new address should need your sign-off every time.
Treat MCP servers like browser extensions. Install only ones you’ve read, and note which can create orders or move money.
Log which tool call produced each payment address, so you can trace where a destination came from.
Keep the wallet balance to what the agent needs for its current task, not everything you hold.
Is there a legitimate reason for an agent to mix coins?
Yes, and Elliptic makes the case itself. An agent pays for what it needs as it works, far more often than a person would, and on a public blockchain every one of those payments is visible. Picture an agent buying specialist datasets for a research team. Once its wallet is tied to the company, anyone watching can see the suppliers, the budget and what the team is working on.
Elliptic’s answer is privacy that can be proven on request. Privacy Pools, run by 0xbow, screens deposits before admitting them and lets users later prove their withdrawal came from an approved set without revealing which deposit was theirs. The Ethereum Foundation’s Kohaku wallet includes privacy pool functionality. Flash Mixer’s guide offers nothing of the kind.
Treating every mixer as the same risk gets it wrong in both directions. Tornado Cash came off the US sanctions list in 2025, yet Elliptic’s research found that over the past six months, a third of deposits into its 100 ETH pool drew more than half their funds from illicit sources.
Why does Elliptic think agents change laundering?
Scripted laundering repeats itself: the same hops in the same order, a pattern monitoring rules learn to spot. An agent given a goal picks its own route, choosing which services to use, how to split the funds and when to move them, and does it differently each run. Elliptic says that makes agents harder to monitor than conventional automation, and warns they could break funds into many small, fast “micromixes.”
Volume is the other concern. Elliptic said in September that agentic crypto payments had risen 500% in three months, and argues that human review alone can’t keep up. That view comes from a company that sells blockchain analytics and uses the report to promote its own agent-based compliance tools. The report cites no instance of an agent laundering money through Flash Mixer.
Quick answers
Can an AI agent mix bitcoin on its own?
Not with Flash Mixer’s documented tools alone. They can price and create an order, but sending the bitcoin needs a wallet the agent has separately been allowed to use, and the access key itself requires a paid manual order first.
What is an MCP server?
A connection point that lets AI apps such as Claude Desktop find and call outside tools. The MCP specification recommends that apps show tool activity and let users refuse calls, but leaves the details to each app.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial or investment advice.
Author
Alexander Zdravkov is a market analyst and crypto journalist with interests in economics, broader financial markets and digital assets.
His journey into crypto began more than four years ago, driven by a fascination with the rapid evolution of blockchain technology and the transformative potential of decentralized finance. He began analyzing market cycles and identifying emerging trends before they reach the mainstream.
He holds a degree in International Relations - a background that helped shape his broader perspective on global economics, geopolitics, and the interconnected nature of modern financial markets.
Whether covering the latest developments in the crypto sector or exploring broader macroeconomic themes, Alexander focuses on giving readers context rather than simply repeating headlines.
During his career, he has authored more than 5,000 articles covering cryptocurrencies, traditional finance, and global market developments. His work spans everything from Bitcoin and altcoins to macroeconomic trends influencing risk assets worldwide.
TD Cowen increased its price target on Strive, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASST) by about 27 percent, from $44 to $56, while retaining a Buy rating. Analysts Lance Vitanza and Jonnathan Navarrete cited the firm’s bitcoin buying activity, which has already surpassed their projected total for the full fourth quarter after only a brief period of acquisitions.
Strive’s bitcoin holdings advanced to 35,595 BTC, valued at roughly $2.9 billion at prevailing prices, from 28,000 BTC at the end of September. The nearly 7,600-coin increase exceeded the prior estimate of 4,750 BTC for the entire quarter.
Reported purchases included 3,311 BTC acquired at an average price near $84,500 (inclusive of fees) and a follow-on buy of 2,822 BTC at approximately $83,266 per coin.
These steps moved Strive into fourth place among publicly traded companies ranked by bitcoin treasury size, just ahead of MARA Holdings’ reported holdings of about 35,577 BTC.
The quicker pace of accumulation continues a strategy in which Strive finances purchases primarily through preferred equity instruments rather than conventional debt.
The company has maintained a debt-free balance sheet for an extended period, using preferred share sales and related capital markets tools to grow its bitcoin position while seeking to improve bitcoin ownership on a per-share basis.
Concurrently, Strive priced an expanded preferred share offering.
It issued 7 million shares of its 15.00 percent Series A Perpetual SATS Preferred Stock at $90 per share, two million shares more than initially planned.
Gross proceeds are projected at approximately $630 million before underwriting discounts and expenses, with settlement expected on October 20 subject to standard conditions.
The shares accrue a cumulative 15 percent annual dividend based on a $100 stated amount and are payable daily when declared by the board, with regular payments set to begin in early November.
At the $90 offering price, the effective yield stands near 16.7 percent.
The security ranks junior to Strive’s existing variable-rate SATA preferred shares.
Upon closing, the company intends to place the equivalent of 18 months of dividend payments—roughly $22.50 per share—into a reserve funded by cash and securities.
Net proceeds are allocated to general corporate purposes, including additional bitcoin and bitcoin-related product purchases, working capital needs, income-generating assets, and potential repurchases of common or preferred shares.
The preferred structure allows further bitcoin accumulation without issuing additional common stock, thereby limiting dilution for current shareholders while the reserve supports near-term dividend coverage.
Rapid treasury expansion paired with this form of non-common financing has strengthened the outlook for bitcoin-per-share growth, a central factor in how analysts value public treasury companies.
With bitcoin trading in the low-to-mid $80,000 range during mid-October 2026, Strive’s larger holdings and new capital access support continued competition in the public-company ranking, where Strategy holds the leading position by a substantial margin.
Observers will track the October 20 settlement of the SATS offering and subsequent bitcoin purchases to assess whether the accelerated buying continues for the remainder of the quarter.
The TD Cowen revision demonstrates how stronger-than-expected treasury execution can prompt higher analyst targets even amid relatively steady broader bitcoin market conditions.
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Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) has released a detailed set of technical priorities aimed at guiding Bitcoin’s shift toward quantum-resistant security.
In a blog post dated October 13, 2026, the digital assets focused firm emphasized the need for proactive steps on signature scheme upgrades and the gradual relocation of funds, noting that both consensus changes and ecosystem-wide migrations can require multiple years of coordinated effort.
As a custodian holding roughly 5 percent of the total bitcoin supply, Coinbase stated that it is already adapting its own infrastructure while engaging with Bitcoin developers and researchers.
It also contributes engineering resources and participates in the Bitcoin Security Consortium to support related open-source work.
The post is framed as input for community discussion rather than a finalized company position or an announced upgrade path.
The exchange has also stressed that defending the network against future cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) extends well beyond simply selecting a new digital signature algorithm.
A workable plan, it argued, must safeguard both funds whose public keys are already visible on-chain and newly created outputs, operate within Bitcoin’s constrained block space, allow full nodes to validate transactions independently, remain compatible with institutional custody systems and ordinary wallets, and offer a realistic route for coins whose owners cannot or will not move them.
Central to Coinbase’s recommendations is the idea of decoupling the output “container” that holds funds from the specific signature scheme used to authorize spending.
Such separation would let post-quantum algorithms be added, swapped, or combined later without redesigning the underlying structure.
The company pointed to constructions such as P2MR (associated with BIP-360) and P2TRv2 as designs that appear to provide this flexibility by keeping public keys hidden until they are needed and leaving room for future signature options.
For the transition period itself, Coinbase favors staged protection.
Active wallets could begin using post-quantum-capable or hybrid formats before any final rules governing older signature types are settled.
One example discussed is a 1-of-2 arrangement in which the same funds support two alternative spending paths—one authorized by a classical ECDSA or Schnorr key and another by a post-quantum key—allowing users to retain familiar methods in the near term while gaining quantum resistance when required.
On the choice of signature algorithms, the post called for a reproducible evaluation process tailored specifically to Bitcoin’s constraints.
General-purpose cryptographic comparisons developed for internet protocols do not map directly, because Bitcoin signatures are stored permanently and verified by every full node.
Suggested candidates include finalized standards such as ML-DSA and SLH-DSA, FN-DSA once standardized, and more compact alternatives such as SHRINCS.
Coinbase also warned that stateful schemes, while potentially smaller or faster, carry the risk that improper state management could enable forgery; therefore any support for them should include reliable stateless fallbacks, along with clear security requirements for wallets and custody providers.
Additional practical considerations include consensus-level limits on signature and script sizes to keep transaction costs manageable, low-friction formats that ordinary users and hardware wallets can adopt, and compatibility with multi-party computation techniques used in institutional custody.
Questions surrounding abandoned or inaccessible coins—those whose private keys are lost or whose owners do not migrate—were described as important but separate.
Coinbase suggested these governance and engineering issues can be debated in parallel so they do not delay the core technical work of adding post-quantum signature support.
Overall, the priorities underscore that preparation must begin well before any announcement of a functional CRQC, because the combination of protocol upgrades, wallet software changes, and user migration across a decentralized network cannot be completed on short notice.
By focusing on flexible designs, staged adoption, rigorous Bitcoin-specific testing, and separation of the abandoned-coin debate, Coinbase aims to contribute to an orderly, multi-year transition that protects both existing and future funds while preserving the network’s ability to operate and validate independently.
Bitcoin old holders who purchased their coins six to twelve months ago have now considerably reduced their exchange-bound transfers. In fact, according to CryptoQuant insights, the holders’ share of exchange-bound transfers fell from 40.4% on 17th June to 4.4% on 15th October.
On the contrary, broader BTC movement increased despite a reduction in exchange-bound activity among these holders. To be specific, the latest 30-day transfer volume hit 205,400 BTC, compared to the 157,700 BTC in June.
The figures might allude to a shift in how older investors move their holdings.
Additionally, a fall in exchange participation could mean weaker immediate selling pressure from this particular investor group.
Source: CryptoQuant
Beyond declining exchange activity, two major Bitcoin whale transactions introduced another development to the supply outlook of the market.
Whale Alert on X reported a transfer of 2,878 BTC, valued at nearly $234.28 million, between two unknown wallets. Separately, another whale withdrew 888 BTC, worth roughly $72.82 million, from crypto exchange Kraken.
Combined, these two transactions totalled 3,766 BTC, carrying a value of approximately $307.1 million.
Here, it is also worth noting that unlike the transfer between unknown wallets, the Kraken withdrawal minimized the exchange’s BTC holdings directly.
The transactions were in alignment with the wider decline in exchange-bound activity among older Bitcoin holders.
Spot netflows reveal contrasting story
Bitcoin’s broader spot exchange activity, however, presented a different picture from the latest whale withdrawal.
According to CoinGlass, BTC was recording a positive spot netflow of $18.65 million at press time. These figures suggested that the exchange inflows exceeded the withdrawals during the reporting period.
The aggregate figure pointed towards a net increase in exchange-held BTC, unlike the Kraken transaction. Usually, such movements can increase the available selling supply, especially when market participants transfer tokens onto the trading platforms.
The positive netflows, however, alone cannot establish whether holders intended to sell their tokens or not.
Furthermore, the recent reading also contrasted with the falling exchange-bound share among six-to-twelve-month BTC holders.
Therefore, these conflicting values could expose Bitcoin’s immediate supply conditions to a mixed state ahead of its next price direction.
Source: BTC Spot Netflows on CoinGlass
Can Bitcoin hold above $80K support?
At the time of writing, Bitcoin [BTC] was valued at around $81,542 after struggling to sustain its recovery towards $87,333. In fact, the subsequent correction pushed BTC closer to the psychological $80,000-support, even though the token had not yet tested that level.
The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) indicator stood at -0.14, hinting at persistent capital outflows and prevailing selling pressure. The RSI indicator, on the hand, stood at 46.42, below its moving average of 52.95, validating the weakening price strength.
Simply put, BTC might be vulnerable to further declines towards $80,000, with both indicators favoring sellers
Finally, Binance’s Liquidation Heatmap revealed clusters around that support zone, alluding to a potential target before a price recovery.
Ultimately, Bitcoin could likely grab these liquidity concentrations before rebounding towards the $83,895 resistance before a move to $87,333.
Source: BTC/USDT on TradingView
Final Summary
Bitcoin’s older holders reduced exchange transfers as recent whale accumulation transactions exceeded $307 million.
BTC could likely sweep liquidations clusters around the $80K support before attempting a recovery.
Bitcoin faced renewed pressure as US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $82.39 million in net outflows on October 16. Market analysts have pointed to these outflows, along with rising stock market volatility, as signs of possible downside for the leading digital asset. However, some observers argue that fears of Bitcoin dropping to $10,000 may be overstated when considering historical drawdowns.
ETF outflows reflect shifting sentimentAccording to the digital asset data provider SoSoValue, the total assets held by US spot Bitcoin ETFs reached $104.29 billion following the latest session, representing about 6.35% of Bitcoin’s overall market capitalization. Despite the net outflow, cumulative inflows remain strong, totaling $56.88 billion.
The recent withdrawals took place during a period of heightened uncertainty in traditional financial markets. ETF trading volumes reached $2.66 billion, showing continued investor activity despite the outflows. Analysts say the net outflow signals some reduced risk exposure among institutional investors but does not necessarily mean a large-scale exit from the asset class.
Significant ETF outflows have sometimes coincided with broader risk-off sentiment. Still, the continued inflow over the lifetime of these products suggests that many investors maintain a longer-term outlook for Bitcoin in their portfolios.
Mini dictionary: SoSoValue, a digital asset analytics platform providing data and insights on crypto ETF flows, trading volumes, and market trends.
Historical context challenges Bitcoin crash fearsOn-chain analyst Darkfost addressed the possibility of a sharp decline in Bitcoin’s price in the event of a significant stock market correction. He calculated that Bitcoin dropping to $10,000 from its April 2025 range would represent an 87% fall, aligning with or exceeding some of the steepest historical downturns the asset has suffered.
Darkfost reviewed previous bear markets, noting that a move down to $10,000 would equate to an 87% drawdown, comparable to prior cycles that saw Bitcoin tumble by 92.9% in 2011, 82.5% in 2015, and 82.6% in 2019.
The 2022 bear market saw a 74.4% decline, while Darkfost cited a more moderate 54.2% drop in 2026. As Bitcoin’s market capitalization expanded from $117 million in 2011 to $2.45 trillion in 2025, the frequency and depth of major corrections have varied. April 2025 also brought a 22% price drop in Bitcoin, while the S&P 500 experienced a nearly 19% correction.
YearBitcoin DrawdownPrevious Market Cap201192.9%$117 million201582.5%N/A201982.6%N/A202274.4%N/A202522% (April)$2.45 trillionKey levels for Bitcoin as market volatility risesMarket analyst Adam commented that Bitcoin had demonstrated relative stability compared to the wider stock market. He observed that buyers were stepping in at local lows and noted a rise in demand for short-term put options, suggesting some traders are hedging against potential downside.
Adam noted that as long as Bitcoin remains above $80,000, the current bullish structure remains intact. Should prices fall below this level, further downward momentum could emerge, with $86,000 and $84,000 identified as the next resistance and control levels.
Analysts are watching $80,000 as a pivotal point for Bitcoin’s short-term price action. Strong absorption at recent lows provides some reassurance, but if broader equity weakness persists and Bitcoin ETFs experience further withdrawals, sentiment could deteriorate further.
Even as volatility returns to traditional markets, the depth of historical Bitcoin crashes offers some context for gauging risk, with previous cycles showing major drops required extreme external pressures.
Inflation is pushing many investors to seek assets capable of preserving their purchasing power in the long term. Bitcoin holds a special place in this debate thanks to its limited supply, capped at 21 million units. However, holding this asset does not guarantee a positive return. Borrowing costs, forgone income, and derivative fees can reduce gains. When rates remain high, these expenses become a determining factor in assessing the true profitability of an investment.
In Brief Bitcoin can serve as potential protection against inflation, but its price does not guarantee any positive return. Borrowing costs reduce gains and can lead to losses, even when the price remains stable. Leverage amplifies potential profits but also increases losses in case of a decline. Futures contracts sometimes include a premium that weighs on the profitability of long positions. Perpetual contracts add variable financing fees and margin requirements. Interest rates and holding costs can compromise the profitability of a strategy aiming to preserve purchasing power. Bitcoin: Three Investment Strategies, Three Different Outcomes The cost of an investment depends as much on its financing as on market evolution. Two people can buy the same asset at the same price and hold it for the same period. Yet, their financial results can differ greatly depending on the means used to make this purchase. The difference becomes particularly visible when one invests their savings and the other borrows to increase exposure.
Let us first consider an investor who dedicates 10,000 dollars of their savings to this asset. They buy their units outright and do not incur any debt to finance the operation. As long as they keep their position, they do not pay interest to a lender. If the price remains stable for a year, their capital theoretically retains its initial value before fees and possible taxes.
However, this situation does not mean that the investment is free of economic cost. The saver forgoes the income they could have obtained with an interest-bearing investment. The yield on the three-month U.S. Treasury bill reached 4.26% on October 13, according to the Federal Reserve interest rate report. On 10,000 dollars, this annualized rate represents 426 dollars in potential income before taxes. This amount serves as a benchmark for measuring the opportunity cost of an investment that pays no interest.
A second investor also has 10,000 dollars but borrows an identical amount at a hypothetical annual rate of 8%. Thus, they commit 20,000 dollars to the market while maintaining 10,000 dollars in debt. If the price does not change during a year, selling their assets yields 20,000 dollars. After repaying the borrowed principal and 800 dollars of interest, they have 9,200 dollars left, before other fees.
The difference becomes clear when the two strategies follow opposite paths. A 10% increase raises the spot position value to 11,000 dollars, compared to 22,000 dollars for the borrowed position. After debt and interest repayment, the second investor retains 11,200 dollars. Conversely, a 10% decrease reduces their net capital to 7,200 dollars versus 9,000 dollars for the spot investor. Leverage thus amplifies potential gains but also accentuates losses.
Borrowing Costs Can Erase Part of the Gains Debt changes the level of performance necessary to make an investment profitable. In the previous example, the borrower must record a 4% increase just to cover the annual interest of 800 dollars. This threshold does not include transaction fees or possible taxes. To achieve a result higher than the indicative 426 dollar income associated with Treasury bills, the needed increase reaches about 6.13%. The price must thus rise enough to compensate for financing and the yield the investor forgoes.
This constraint becomes even more significant when interest rates rise. An investor financing their purchase with debt must allocate part of their resources to interest payments. Even if the market moves in the expected direction, these expenses reduce the final profit. Conversely, someone using only their savings avoids this recurring financial charge. However, they remain exposed to price fluctuations and to the opportunity cost of their capital.
The total amount paid to the lender does not limit the risk. Credit terms can also determine how long the investor may hold the position. A swift market drop can prompt the lender to request additional collateral or to liquidate the concerned assets. In this case, the investor may have to sell before the price recovers its initial level. They risk suffering a definitive loss even if their long-term view later proves correct.
The leverage effect thus introduces a major difference between the theoretical performance of an asset and the actual result. A calculation based solely on purchase and sale prices ignores interest, margin requirements, and liquidation risks. Yet, these elements can impact results well before the end of the planned holding period. Financing must therefore be incorporated into the analysis from the start rather than appearing as an incidental expense. This distinction helps compare strategies that nonetheless present a similar market exposure.
Bitcoin: Futures Contracts Sometimes Hide the Cost of Financing Futures contracts allow taking a position on a price agreed upon today for a later settlement. Unlike a spot purchase, this operation may include a premium directly in the entry price. This difference, called the futures basis, is an important factor in assessing the real cost of exposure. It can complicate analysis when the investor focuses solely on spot price variations.
Imagine the spot price reaches 80,000 dollars, while a 90-day maturity contract trades at 81,200 dollars. The gap represents a premium of 1,200 dollars per unit, or 1.5% of the spot price. Annualized, this difference amounts to about 6.08%. If the spot price remains at 80,000 dollars until settlement, the contract must converge to this level. A long position then suffers a loss related to the disappearance of the initial premium.
The trader does not necessarily need to borrow money to bear this cost. The premium is already included in the price at which they open their position. This peculiarity explains why a lack of apparent debt does not always mean the exposure carries no financing cost. Futures prices also reflect investor demand for leveraged positions. They may also indicate the constraints faced by participants when using derivatives.
Interest rates play a role in this balance. An operator who buys spot and simultaneously sells a more expensive contract may have to borrow to finance the initial purchase. When dollar financing becomes more expensive, this expense can alter the economic interest of the operation. However, the futures premium and loan interest do not automatically represent twice the same cost. Proper analysis must distinguish each component to avoid double-counting an identical expense.
Comparison also requires consistent data. Spot and futures prices must correspond to observations sufficiently close in time. Otherwise, the calculated gap may not reflect a trade truly accessible to investors. This precaution is especially important when markets move quickly. A premium observed from delayed data may give a misleading picture of trading conditions. Calculation must therefore consider prices available at the time the strategy would have been executed.
Perpetual Contracts Add Variable Fees Perpetual contracts differ from fixed-maturity contracts because they have no expiration date. Platforms use funding payments to bring their price closer to a reference market. These payments can vary according to trading conditions and the balance between long and short positions. The investor must thus monitor their evolution throughout the holding period rather than assume a single rate for the entire operation.
According to rules published by Deribit, a positive funding rate means longs pay shorts. When the rate turns negative, shorts pay longs. The direction of payment thus depends on observed market conditions. This mechanism differs from a traditional loan, whose interest rate follows terms set by the contract. It also means a funding rate does not necessarily remain stable during the holding period.
Credit costs and perpetual contract fees can move in different directions. Borrowing rates can stay high while perpetual funding becomes negative during a market decline. Therefore, an investor cannot deduce the total cost of their position from a single indicator. They must examine financing conditions applicable to their instrument and platform. This approach helps better understand expenses influencing final returns.
Collateral and margin requirements complete this equation. Depending on platform conditions and account financing mode, collateral may earn interest. Transaction fees add to funding payments and possible borrowing costs. Furthermore, margin requirements may change, forcing the trader to commit additional capital. To measure profitability accurately, these expenses must be included over the actual holding period.
The choice of financial product thus determines part of the risks borne by the investor. A spot position financed with equity does not face the same constraints as a leveraged perpetual contract. In the latter case, variable fees and margin demands can accelerate available losses. Profitability then depends on market price but also on conditions for maintaining the position. These differences must be clearly understood before comparing several strategies.
Bitcoin: A Limited Supply Does Not Guarantee Protection Against Inflation The argument in favor of this asset notably rests on the limit of its supply, capped at 21 million units. Some investors believe this scarcity can help preserve their purchasing power in the long term. Michael Saylor is among those who have placed this argument at the center of their investment strategy. However, a limited supply does not guarantee a price increase when consumer prices rise. Scarcity is a characteristic of the asset, not a promise of return.
Inflation measures changes in the price of goods and services purchased by consumers. The yield of an asset depends on the price future buyers are willing to pay. These two mechanisms can interact but do not work identically. An increase in the consumer price index does not prove that an asset will automatically appreciate. Investors must distinguish their goal of protecting purchasing power from the actual performance obtained.
U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, called TIPS, have a different mechanism. Their principal adjusts according to changes in the relevant inflation index, per the terms of the security. The real yield at constant maturity of ten-year inflation-indexed Treasury bonds reached 2.88% on October 13. This data provides a comparison point for investors evaluating multiple solutions. Nevertheless, it does not guarantee a gain in case of early sale.
Indeed, indexed bonds remain exposed to market rate variations. If yields increase, a bond’s price can fall, causing a loss to one who sells before maturity. Each asset class thus presents its own yield conditions and specific risks. Investors must compare possible incomes, liquidity needs, and price variations. An analysis limited to inflation alone is insufficient to determine which strategy best meets their goals.
Limited supply also does not exempt examining market financial conditions. Even if an investor anticipates long-term appreciation, they must be able to bear costs necessary to maintain the position. High borrowing rates may reduce their ability to wait for favorable movements. Conversely, an investor financing their purchase with savings avoids debt-related interest. However, they remain subject to price fluctuations and opportunity costs of interest-bearing placements.
Financing Becomes a Decisive Factor for Profitability Analysis of different strategies shows that yield depends not only on the final price. A spot investor bears market risk and opportunity cost of capital. A borrower adds interest and liquidation risk to potential expenses. A trader using derivatives must also monitor premiums, funding payments, fees, and margin requirements. These differences can produce very divergent results, even when starting expectations are identical.
Holding period plays a central role in this comparison. A purchase financed by borrowing can become more costly as interest accumulates. A perpetual contract position can generate variable payments throughout its term. Cumulative fees then reduce available yield, while a sharp drop may trigger liquidation before any recovery. The price at which the asset ends the period thus does not always tell the whole investment story.
Calculations must also avoid confusing distinct expenses. The premium embedded in a futures price corresponds to a gap between two market prices. Interest on a loan used to finance collateral constitutes another expense. Adding them without checking their nature can lead to overestimating total cost. Conversely, omitting one element may yield an overly positive view of expected return. Accurate evaluation thus requires detailing financial flows linked to each operation.
Investors must also consider their ability to mobilize additional funds. A strategy appearing profitable on paper may become difficult to sustain when markets move fast. Margin calls and collateral demands can force immediate decisions. An investor lacking necessary liquidity risks exiting a position at the wrong time. This constraint distinguishes theoretical yield of a strategy from its feasibility in real market conditions.
In the future, changes in interest rates and financing costs will remain important factors for evaluating strategies related to digital assets. If credit remains costly, debt-funded positions will need to generate sufficient gains to cover their charges. Spot investors will continue to arbitrage between upside potential and forgone income. Derivative users will have to watch premiums, payments, and liquidation risks. The ability to maintain a position during tough periods could thus matter as much as price forecasts. Ultimately, BTC can satisfy a search for scarcity. However, its purchasing power preservation also depends on price paid, financing method, and length of exposure.
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Ghiles A.
Journaliste et rédacteur web passionné par l’univers des cryptomonnaies et des technologies Web3. J’y traite les dernières tendances et actualités afin de proposer un contenu de haute qualité à un large public du secteur.
Aksel Kibar, known for his technical analysis in the cryptocurrency markets, evaluated the recent movements in Bitcoin (BTC) price and explained the critical levels that investors should pay attention to. The analyst stated that two important bullish signals have recently emerged in Bitcoin, but the price has sharply retested one of these breakouts.
According to Kibar’s analysis, the first significant bullish signal in Bitcoin emerged with the vượt qua of the $67,200 level. This move indicated the completion of an inverse head and shoulders (IHS) pattern, known in technical analysis as a bullish reversal formation.
The second important signal came when Bitcoin broke above the upper boundary of the rectangular formation it had been trading within for a long time. Kibar argued that this breakout indicated the completion of a bottom reversal pattern, but Bitcoin is currently retesting this breakout sharply.
The analyst also drew attention to risk management regarding the technical signal at the $82,800 level. According to Kibar, the last low point formed within the wide rectangular pattern can be considered a broader stop-loss level for this signal.
Kibar also touched upon the technical structure of the inverse head and shoulders formation, stating that the lowest point of the right shoulder is particularly important. According to the analyst, this level can be used to determine whether the formation remains valid after an upward breakout from the neckline.
Kibar stated that if the price falls below the aforementioned low, the bullish formation could become invalid, and this could also generate a sell signal.
Technical analyst chart shared by Aksel Kibar. *This is not investment advice.
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US spot Bitcoin ETFs had a rough October stretch. Investors pulled $228.6 million from the funds over the five trading days ending October 16, 2026.
That brings month-to-date net outflows to roughly $615 million, with some tallies putting the figure closer to $618 million.
These funds have become the main on-ramp for institutional money into Bitcoin. When the exits outpace the entrances, people notice.
Where the money went BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the retreat. The fund saw approximately $165 million leave during the week, including $71.8 million on October 16 alone.
Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) also posted outflows on October 16. Its share was smaller, at $10.6 million.
The sharpest single-day hit landed on October 7, when outflows peaked at $487.1 million. That one session represents a large chunk of the entire month’s net damage so far.
Trading activity stayed busy throughout. Daily volume across the funds exceeded $2 billion on various sessions during October.
The bigger picture since January 2024 US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, and cumulative inflows since then have reached approximately $56.88 billion.
Total assets under management across the funds stood at $104.29 billion as of mid-October. The month’s outflows represent well under 1% of that figure.
The funds collectively hold roughly 1.276 million BTC.
Every share redeemed can require an issuer to reduce its Bitcoin holdings or its cash position. So outflows are not just an accounting entry. They can translate into actual selling in the underlying market.
What this means for the market With IBIT and FBTC leading redemptions, the largest and most institutionally oriented products are where the exits are concentrated.
The outflows do not necessarily mean institutions have lost faith in Bitcoin. A week of redemptions can reflect rebalancing, profit-taking, or shifting allocations across a broader portfolio, rather than a verdict on the asset itself.
The October 7 session deserves attention. A $487.1 million single-day exit shows how quickly sentiment can swing, and how much money can move in one direction when it does.
The sustained trading volume above $2 billion on multiple sessions is worth tracking alongside the flow data. Engagement remains high, which means the funds are still a central venue for Bitcoin exposure, even when the net direction is negative.
The key data points to watch are whether IBIT’s redemptions slow or accelerate, whether the month-to-date total climbs meaningfully beyond the $618 million mark, and how the funds’ combined holdings of roughly 1.276 million BTC hold up.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The Quantum Alliance is a new open standards body, launched by nine blockchain organizations on October 16, that will define what “post-quantum readiness” means for crypto networks, wallets, and infrastructure, and publish a common way to test whether a quantum-resistance claim is real. The group said its definitions, benchmarks, and migration guidance will all be released openly, according to its launch announcement.
The problem it targets is specific. Nearly every major blockchain secures accounts with elliptic-curve signatures, and once an account signs a transaction its public key sits permanently on a public ledger. A sufficiently capable quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could work backward from that public key to the private key and take control of the funds. The same signatures protect stablecoin minting keys, governance contracts, bridges, and oracle feeds, so a single compromised key could spread across many platforms at once.
By the Alliance’s count, 6.04 million BTC — 30.2% of total supply — is quantum-exposed at rest, and almost all of the roughly $2.9 trillion crypto market still relies on classical signatures. At Bitcoin’s October 17 price near $81,500, that exposed supply is worth about $492 billion. No existing quantum computer can perform the attack today, but the group argues the industry still has no agreed definition of “quantum-ready” to prepare against it.
What the Alliance Will Define and Publish The Alliance’s first deliverable is a public definition of quantum readiness covering transaction signatures, key management, consensus, zero-knowledge proof systems, and peer-to-peer connections. It will also publish open test criteria and benchmarks that any team can run against its own implementation, plus reference designs for migration that address exposed keys, dormant accounts, and the larger transactions post-quantum signatures produce.
The work is split across four groups: blockchain migration, post-quantum zero-knowledge systems, wallet security, and cross-chain compatibility. Modeled on the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Alliance will let proposals advance on public evidence, rough consensus, and working implementations, with no voting weight for corporate size or token holdings. Anyone can join a working group or submit a proposal.
Why the Timeline Keeps Tightening The Alliance points to a string of recent forecasts that have moved the threat window forward. In March, Google Quantum AI, working with researchers from the Ethereum Foundation and Stanford, found that cracking the elliptic-curve cryptography behind Bitcoin, Ether, and most major coins could take fewer than 500,000 physical qubits — roughly a twentieth of earlier estimates. A model called the Quantum Doom Clock, built by two Alliance contributors, has pointed to March 2028 as an early window since early 2025, and in September IonQ estimated that a fault-tolerant trapped-ion computer with about 20,000 physical qubits could solve Bitcoin’s secp256k1 problem in roughly 26 days per attempt.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024, but no single party can order a live blockchain to adopt them. A network can call itself “quantum-resistant” today with no shared understanding of which parts of its system the claim covers. How a quantum attack on Bitcoin would actually work is a question most networks have answered with marketing rather than a testable standard.
The Nine Founding Contributors The Alliance spans every layer a migration has to pass through. The founding contributors are Christopher Smith, founder and CEO of Quantus, a proof-of-work blockchain that uses NIST’s ML-DSA signature standard from its first block; Michal “Mehow” Pospieszalski, CEO of American Fortress, which builds the Send-to-Name payment address system; Leona Hioki of Intmax, a stateless zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum; Aaron Chen, CTO of the hardware wallet maker Keystone; Sebastien Guillemot, CTO of Midnight Foundation, which supports the Cardano-linked Midnight privacy chain; Colton Dillion and Dr. Richard T. Carback III of Postquant Labs, the developers of Quip Network; Richard Lee, chief business officer of the privacy-focused, lattice-based Abelian blockchain; Bryn Bennett, chief revenue officer at The Vault; and Katina Messinis, head of business development at security firm Hacken.
“In the future, ‘post-quantum cryptography’ will just be called ‘cryptography’ and everything else will be in a museum,” said Smith in the announcement. Guillemot added that zero-knowledge systems “carry some of the most sensitive data on any chain,” and that agreeing now on how to evaluate post-quantum proofs “saves every team from solving it alone later.”
What the Standards Cannot Do The Alliance is a standards body, not a regulator or an upgrade authority. It cannot order a live network to migrate, and its criteria cannot protect addresses whose public keys are already exposed, including coins whose owners have lost access. A single working demonstration, such as StarkWare’s quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction mined in August, protects only coins moved into a special output and does not make Bitcoin quantum-safe on its own.
What happens next is the first public definition of readiness and the open benchmarks that follow it. Until a cryptographically relevant quantum computer actually exists, the test of the Alliance will be whether exchanges, custodians, and developers adopt one shared yardstick instead of each grading its own migration.
Frequently Asked Questions Is Bitcoin safe from quantum computers? No machine capable of breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography exists today. The Quantum Alliance estimates 6.04 million BTC has public keys already exposed on-chain, which is why the group wants a shared readiness standard before a practical attack, currently forecast around 2028–2029.
What is post-quantum cryptography? Post-quantum cryptography refers to signature and encryption schemes designed to resist attack by quantum computers. NIST finalized its first standards, including ML-DSA and ML-KEM, in August 2024, but live blockchains still need a defined migration path to adopt them.
When could a quantum computer break crypto? Forecasts differ. Google Quantum AI cut its estimate to under 500,000 physical qubits in March 2026, and other projections point to a practical window around 2028–2029. No existing machine has reached that scale, so the timing remains an estimate, not a confirmed date.
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A freelance writer with a passion for crypto, delivering insightful and accurate content on blockchain and fintech. With a knack for translating complex concepts into accessible content, Eric produces well-researched articles, blog posts, and thought leadership pieces that cover the latest trends and developments in the digital finance space. His writing is aimed at educating and engaging both newcomers and industry experts, offering fresh insights into the world of cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), and blockchain innovations. Eric’s dedication to quality and accuracy makes him a trusted voice in the fintech and crypto communities
Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy Inc., presented Bitcoin as “digital capital” to investors at ParaFi Investor Day, focusing on the recovery of Strategy’s STRC preferred stock and the shift to daily dividends. Saylor highlighted the potential for Bitcoin to underpin a credit model, leveraging STRC’s dividend structure and buybacks. The presentation aimed to position STRC securities within a broader Bitcoin-backed financial strategy, although the transition to daily dividends remains contingent on shareholder approval.
Key Takeaways
Michael Saylor’s presentation appears consistent with supporting a YES outcome for STRC hitting $100, emphasizing Bitcoin’s role as digital capital.
Market pricing suggests increased confidence, with the December 31 sub-market showing 80.7% support for STRC reaching $100.
The move to daily dividends and STRC’s recovery to par value are central to Strategy’s financial strategy, though contingent on shareholder approval.
What to Watch
Markets will closely monitor any announcements from Strategy regarding shareholder approval for daily dividends, which could further support the YES scenario for STRC reaching $100. Additionally, any strategic Bitcoin acquisitions by Strategy could serve as key indicators of confidence in the underlying asset. Watch for updates on STRC’s dividend plans, as these may influence market perceptions and pricing dynamics.
XRP is holding close to $1.33, drawing attention from crypto analyst Egrag Crypto, who has identified a recurring pattern linking the digital asset’s current price action to three past market cycle lows. According to analysis shared on X, the emerging formation closely resembles those seen at major XRP bottoms in 2014, 2017-2018, and 2022.
Recurring traits at historical lowsOn the three-month chart, Egrag Crypto pointed out that every significant bottom displayed four primary features: highly erratic price movement, nonlinear reversals, a sense of chaos driven by fear and uncertainty, and a prolonged timeline that often extends for months or even years.
Egrag Crypto’s technical review underlined that these periods tend to be marked by “endless ups and downs” and a lack of clear direction, making it difficult for traders to time entries or exits confidently. The analyst emphasized that such conditions, while unsettling, have historically set the stage for eventual rallies.
“Bottoms are built in chaos, not comfort. Reviewing the 3-month chart, each cycle low has been defined by choppy, nonlinear and chaotic action,” Egrag Crypto wrote in the latest update. “The current structure fits the same mold, but the bottom isn’t confirmed yet.”
Egrag Crypto is an independent market analyst known in the digital asset community for pattern-based long-term XRP chart research. The analyst regularly publishes technical insight and market commentary to a large following on X.
Mini dictionary: Egrag Crypto, a pseudonymous analyst focusing on technical analysis and long-term price cycles in digital assets, especially XRP, frequently shares chart-based outlooks and trading perspectives on social platforms.
XRP fluctuates around key supportThe analysis notes that XRP’s most recent quarterly candle is positioned at a long-standing dotted support line on the chart. This area coincides with previous accumulation phases before upward moves in earlier cycles. However, the analyst said the current bottom should not be considered officially established.
While Egrag Crypto’s chart includes a “Bottom” label for the ongoing formation, it serves as a working identifier rather than a conclusive statement that the cycle has reversed. The main takeaway is that the bottoming process is typically gradual and uncertain.
Cycle BottomYearDurationKey ConditionsFirst2014MonthsChoppy, chaotic, nonlinearSecond2017-2018MonthsUps and downs, prolonged uncertaintyThird2022MonthsFear, lack of directional clarityCurrent2026*OngoingSimilar traits, bottom not confirmed*2026 refers to the time of the analysis and not a historical cycle.
Market bottoms as extended processesEgrag Crypto stressed that market bottoms are prolonged and complex rather than clear-cut moments. The analyst explained that these turning points do not provide assurance but instead challenge holders’ conviction through volatility and skepticism.
“Bottoms are a process, not an event. They rarely arrive with widespread agreement, and by the time the market recognizes one, prices may have already moved significantly higher,” Egrag Crypto commented.
This perspective suggests that waiting for absolute certainty may leave investors behind, as market turning points rarely offer comfort or clarity while underway.
Guidance for XRP holdersEgrag Crypto encouraged XRP holders to recognize that current price swings fit a pattern established in previous accumulation phases, cautioning that ongoing chaos is often part of durable bottom formation.
The analysis refrains from offering a specific price target or timeline, instead suggesting that the recent period structurally mirrors recoveries seen in the past over several months. Each prior low eventually resolved with strong upward moves on the three-month chart.
XRP closed its latest quarterly candle at $1.3384, inching down 0.14% at the time Egrag Crypto published the chart.
XRP whales moved a total of approximately 1.669 billion tokens to Binance over the past 30 days, marking the largest influx from large holders in the past seven months as XRP traded near $1.30.
Record Whale Inflows Drive Binance ActivityCryptoQuant analyst Arab Chain reported that the cumulative inflow of XRP to Binance wallets over 30 days climbed past the previous high recorded in September, which totaled around 1.65 billion XRP. This surge suggests renewed activity among significant market participants.
The transferred tokens, priced at roughly $1.33 per XRP, amounted to about $2.22 billion. This figure represents deposits over a 30-day span rather than direct evidence of completed sales.
CryptoQuant’s whale inflow metric aggregates the volume of XRP sent from large wallets to Binance over a rolling 30-day period. After peaking in September and declining, this metric rebounded in mid-October, adding about 19 million more XRP compared to the previous peak.
A shift in whale behavior has accompanied these inflows. Earlier in October, the percentage of large holders in total exchange withdrawals dropped by 27% in eight days after previously reaching 82% of outgoing transfers.
It is important to note that inflow and withdrawal metrics track different activities. While withdrawals from exchanges often reflect buying or custody decisions, inflows boost the amount of XRP that could be sold or traded quickly on Binance.
Renewed inflows do not necessarily signal immediate selling, but they increase the available supply that could be traded if whales choose to liquidate their assets.
$2.2 Billion Moves: What It Means for Market PressureLarge holders typically use centralized exchanges like Binance to facilitate trading, rebalance portfolios, or manage collateral across crypto and traditional markets.
An increase in whale deposits may heighten the risk of selling pressure, particularly when liquidity is thin. However, on-chain transfers do not prove that all deposited XRP has been sold.
These developments coincide with a broader rise in tracked XRP reserves on exchanges.
From October 12 to 15, exchange wallets accumulated an additional 83.94 million XRP, bringing their total to about 22.06 billion tokens. Binance alone saw reserves grow by approximately 54.61 million XRP during the week ending October 15.
CryptoQuant’s whale inflow data and exchange reserve changes measure distinct but related activities. Deposits add to exchange balances, while net reserve changes reflect both deposits and withdrawals over defined periods.
As a result, not all of the cumulative 1.669 billion XRP in whale deposits necessarily remained on Binance after accounting for withdrawals.
MetricAmountPeriodExchangeCumulative Whale Deposits1.669 billion XRP30 daysBinanceExchange Reserve Increase83.94 million XRPOct 12-15All exchangesBinance Reserve Growth54.61 million XRP7 days to Oct 15BinanceXRP Price Outlook Remains Cautious Amid Whale ActivityThe influx of large whale transfers appeared as XRP traded near $1.31, raising questions about whether a larger exchange supply could challenge market stability.
Meanwhile, demand from institutional investors has grown less predictable. Recent outflows from XRP ETF products occurred alongside withdrawals from prominent Ethereum and Solana investment funds, though the reported totals for XRP varied among data providers.
Previously, XRP-backed investment vehicles had attracted steady inflows for 13 consecutive weeks, underscoring that institutional interest does not always move in tandem with price trends.
If future whale deposits result in continuous selling, XRP may experience further downward price momentum. Alternatively, declining inflows paired with resilient buying interest could ease negative sentiment.
Recent data confirm an uptick in whale activity, but not a coordinated mass selloff. Short-term market direction will depend on actual exchange flows, trading volume, and broader price movements in $XRP.
Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has issued a warning after encountering a suspicious notification on his Android device, which appeared to come from the SecuX wallet app. SecuX is a provider of hardware cold wallets designed to securely store cryptocurrencies offline, aiming to safeguard users against online threats.
Suspicious notification ties to phishing attemptSchwartz reported receiving a push notification that seemed to originate from the SecuX app. He initially shared his experience on the X social platform, noting that the message claimed a critical vulnerability had been detected, warning that, “Your funds may be at risk, critical vulnerability detected in SecuX wallet, verify your wallet immediately.”
When Schwartz tapped the notification, the app launched normally, causing no immediate alarm. However, after further investigation, he checked his notification history where he discovered the suspicious message. The alert contained a link to a website requesting users to enter their wallet’s 12 or 24-word recovery phrase—a clear indication of a phishing attack designed to steal sensitive wallet information.
Schwartz urged, “Never do that,” stressing the critical importance of not sharing the 12- or 24-word seed phrases that allow full access to a crypto wallet’s funds.
Mini dictionary: SecuX is a company specializing in hardware cold wallets used for storing cryptocurrency assets offline, offering an additional layer of security against online hacking attempts.
Another user responded to Schwartz, advising him not to interact with suspicious notifications. However, Schwartz acknowledged that he had already tapped the alert out of curiosity, and although no unusual activity followed, the presence of a malicious link in the notification history confirmed the fraudulent intent.
Security measures and service updateAround the same time, SecuX informed the crypto community of “emergency maintenance” for its Android app. On October 16, the company explained its wallet application was undergoing a major upgrade and emergency maintenance to improve both security and stability. The announcement did not specify the cause of the emergency, leaving the connection between the maintenance and Schwartz’s experience uncertain.
The origin of the suspicious notification has not been independently confirmed. It remains unclear whether the alert was generated by the SecuX app, a third-party notification service, or another source entirely. Information so far does not confirm a direct compromise of SecuX’s app or its underlying infrastructure.
In an official communication, SecuX reiterated that users should avoid clicking on suspicious or unverified links and should never share their wallet’s 24-word recovery phrase. The company also cautioned against phishing attempts, including messages impersonating SecuX Support.
The provider emphasized that their app does not request the recovery phrase and warned, “Never share your 24-word recovery phrase with anyone.”
After completing system maintenance, SecuX reported that the app had resumed normal operations. The company once again reminded its users that under no circumstances would the app request a recovery phrase and reinforced best practices for wallet security.
The severe market volatility that affected XRP's price movement last week has also extended to its ETF ecosystem as both retail and institutional investors appear to be taking caution.
The broad XRP ETF market has posted its worst weekly performance in over three months, drawing attention from market analysts about how this could affect XRP's price potential.
Over $1.84 million exit XRP funds last weekAccording to the latest data from SosoValue, XRP ETFs have recorded a net outflow of over $1.84 million over the last week.
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While this marks the first weekly outflow the funds have registered since July 7th, it has come at a time when the market is facing a downturn, raising concerns about whether investor demand for the XRP investment product is beginning to weaken.
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Notably, the reversal has come after XRP ETFs maintained a steady streak of consistent capital inflows for 13 consecutive weeks.
As such, the XRP funds have broken the bullish trend with a negative performance this week after seeing sustained investor interest in gaining exposure to the XRP investment product.
XRP demand stalls as price retests $1.30While the performance of the XRP funds provides a bearish outlook for the asset, XRP's recent price movements have contributed to the uncertainty surrounding its short-term outlook.
Despite showing signs of a potential price recovery in the previous day, XRP is back in the red and has once again retested the $1.30 level, placing market sentiment under renewed pressure.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Major crypto exchange Binance has kicked off an airdrop campaign that rewards eligible users holding Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin on its platform. The grand prize pool is $800,000 in XRP. The campaign runs from September 25, 2026, 00:00 (UTC) to October 23, 2026, at 00:00 (UTC).
Binance users are required to hold RLUSD in any Binance account to partake in the XRP Rewards, which will be distributed weekly every Friday by 18:00 (UTC).
Eligible users must hold RLUSD in balance (net assets) in any of the following account categories on Binance: Spot Account; Funding Account; Earn Account (RLUSD in Flexible Savings); Margin Account (RLUSD in Cross Margin, Isolated Margin, or Portfolio Margin).
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Eligible users are required to maintain at least 0.01 RLUSD in their Spot, Funding, Earn, or Margin Accounts to qualify for the rewards, which will be airdropped directly to the Spot Accounts of their Binance master accounts.
RLUSD newsUS financial services company Cross River Bank announced a partnership with Ripple this week to expand its stablecoin optionality and integrate RLUSD into its banking core infrastructure, with support for transactions on the XRP Ledger. The collaboration combines traditional payment technology with RLUSD on the XRPL, giving issuers and acquirers greater flexibility to settle intraday and reduce settlement latency.
Ripple also announced its partnership with DriveWealth across RLUSD settlement on the XRP Ledger, cross-border payments, custody, and prime brokerage to modernize how money moves across global markets.
DriveWealth will integrate Ripple's stablecoin infrastructure to support settlement in Europe, with plans to expand to the U.S. The integration will leverage RLUSD on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), alongside Ripple's mint and burn capabilities.
Standard Chartered Bank also announced this week the launch of institutional custody services for Ripple's stablecoin, RLUSD, through its Dubai International Financial Centre branch.
According to Token Terminal, Ripple led stablecoin issuer growth over the last 24 hours with over $27.4 million added.
Crypto analyst Cleo Schmidt has identified what she describes as a pivotal repetition in XRP’s price structure, suggesting that the asset is currently mirroring the powerful trend sequence that preceded its 60,000% rally leading up to the 2018 peak. Schmidt, who regularly shares market insights as @Cleo_995yu, points to a sequence of support level retests that historically have marked the start of sharp upward moves in XRP.
Pattern echoes past rallySchmidt’s analysis focuses on a longstanding support zone that XRP has revisited several times since 2017. She notes that each major retest–when the price approaches and confirms a support level multiple times without falling below–has preceded periods of compression followed by breakouts.
According to Schmidt, the previous completion of this formation in 2017 led XRP to surge over 60,000%, reaching its all-time high in early 2018. She believes a similar setup is currently in play as the price moves through the same levels and consolidates in a comparable structure.
Schmidt argues that a sequence of support retests, particularly a third confirmation, has historically signaled the start of explosive moves for XRP, reflecting the cycle that led to the 2018 peak.
Key retest level and expansion triggerSchmidt emphasizes the importance of the third confirmed retest at this price zone. She states that while the first two retests establish and confirm the support level’s validity, a third confirmation often acts as a launchpad for broader expansion.
She stated, “Once the support level is confirmed for the third time, the expansion could accelerate.” This anticipation aligns closely with what was observed during XRP’s 2017 rally, where each retest appeared to compress volatility ahead of the historic surge.
Mini dictionary: Retest, a technical analysis term referring to the market price returning to a previously established support or resistance level to confirm its validity before moving in the direction of the trend.
Step-by-step price roadmapSchmidt has laid out a stepwise roadmap for XRP, projecting a series of key milestones she believes the asset could reach if the pattern holds. Her stated path begins at $1.10, predicts a pullback to $0.97, and then lays out further upside targets at $1.80, $2.70, $3.20, $6.50, and ultimately $13.
The early pullback to $0.97 is described as a re-accumulation phase, which could precede a significant rally toward $1.80. Subsequent levels mark progressive resistance points on the way to higher price objectives.
Outlook depends on confirmationThe roadmap gives traders clear levels to watch as Schmidt continues to monitor for confirmation of the third retest, which she views as the critical signal for the start of a new expansion phase. Until this occurs, she suggests that the pattern remains in development and that market participants should remain attentive to support zone behavior.
Schmidt’s approach offers a detailed framework for interpreting XRP’s current technical setup. If the cycle repeats as analyzed, traders may witness a significant upward movement. However, the realization of this scenario hinges on the confirmation of the key support level, which has proven to be instrumental in previous cycles.
Schmidt is an independent market analyst known for her pattern-based cryptocurrency forecasts. XRP is a digital asset and payment protocol developed to enable quick, cross-border financial transfers.
Bitwise Asset Management has established a dominant presence in the spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) sector, reporting $561 million in assets under management (AUM) for its Bitwise XRP ETF, according to data from BSCN Newswire. This milestone positions Bitwise as the largest issuer in the segment, currently accounting for over one-third of all assets managed by spot XRP ETFs worldwide. The surge reflects strong investor demand for regulated exposure to XRP amid ongoing market volatility.
Bitwise maintains significant leadDespite fluctuations in XRP’s market value, the Bitwise XRP ETF continues to attract robust capital inflows. The fund currently outpaces major competitors by more than $150 million in AUM. Comparative figures from CryptoETF.today previously showed Bitwise with $517.4 million, Canary at $457.8 million, and Franklin Templeton at $425.7 million. These asset values shift regularly with market conditions and reporting dates, but Bitwise consistently leads the field.
ETF IssuerReported AUM (million USD)Bitwise561Canary457.8Franklin Templeton425.7Weekly flow data from SoSoValue shows that Bitwise attracted $10.55 million of the total $11.31 million invested in U.S. spot XRP ETFs between October 5 and October 9. Net inflows for the Bitwise XRP ETF reportedly reached $688 million, further solidifying its position.
The ETF began trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker symbol XRP on November 19, 2025. The fund tracks the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, New York Variant Index, which sources its price data from leading crypto exchanges and aims to closely mirror XRP’s spot market value.
Bitwise Asset Management is a U.S.-based investment firm specializing in cryptoasset-focused investment products. The ETF invests directly in XRP, with custody services provided by Coinbase Custody. The annual management fee for investors is set at 0.34%, amounting to an estimated $1.91 million per year based on current asset values.
Mini dictionary: CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, New York Variant Index, is a benchmark price index designed to provide a representative USD price for XRP. It aggregates trading activity from selected major exchanges to create a stable reference point for institutional products.
Interpreting fund performance and competitive landscapeAssets under management reflect the scale of an ETF but do not necessarily indicate trading volumes, performance, or investor profitability. Changes in XRP’s market price directly impact the value of assets held, which means AUM can decrease even if inflows remain positive during periods of market downturns.
Analysts have highlighted this distinction, emphasizing that net inflows represent the net cash moving in and out of a fund, while AUM accounts for current market value of the assets, including price fluctuations.
“Net inflows for the Bitwise XRP ETF reached $688 million, but total assets can still fall if XRP’s price drops. AUM is sensitive to crypto volatility, not just new investment activity,” analysts explained when reviewing the fund’s rapid growth alongside market risks.
Bitwise XRP ETF has attracted the largest share of capital among spot XRP products, capturing more than one-third of the sector with $561 million in assets. This significant lead underscores strong demand for institutional access to $XRP as regulatory frameworks expand.
The competitive dynamics among asset managers such as Canary and Franklin Templeton remain intense, as each seeks to carve out market share in the fast-evolving world of crypto-based ETFs. However, variations in data collection methods and reporting timelines mean that comparisons may not always reflect real-time standings.
Technical perspectives and market impactXRP’s price action is a key determinant for the valuation of ETFs holding the asset. Crypto analyst EGRAG Crypto recently examined key exponential moving averages (EMAs) over 21, 50, and 100-month periods, comparing them to historical market cycles and corrections.
According to EGRAG Crypto, a breakout above $3.67 could mark a significant turning point, with hypothetical technical targets at $5.25, $6.33, $8.28, and $13.69 based on Fibonacci retracement levels. These levels serve as technical scenarios rather than definitive price predictions.
An increase in XRP’s market price can directly lift total ETF assets under management, independent of new capital inflows, while a decline can reduce fund value even when investors add funds.
These technical observations offer insight into how price trends could affect ETF valuations going forward. Institutional and individual investors alike monitor such metrics when evaluating exposure to XRP through regulated investment vehicles.
Leading asset management firm Bitwise has continued to establish its foothold in the XRP ETF ecosystem, pulling in the largest amount of capital on most trading sessions.
Following its consistent XRP purchases, the Bitwise XRP ETF now holds more than half a billion dollars' worth of XRP as of October 17, per the latest data from SosoValue.
Bitwise crossed crucial XRP milestoneThe data shows that the XRP ETF issued by Bitwise has accumulated up to $541.12 million in net assets as its XRP fund continues to grow.
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While the fund has continued to witness consistent investor demand, the data shows that its total net inflows now stand at $684.73 million, as investor capital has continued to flow consistently into the fund since it launched.
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With over $541 million worth of XRP now owned by the company, it appears that Bitwise has continued to play a major role in providing investors with exposure to XRP through traditional financial markets.
As such, it has continued to provide investors with the opportunity to benefit from XRP's price movements without the need to purchase and manage XRP directly.
What does this mean for XRP?While this marks a major milestone for Bitwise and its investment product, it is also significant for the broader XRP ecosystem as it indicates growing demand for XRP among institutions.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that the net assets and inflows achieved by an ETF do not necessarily indicate an equivalent amount of XRP purchased by the fund; they could hold more.
XRP investment funds have reported significant outflows, as $1.84 million exited XRP-focused exchange traded funds in the past week. Market observers noted that this represents the first weekly outflow since July 7, ending a prolonged period of capital inflows and raising questions about investor sentiment in XRP’s ecosystem.
XRP ETF inflows reverse after steady gainsThe XRP ETF market registered its worst weekly performance in over three months, following a steady 13-week streak of positive capital inflows. During this period, both retail and institutional investors had consistently increased their exposure to XRP through exchange traded funds.
Report data provided by crypto analytics platform SosoValue confirmed that over $1.84 million left XRP ETFs last week. This downturn has coincided with heightened volatility across broader crypto markets, where investors have shown growing caution.
After 13 consecutive weeks of positive inflows, XRP funds have now recorded their first net outflow, as more than $1.84 million exited these investment products last week.
The reversal marks a notable shift in investor behavior, as XRP ETFs had been on a consistent upward trajectory for over three months. The outflows have come at a time when both prices and sentiment across the cryptocurrency market have weakened, amplifying concerns about future demand for XRP investment products.
Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, offer a regulated product for investors to gain exposure to an underlying asset such as XRP without directly holding the asset itself. These funds often serve as an indicator of institutional and retail interest in a particular cryptocurrency.
Mini dictionary: SosoValue, a cryptocurrency data provider known for tracking ETF flows and fund activity in the digital asset sector.
XRP price fluctuates amid market uncertaintyThe recent outflow has corresponded with notable price volatility for XRP. After briefly showing signs of recovery, XRP has retraced its gains and now trades near the $1.30 level, entering negative territory once again. This renewed loss has placed additional pressure on overall market sentiment.
Analysts have pointed to the reversal in fund flows as a potential bearish signal for XRP’s price trend, particularly as the cryptocurrency struggles to maintain short-term momentum.
PeriodXRP ETF FlowsXRP Price TrendPast 13 WeeksConsistent inflowsGradual recoveryLast Week$1.84 million outflowRetest of $1.30, renewed lossesAs XRP continues to move in step with shifting investor sentiment in ETF products, market participants are closely watching for further signals on whether outflows will persist or if a return to positive momentum is possible.
Both retail and institutional participants appear increasingly cautious as XRP’s price and associated funds respond sharply to current market volatility.
Brandon Biggs, a self-described prophet based in Oklahoma, has returned to the spotlight with a new vision related to XRP and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Biggs previously attracted attention in the XRP community after stating that he believed XRP, the digital asset developed by Ripple, would one day reach a value of $10,000. His latest statements have prompted discussion among cryptocurrency commentators, notably Digital Asset Investor.
Biggs’s latest vision and symbolismBiggs detailed a vivid vision that he claimed involved Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X, formerly Twitter. In the vision, Biggs described Musk as wearing an unusually dark suit paired with a white shirt he described as “blinding.” He added that Musk’s tie appeared even blacker, suggesting an emphasis on the symbolism of colors and contrasts.
According to Biggs, the most striking aspect of the vision was seeing the X symbol and the XRP logo overlap to form a single entity. However, he clarified that this image was not a literal prediction of a merger or partnership. “I’m not saying they will merge. This is not financial advice. This is a vision,” he told his followers.
Biggs also described an owl with a dark wizard’s hat landing on Musk’s shoulder during the vision. He stated that he interpreted this as a “sinister” element but acknowledged the symbolic nature of these details.
Biggs stated that he witnessed an unusual combination of the X and XRP logos alongside symbolic imagery including an owl with a wizard’s hat, underscoring that his vision should not be taken as financial advice or assurance of future developments.
Reaction from Digital Asset InvestorDigital Asset Investor, a well-known crypto commentator, responded with skepticism to Biggs’s claims, remarking about the prophet’s credibility. Despite his reservations, he said he found certain aspects of the vision aligned with his own research.
He explained that, nearly seven years ago, he had independently concluded that satellite technology such as SpaceX’s Starlink could play a key role in expanding banking services to remote populations. In his view, connecting banking to satellite infrastructure could help reach unbanked communities worldwide.
Additionally, Digital Asset Investor connected Ripple’s previous marketing efforts, featuring astronauts and space themes, as possible indirect support for the role of technology like Starlink in the future of financial infrastructure.
Mini dictionary: Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX. It aims to provide high-speed internet access to underserved and remote areas globally using a network of low Earth orbit satellites.
Digital Asset Investor highlighted that Ripple’s technology, combined with Starlink’s potential for global connectivity, could contribute to banking the unbanked, and saw echoes of this idea in previous Ripple commercials.
X Money and financial integrationThe conversation extended beyond symbolic visions to include speculation about future financial technology developments. Digital Asset Investor asserted that X Money, a developing financial product under the X platform owned by Elon Musk, could become a dominant force in global banking.
He suggested that recent partnerships, such as Ripple’s work with Cross River Bank, could facilitate XRP’s integration with X Money. This potential convergence of Musk’s financial ambitions, Ripple’s blockchain solutions, and satellite infrastructure represents a growing speculation in the digital asset sector.
XRP’s standing in the new financial landscapeBiggs has previously described XRP as a foundational element or “pillar” of a future financial system. Digital Asset Investor indicated that, while he doubts the prophetic nature of visions, he believes the groundwork for such a role is being laid through the expansion of relevant technical infrastructure.
Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin continues to attract significant attention from both XRP supporters and institutional analysts, with fresh analysis highlighting its importance within the Ripple ecosystem. The crypto researcher SMQKE presented findings on how RLUSD strategically complements XRP, particularly in the areas of decentralized finance and broader institutional engagement.
RLUSD and its strategic roleThe analysis positions RLUSD as an asset intended to work alongside, rather than against, XRP. By leveraging RLUSD, Ripple aims to strengthen market presence in low-liquidity environments. The new stablecoin is designed to operate in a way that supports XRP’s key functions, furthering its adoption across DeFi and among institutional investors.
Management of RLUSD reserves was assigned to Standard Custody, which became part of Ripple through an acquisition in 2024. This move seeks to assure both transparency and stability for those using the stablecoin.
RLUSD is structured to complement XRP and expand its adoption, not to compete with it.
Progress in real-world asset tokenizationRipple’s efforts have also extended into real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, an area gaining traction among leading financial institutions. Through a partnership with Archax, Ripple has advanced the integration of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tokenized assets onto the XRP Ledger, positioning itself among established players like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs, who have also moved toward blockchain adoption.
Tokenized assets require robust infrastructure in terms of both liquidity and stability. Within this structure, RLUSD is tasked with fulfilling the demand for stability, while XRP focuses on transaction settlement and liquidity management. These two assets are designed to perform separate roles but jointly enhance the overall efficiency of Ripple’s solutions.
In a market where a single Fed decision or a sudden altcoin listing can change everything in seconds, switching between multiple apps for trading tools and news can become costly for investors. As a result, more traders are turning to privacy-first platforms like CryptoAppsy, which consolidate real-time charts, news, portfolio tracking, and macro data into one interface, with no account required.
The impact of XRP ETFsMonica Long, referenced in the analysis, expressed confidence in the prospects for an XRP exchange-traded fund, citing regulatory clarity from the United States as a driving force. XRP and Bitcoin are the only digital assets with this level of explicit regulatory recognition in the country, which Long argued would create favourable conditions for an XRP ETF filing.
This view was validated when the first spot XRP ETFs received approval in late 2025. The launch of these products gave traditional investors a new gateway to gain exposure to XRP and removed several longstanding access barriers for large institutional participants.
Community members have discussed the integration of RLUSD within current payment channels. One observer emphasized that placing RLUSD alongside conventional systems such as ACH and wire transfers through shared APIs could expand the ledger’s utility while retaining XRP’s central role as a bridge asset.
Others focused on RLUSD’s US dollar peg, expressing concerns about maintaining stability should the dollar weaken. Some analysts argued that the ongoing development of network effects and broader blockchain adoption remains an area many market participants have yet to fully recognize.
By addressing stability and leveraging liquidity, RLUSD and XRP are positioned to strengthen Ripple’s footprint in tokenized finance and institutional adoption.
Bitwise, a prominent digital asset manager, has strengthened its presence in the XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) sector, accumulating substantial investor interest and capital inflow to its XRP ETF.
Record assets and growing inflowsRecent data from SosoValue shows that the Bitwise XRP ETF now manages net assets exceeding $541 million, making it one of the largest XRP-focused ETF products in the market.
Cumulative net inflows to the fund have reached $684.73 million, marking a steady influx of capital since its launch. This figure suggests that institutional and individual investors continue to allocate funds to the product, seeking XRP market exposure via traditional market structures.
Bitwise, established in 2017, is recognized for pioneering various crypto investment vehicles, including spot and futures-based ETFs. The firm has steadily expanded its offerings to cover prominent digital assets, reinforcing its status within the crypto asset management industry.
With consistent inflows and significant assets under management, Bitwise has positioned its XRP ETF to meet increasing investor demand for crypto exposure. The company’s strategy enables market participants to participate in XRP price movements without directly holding or managing the digital asset.
MetricBitwise XRP ETF ValueNet assets$541.12 millionTotal net inflows$684.73 millionImpact on the XRP ecosystemReaching $541 million in net assets marks a notable milestone, both for Bitwise and for wider institutional adoption of XRP. The accumulation of assets in the ETF reflects sustained institutional interest in the digital asset space, especially in products offering regulated, traditional access to cryptocurrencies.
Bitwise’s approach has also given investors alternative ways to gain exposure to $XRP, without the operational complexities related to direct token management and custody.
With its XRP ETF amassing more than half a billion dollars in holdings and net inflows exceeding $684 million, Bitwise has continued to provide a robust gateway for investors seeking regulated access to the XRP market.
The growing size of Bitwise’s ETF indicates that demand for institutional-grade XRP investment products is on the rise, mirroring trends seen in Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.
However, analysts note that the total net assets and inflows associated with an ETF do not directly equate to the exact quantity of XRP tokens acquired by the fund. The relationship between inflows, net assets, and XRP holdings can be influenced by various factors, including price fluctuations and fund management strategies.
Mini dictionary: SosoValue, a digital asset analytics provider, offers detailed data and tracking for fund performance and digital asset flows across a variety of ETF products and crypto investment vehicles.
Digital Asset Investor, a prominent crypto analyst active on social media, recently brought attention to a clip from YouTuber The Modern Investor highlighting unprecedented XRP outflows from cryptocurrency exchanges. The discussion has focused investor concerns on the speed and scale of these withdrawals and the potential impact on XRP’s long-term supply.
The pace of XRP accumulationThe Modern Investor explained that in a 24-hour period, 1.6 billion XRP were withdrawn from exchanges. Given XRP’s total supply of 100 billion tokens, this single-day movement accounted for just over 1% of all tokens in existence.
He emphasized that such large-scale daily removals are not isolated events. Outflows of one billion or more XRP are becoming increasingly frequent, which could have a rapid effect on the amount of XRP available for trading on exchanges. If similar withdrawal rates continued uninterrupted, the total supply of accessible XRP on exchanges could be depleted within a few months.
This calculation is intended as a hypothetical scenario based on recent data, not as a formal prediction. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the exchange outflows is clear.
The Modern Investor argued that daily removals of more than 1% of XRP’s supply create a scenario where, if the trend continues, the majority of the asset could soon move out of publicly traded hands.
Growing demand from tokenizationDigital Asset Investor also commented that the current rate of XRP being removed from exchanges does not include anticipated demand pressures. Traditional financial institutions are beginning to tokenize real-world assets and the transition is expected to move swiftly into the hundreds of trillions of dollars, potentially increasing demand for XRP as a critical settlement and liquidity asset.
He suggested that institutional adoption and tokenization of assets could sharply accelerate the pace at which XRP is accumulated, amplifying existing pressures on supply as new financial use cases emerge.
Mini dictionary: Real-world asset tokenization, the process of using blockchain technology to represent ownership or rights to traditional assets, such as real estate or securities, as digital tokens that can be traded or settled on a blockchain network.
If this trend accelerates, analysts predict retail investors waiting on the sidelines may face significantly reduced opportunities to purchase XRP at current prices or in comparable volumes.
Supply scarcity and warning to investorsDigital Asset Investor warned that ongoing withdrawals combined with increased institutional interest could result in dramatically less XRP being available on open exchanges. He cautioned future investors that those delaying entry might struggle to obtain substantial quantities of XRP, compared with today’s market participants.
He stated, “People are going to be sick,” urging his audience to take note in light of evolving market conditions.
The warning highlighted concerns that, if exchange outflows persist alongside growing demand for tokenized assets, market liquidity for XRP could decline sharply, constraining access for latecomers.
Key metrics: Exchange outflows and total supplyWith a 24-hour outflow amounting to 1.6 billion XRP, active monitoring of exchange supplies has become a focal point for investors and analysts tracking the token’s distribution trends. Market watchers are evaluating how sustained outflows could affect available supply and pricing dynamics over the coming months.
MetricAmountPercentage of Total SupplyXRP withdrawn (24h)1.6 billion1.6%Total XRP supply100 billion100%While some see this as a pivotal supply event for XRP, others advise caution, recommending that investors stay informed and exercise due diligence.
XRP experienced renewed selling pressure, falling 2.86% to $1.29 while trading volume dropped 24.1% to $1.28 billion in the last 24 hours. The decline in volume alongside price weakness has drawn attention from analysts monitoring key support zones, particularly as a possible double top pattern emerges on the charts.
XRP double top raises downside concernsA potential double top formation is worrying traders who are closely following XRP’s price action. Crypto With Gopal, a digital asset analyst known for technical evaluations, identified two recent price rejections in the $1.65 to $1.70 range. These repeated failures to break higher have led to speculation that XRP could be at risk of further losses, especially if immediate support levels fail to hold.
Crypto With Gopal noted that sellers stepped in after two rejections near $1.65 to $1.70, causing XRP to slide toward the $1.25 support zone. If the price breaks below this area, the path toward $0.80 could become more likely.
A double top is a classic chart pattern that often signals a potential trend reversal. In this scenario, two similar price peaks form before a retracement, suggesting that buying power is weakening. The recent pullbacks to the $1.25 area have now become critical for future price direction.
Analysts have identified the $1.25 support as a key level. Should XRP fall below this threshold, further downward movement toward $0.80 could follow according to Gopal’s assessment. While this is a possible downside target, this outcome is not certain unless the support area is decisively breached.
Alongside softening price action, XRP’s market capitalization now sits at $82 billion. The decline in trading activity, reflected in the reduced volume, suggests uncertainty as traders pause to watch pivotal support.
MetricPreviousCurrentPrice$1.33$1.2924h Change—-2.86%Volume$1.68 billion$1.28 billionSupport$1.25$1.25Potential DownsideNot flagged$0.80 if breakdownXRP technical signals show persistent weaknessTechnical analysis suggests continued weakness for XRP. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) currently sits at 35.45, placing it well below the neutral threshold of 50. This reading signals that sellers are in control and buying pressure remains limited.
Further bearish momentum is seen in the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator. The MACD line is measured at -0.03221, remaining below its signal line at -0.01274, with a histogram of -0.01946, reinforcing the negative outlook.
XRP is also trading under key technical resistance. The 0.786 Fibonacci retracement level at $1.34 has turned into immediate resistance, while further upside barriers are expected near $1.45. A sustained move above these levels would be required for a possible rebound.
Mini dictionary: RSI (Relative Strength Index) is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price movements, with values below 50 typically indicating weaker momentum or bearish pressure.
Key levels for XRP in the near termFor traders monitoring immediate risks, $1.25 remains the crucial support level, as identified by the latest analysis. If selling persists, Fibonacci levels near $1.20 could act as an additional downside marker.
Protecting the $1.25 support and regaining the area between $1.40 and $1.50 may be essential if XRP is to reverse recent losses and regain positive momentum.
Overall, the combination of declining volume, technical weakness, and potential trend reversal signals places XRP in a vulnerable position. If the double top formation is confirmed by a breakdown of support, price movement toward $0.80 may become increasingly likely.
XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) extended its recent decline as the broader crypto rally stalled and investor demand cooled. The token slipped to $1.3080, its weakest level since September 18 and roughly 20% below its September highs. The retreat could deepen, as the price has formed a bearish technical pattern and ETF outflows are climbing.
Ripple has pulled back over the past few weeks, in line with Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and other altcoins. The market capitalization of all tokens has dropped from nearly $3 trillion in September to $2.7 trillion today.
This retreat has coincided with the fading demand in the spot, futures, and ETF market. CoinGecko data shows that its 24-hour volume dropped to $1.4 billion from over $1.7 billion on the same day last week.
Spot XRP ETFs recorded outflows of more than $2.47 million on Friday, after shedding $104,000 the day before. That left the funds with a net outflow of $1.8 million for the week, their first weekly outflow since July. Bitwise’s XRP fund holds $541 million in assets, while Franklin’s XRPZ holds $390 million.
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XRP’s futures open interest has also been sliding, dropping to $2.8 billion, its lowest level since September 17. It peaked at $3.78 billion last month, which puts the current figure roughly 26% below that high. Falling open interest typically signals that demand from leveraged traders is fading.
The performance has coincided with rising macro headwinds. Crude oil prices soared, with Brent, the global benchmark, crossing the $110 milestone. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) jumped to $101 as the crisis in the Middle East escalated. US bond yields have continued rising, with the 10-year rising to 5.10%.
The daily chart shows that XRP price has dropped sharply in the past few days, moving from a high of $1.6465 to $1.3082. It is attempting to move below the neckline of $1.2470, its lowest level on September 15.
XRP is attempting to form a death cross pattern, which happens when the 50-day and 200-day moving averages cross each other. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the MACD have continued falling.
Therefore, the price may continue falling as sellers target the psychological level of $1.00. A move above the resistance level of $1.3840 will invalidate the bearish outlook.
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XRP is trading at $1.30, having declined 2.26% as broad losses persist across the cryptocurrency market. Crypto analyst Austin Hilton has drawn attention to a technical setup that, according to him, has historically signaled major price moves in XRP whenever certain chart conditions are met.
Technical signals under reviewHilton outlined a specific indicator on XRP’s chart that issues a green dot when a wave component drops below a white line. He pointed out that this green dot signal has reliably appeared ahead of significant XRP rallies in recent years.
Reviewing past instances, Hilton stated that a green dot formation preceded a 194% surge in XRP within just 12 days in August. He highlighted two other notable occurrences, which resulted in gains of 124% over 10 days and 101% over 11 days. In addition, he recalled an earlier case where XRP jumped approximately 83% in 12 days after the indicator flashed the signal.
Hilton indicated that all recent green dot signals on this chart have produced moves of over 100% shortly after confirmation, reinforcing his belief in the pattern’s reliability on XRP.
Present consolidation and potential breakoutSince late August, Hilton observed that XRP has entered a consolidation phase and recently slipped below a support level at $1.32. He noted that the technical indicator’s blue wave is now moving underneath the white reference line, a condition that previously led up to the green dot’s appearance.
However, Hilton clarified that the key buy signal has not yet materialized. He stressed that the chart setup is only in the initial stage, describing the current price action as typical of periods before a potential breakout. Hilton continues monitoring for a confirmed green dot below the white line as a possible trigger for entering a position.
He often references the alignment of price weakness and consolidation as a setup that matches those which preceded prior major upswings, but emphasizes that without the green dot, the opportunity remains unconfirmed.
Awaiting confirmation before actingHilton distinguishes this period from earlier chart formations where the indicator approached but did not cross beneath the white line; only true crossings generated the historical buy signal. He advises patience, stating that he is following the lower right section of the chart and looking for full confirmation before acting.
In this context, he maintains that his outlook is based on prior indicator performance rather than external sentiment or news. Hilton reiterates that confirmation always happens after the technical criteria are fully satisfied and is waiting for this explicit indicator before moving forward.
Meme token trading and the importance of timingBeyond XRP’s price movements, close observation of investor timing and token selection is becoming vital in the wider crypto environment. In the meme token market, internet trends can quickly turn into millions of dollars in activity. Data from Fomo App shows one trade in “Niu Lai” where a $99 investment escalated to about $370,000, illustrating this rapid transformation. Fomo App facilitates token discovery and trading in one place, featuring social feeds, investor rankings, and trade alerts. Such tools are gaining relevance as traders look to monitor both price and strategic activity in fast-moving markets.
17 October 2026 | 17:37 US spot Ethereum ETFs lost more money than their Bitcoin counterparts in the week ended October 16: $320.1 million against $228.4 million, according to calculations from Farside Investors data.
Key Takeaways Ethereum ETFs lost $320.1 million; Bitcoin ETFs lost $228.4 million. BlackRock’s ETHA accounted for $299 million and has not had an inflow day since September 28. Two weeks of withdrawals have reversed about 28% of Q3’s $3.1 billion in Ethereum ETF inflows. Ethereum’s outflows didn’t accelerate, though. Bitcoin’s slowed faster: weekly Bitcoin ETF withdrawals fell by two-thirds, while Ethereum’s shrank by 41%.
Almost all of the Ethereum figure came from one product. BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) lost $299 million, 93% of the sector’s net outflow, and has now gone 14 trading sessions without a single day of inflows.
ETHA has carried Ethereum’s outflows for three weeks Farside’s daily Ethereum ETF table shows ETHA posting withdrawals on four of the week’s five sessions, peaking at $109.8 million on Wednesday, October 14. Grayscale’s two funds lost a combined $30.7 million: $18.3 million from ETHE and $12.4 million from the lower-fee ETH. Franklin’s EZET lost $900,000. Fidelity’s FETH was the only fund to finish the week with net inflows, at $10.5 million.
FETH’s gain slightly inflates ETHA’s share of the net total. Counting only the days on which each fund recorded withdrawals, Ethereum ETF outflows came to $347.3 million, and ETHA still accounted for 86% of them.
The drain is also large relative to the fund’s size. BlackRock reported ETHA’s net assets at about $8.16 billion on October 16, so a $299 million weekly outflow equals roughly 3.5% of the fund, before any effect from ether’s price. Since its last inflow on September 28, ETHA has lost $805.1 million.
The concentration isn’t new. ETHA also accounted for $477.1 million of the $542.2 million withdrawn from Ethereum funds during October 5-9, or 88%.
Ethereum overtook Bitcoin because Bitcoin’s outflows eased faster A week earlier, Bitcoin funds were losing more money than Ethereum funds. Both categories improved, but by very different margins.
Fund / category October 5-9 October 12-16 All Ethereum ETFs −$542.2M −$320.1M BlackRock ETHA −$477.1M −$299.0M All Bitcoin ETFs −$678.9M −$228.4M BlackRock IBIT +$1.1M −$165.4M Fidelity FBTC −$380.3M −$60.2M Source: calculations from Farside Investors’ daily tables. Negative figures indicate net outflows.
Ethereum’s net outflow fell 41% between the two weeks, while Bitcoin’s fell 66%. That gap, not a worsening in Ethereum demand, put ether funds ahead.
The fund-level rows show a second difference. In Bitcoin, leadership of the withdrawals rotated: FBTC lost $380.3 million in the first week while IBIT was flat, then IBIT took $165.4 million, or 72% of the sector’s net outflow, in the second. In Ethereum, the same fund led both weeks.
The two markets did move on the same days. Both had their strongest session on Tuesday, October 13, with $175.7 million into Bitcoin funds and $24.8 million into Ethereum funds, and their heaviest withdrawals the next day, at $261.4 million and $129.5 million respectively.
Two weeks have reversed more than a quarter of Q3’s inflows The withdrawals follow a strong third quarter. CoinGecko’s Q3 2026 industry report recorded $3.1 billion in net inflows into US spot Ethereum ETFs during July-September, a period in which ether rose 71%
Ethereum funds have now lost $862.3 million across October 5-16, equal to about 28% of that quarter’s inflows. ETHA accounts for $776.1 million of the two-week total, or 90%.
Why an ETF outflow isn’t the same as ether being sold
ETHA’s SEC-filed prospectus lets authorised participants, the broker-dealers approved to deal directly with the trust, redeem shares in large blocks for either cash or ether. In an in-kind redemption, the trust hands over ether instead of selling it, so a $299 million outflow does not mean $299 million of ether reached the spot market. Flow data also does not show who redeemed or why.
If outflows spread beyond BlackRock, the story changes The first signal is whether ETHA breaks its run of 14 sessions without an inflow. The second is breadth. Withdrawals outside ETHA have so far been modest, and FETH returned to net inflows this week. If Grayscale, Fidelity and the smaller issuers begin losing assets at a similar pace, the outflow stops being a one-fund story.
On the Bitcoin side, the number to follow is IBIT. The largest spot crypto ETF went from flat to a $165.4 million weekly loss, and a second week like that would undo much of the slowdown that let Ethereum overtake Bitcoin in the first place.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
Author
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
ZKsync’s new prover keeps pace with Ethereum using one graphics card instead of a GPU cluster.
Vitalik Buterin says the speed race is over and the next fight is about proving these systems are correct.
Nothing changes on Ethereum yet, and there is no date for adopting this technology.
The ZK token has more than doubled since August, but the prover gives holders no direct revenue.
In mid-2025, the fastest systems for proving an Ethereum block in about 12 seconds needed somewhere between 50 and 160 graphics cards. On October 13, Matter Labs, the company that builds ZKsync, announced that its new Airbender Prime prover does the job on one. Across 7,200 consecutive Ethereum blocks, a single NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell card produced proofs for 99% of them in under 10 seconds, fast enough to keep up with the chain itself. Two days later, Vitalik Buterin congratulated the team and said the speed race is effectively won. For Ethereum, that moves the debate to a slower and far less exciting question: can anyone show these systems never make a mistake?
7,200
consecutive Ethereum blocks in the test
99%
proven in under 10 seconds
1 GPU
no data center, no cluster
<12 sec
slowest block, still within one Ethereum slot
The finish line was crossed last year. ZKsync shrank the machine
A proof, in this context, is a small cryptographic file confirming that every transaction in a block was processed correctly. Today, each Ethereum node checks a new block by running all of its transactions again on its own hardware. With a proof, a node could check that file instead, which takes very little computing power. The expensive work shifts to whoever generates the proof.
Speed alone is not the headline. In December 2025, the Ethereum Foundation said the industry had already hit its real-time target, after proving times fell from 16 minutes to 16 seconds within a year and costs dropped about 45 times. What ZKsync adds is the size of the setup. Its timings also include the data-gathering step before proving starts, which some earlier benchmarks left out.
June 2025
The first Airbender version proves a block in about 35 seconds on one GPU. Rivals need 50 to 160 cards for roughly 12 seconds.
July 2025
The Ethereum Foundation sets the rules: 99% of blocks in 10 seconds, on hardware under $100,000 using no more than 10 kW.
December 2025
The Foundation says the speed target has been met and shifts its focus to security.
October 13, 2026
Airbender Prime hits the target on a single graphics card and tops the public ETHproofs leaderboard.
October 15, 2026
Buterin calls the speed race won and names three security problems still unsolved.
Why the Ethereum Foundation put a $100,000 cap on proving hardware
The Foundation’s real-time proving rules were never only about speed. They also capped hardware at $100,000 and power use at 10 kilowatts, so that some of the people who already run validators from home could generate proofs too. A million-dollar machine that proves blocks in five seconds would fail that test, because it would leave proving to a handful of large operators.
One workstation card sits far below that budget. That is why the result matters more for decentralization than for raw performance. If a single card can keep up with Ethereum, then producing proofs stops being a job only well-funded companies can do.
The numbers come from ZKsync’s own tests. The code is open, and the ETHproofs leaderboard lets outsiders follow live results, but no independent team has published a full reproduction yet.
Buterin’s congratulations came with a three-item to-do list
Buterin did not stop at praise. He argued that the industry should now put its effort into making these provers trustworthy, and he named three specific gaps.
The first is formal verification, a set of mathematical checks showing that the prover follows Ethereum’s official rules exactly, including rare edge cases that normal testing can miss. The second is a hard ceiling on proving costs, so that no block can be made deliberately expensive enough to prove that it stalls the network. The third is the security of the proof system itself, meaning confidence that the cryptography underneath cannot be tricked into approving something false.
A slow prover only delays things. A fast prover with a bug can approve something false. If a flaw lets an invalid block pass as valid, nodes that only check proofs would accept it, on a network holding hundreds of billions of dollars. The Foundation has already said it wants validators to check several independent proofs for each block, so that a bug in one system cannot slip through alone. That work tends to take years, not months.
For people using Ethereum today, nothing changes yet
Airbender Prime is a ZKsync product, not an Ethereum upgrade. Validators still check blocks the traditional way, and no one has set a date for proofs to replace that. The Foundation’s plan starts with optional software that validators can choose to run, and only later could it become standard.
If it does arrive, the main gain would be room to grow. Ethereum could handle more activity per block without forcing everyone who runs a node to buy stronger hardware. Faster proofs would not make transactions final faster, though, because the rest of the network process follows its own timing.
ZKsync is already using Airbender on its own chains that run the Atlas upgrade, and it is pitching the same technology to banks and companies through Prividium, its system for private blockchains that settle on Ethereum. For now, those private chains are where the prover makes money for ZKsync, well before Ethereum mainnet could use it.
The ZK token doubled, but the prover does not pay its holders
ZK is mainly a governance token. Fees on ZKsync Era are paid in ETH, and proposals to give ZK more economic uses still depend on governance votes. A better prover can raise ZKsync’s profile without creating direct demand for the token.
Market trackers recorded a gain of about 6% after Buterin’s post. Traders have seen this pattern before. In November 2025, Buterin’s praise for ZKsync’s work sent ZK up more than 50% in a single day. The token now trades well below where that rally peaked.
ZK Doubled Off Its Lows, but Sellers Are Waiting Near $0.019
ZK bottomed at $0.00704 in mid-August, close to its all-time low, and now trades around $0.0160 on Binance, about 127% higher. The turning point came around October 9, when one daily candle added roughly 27% and lifted the price above its 200-day average, a long-term trend line that had blocked every rally since May. The price has stayed above it since, and the August-to-October pattern of higher lows near $0.0080, $0.0088 and $0.0108 shows buyers stepping in earlier each time.
ZK/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView / Alexander Stefanov
The top of the move tells a different story. Long upper wicks at $0.0175 and $0.0189 mean the price pushed higher during the day and then got sold back down. The heaviest trading volume of the whole rally came on the day ZK touched $0.0189 and reversed, which points to large sellers waiting at that level. The RSI, a gauge of buying strength, has slipped to 61 from the low 70s, and its peaks have flattened while the price kept rising. Buyers are still in control, but each push is weaker.
ZK/USDT price ladder · daily chart
$0.0189
Resistance
This week’s high, where the heaviest selling appeared
$0.0175
Resistance
Several daily candles rejected here
$0.0161
Testing now
First support, with the price ($0.0160) sitting right on it
$0.0144-$0.0145
Key support
The 200-day average and a common pullback level meet here
$0.0130
Support
Top of the late-September trading range
$0.0116-$0.0118
Last line
The rising 50-day average
The $0.0144-$0.0145 zone decides what happens next. A dip into it on lighter volume than the rally, followed by a bounce, would keep the breakout alive and set up another attempt at $0.0175-$0.0189. A daily close back below the 200-day average would turn October’s move into a failed breakout, with $0.0130 the next likely stop. ZK also held its breakout even as a liquidation wave pushed Bitcoin under $81,000 this week. Saturday’s red candle is forming on much lighter volume than last week’s green days, which so far looks more like a pause than a wave of selling.
About 10 billion ZK tokens are still waiting to enter the market
Only around 52% of ZK’s 21 billion maximum supply circulates, according to market data aggregators, which leaves roughly 10 billion tokens to be released over time. Every recovery has to absorb that extra supply, whatever happens with the technology. On the development side, the next signals worth watching are outside teams reproducing ZKsync’s results on ETHproofs and the first published formal verification work Buterin asked for. Those would show whether Airbender Prime is ready for Ethereum itself, or only fast.
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.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has declared the zkEVM “battle for speed” to be “definitively won” and says the top priority should now “shift fully to security.” In an October 15 post on X, he congratulated ZKsync’s Airbender team on a milestone that redefines the zero-knowledge race: real-time Ethereum proving on a single graphics card.
The statement reads as more than praise. It moves the finish line for every zkEVM — away from faster benchmarks and toward proofs that are themselves provably correct.
What Airbender Prime Actually Proved ZKsync unveiled Airbender Prime on October 13, calling it the first Ethereum prover, to its knowledge, to demonstrate real-time proving on a single GPU. Running on one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell card, the system generated proofs for a consecutive batch of 7,200 Ethereum mainnet blocks; 99% of those proofs finished in under 10 seconds, and every block completed within 12 seconds including witness preparation. Competing provers have required large GPU clusters to reach comparable timings, so a single card changes who can realistically run a prover.
The prover is built on the open RISC-V instruction set and uses hash-based STARK technology, which ZKsync positions as resistant to quantum attack. It also ships with a standalone verifier, so results can be checked without trusting the team’s numbers.
The Three-Part Security Checklist Buterin spelled out what “formally verifying” now means: proving the arithmetization is equivalent to the Ethereum specification, setting a hard maximum bound on prover cost relative to the gas in a block, and verifying the security of the proof system itself.
The distinction matters because a benchmark can be gamed or measured loosely, while the Ethereum spec leaves no slack. A prover that is fast on a friendly workload still has to be shown to behave exactly like Ethereum’s rules on every input. That is the same reason zero-knowledge proofs are treated as a trust fix only when the proof system itself is sound.
Why Speed Was the Easier Problem Optimizing proof throughput is an engineering problem with clear, comparable numbers. Matching a mathematical proof to the Ethereum specification is slower, harder work that produces no headline benchmark. Quantum-resistance claims carry the same burden: saying a hash-based proof system is post-quantum ready is not the same as independently verifying its cryptographic assumptions hold.
ZKsync’s own recent trajectory makes the point. Before Airbender Prime, the team spent months hardening the security of its older EraVM, work that matters precisely because raw proving speed is no longer the bottleneck.
What Happens Next The next observable milestone is not a faster benchmark but formal-verification progress and independent scrutiny of the prover’s security. If the field treats Buterin’s checklist as the new bar, the center of gravity moves from proving speed to provable correctness — a slower race with a much higher bar.
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.
Crypto analyst Steph Is Crypto recently drew attention to ongoing concerns about XRP’s price trajectory, echoing data shared by leading digital asset news outlet CoinDesk. The discussion highlights the significant gap between XRP’s current valuation and its highs achieved in early 2018, despite notable gains in competing cryptocurrencies over the same period.
Coindesk chart reveals performance gapCoinDesk’s latest analysis compared the performance of major cryptocurrencies since their respective peaks in late 2017 and early 2018. The data sets out how assets like BNB, Dogecoin, and Bitcoin have not only recovered but also surpassed their previous records. According to the chart reflecting prices as of October 2026, BNB leads with a surge of 2,818% over its earlier high. Dogecoin and Bitcoin have recorded increases of 322% and 314%, respectively, while Ethereum shows a 66% gain. Zcash has climbed 38%, and Tron trades just 4.2% below its previous record.
In stark contrast, XRP stands out as the only major asset substantially below its previous high, trading at $1.33—still 62.5% under its all-time peak from January 2018.
AssetPerformance vs. Previous HighCurrent Price*BNB+2,818%—Dogecoin+322%—Bitcoin+314%—Ethereum+66%—Zcash+38%—Tron-4.2%—XRP-62.5%$1.33DATA: XRP trades around $1.33, about 62.5% below its January 2018 peak, while Bitcoin, Ether and several other major cryptocurrencies have surpassed their previous highs.
The all-time high debateUncertainty remains about XRP’s precise all-time high. Some reference $3.84 as the top reached in 2018, but Ripple’s former Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz stated the true peak is $3.65, recorded in July 2025. Regardless, the token exceeded $3 in early 2018 but remains significantly below these levels today.
Mini dictionary: David Schwartz, a key figure in the development of Ripple and the XRP Ledger, played an instrumental role as the company’s CTO. His technical clarifications are often referenced within the industry.
XRP adoption versus price stagnationDespite more than six years of development, ongoing partnerships, and institutional adoption by Ripple, XRP has not succeeded in breaking above its historical highs. Numerous price forecasts from both analysts and the XRP community have not materialized into new peaks. In comparison, Bitcoin and Ethereum not only reached but surpassed their previous record prices.
XRP remains one of the few major crypto assets still trading below its historic 2018 high, despite years of ongoing partnerships and predictions of new rallies.
Some in the XRP community blame ongoing legal pressure for the stagnant price. According to community discussions, while leading assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum have not faced the same degree of legal scrutiny, XRP’s value may have suffered due to the longstanding lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple.
Others within the community advise patience, arguing that long-term investors could still see substantial returns if regulatory challenges are resolved. Some, however, describe the asset as manipulated and have encouraged holders to consider selling due to continued underperformance.
A major Ethereum transaction recently caught market attention after 23,528 ETH moved from Coinbase Institutional to an unknown wallet. According to Whale Alert, this transfer was valued at around $57.88 million worth of ETH, marking a significant movement from an institutional custody.
However, the receiving address remained unidentified, leaving the wallet’s ownership and the purpose of the transaction unclear.
Meanwhile, on the other side, BlackRock reportedly sold approximately $69.68 million worth of ETH, introducing another significant institutional development.
These developments notably emerged during a period of significant exchange outflows, reflecting contrasting signals around Ethereum’s institutional activity.
ETH exchange outflows approach fourth consecutive week Here, it’s worth noting that Ethereum’s spot exchange flows recorded three consecutive weeks of net outflows, extending a sustained withdrawal trend. In particular, the recent weekly reading approached -$1.5 billion, hinting at significant withdrawals from trading platforms.
In case netflows remain negative through the weekly close on 19th October, Ethereum will complete its fourth consecutive week of outflows.
These sustained withdrawals have reduced exchange-side supply, potentially limiting the amount of ETH readily available for selling.
The fall in exchange balances, however, did not establish an automatic stronger demand or guarantee a price recovery. Instead, the sustained outflows contrasted with ETH’s weak price performance, hinting at a divergence between exchange activity and market direction.
Source: CoinGlass Are Ethereum traders still betting on a price recovery? Despite the fall in price, Ethereum derivatives traders predominantly maintained a bullish position across major trading platforms.
According to Coinglass, ETH’s OI-Weighted Funding Rate remained positive at 0.0037%, hinting at continued demand for long exposure as longs paid shorts.
Meanwhile, Binance’s top trader accounts recorded a notable imbalance between bullish and bearish positions. Specifically, the long positions accounted for 69.78% compared to the 30.22% holding short positions. The positioning resulted in a Long/Short Ratio of 2.31 as bullish accounts outnumbered the bearish accounts.
These metrics together reflected persistent bullish positioning even when Ethereum failured to record a meaningful price recovery. However, the long positions concentration also increased exposure to potential liquidations in case ETH extends its decline.
Ultimately, the derivatives positioning provided a more optimistic outlook than Ethereum’s underlying technical structure.
Source: CoinGlass ETH approaches $2,400 as bearish signals intensify After correcting from the $2,800-resistance area, Ethereum [ETH] sat at around $2,429. The pullback pushed ETH towards the $2,400-support, although the bulls were trying to prevent a sustained breakdown.
Also, on the daily chart, the price action highlighted repeated attempts to stabilize around the prevailing demand area, keeping the technical support structure intact.
The Parabolic SAR indicator, however, remained above ETH at $2,638.98, validating the prevailing bearish trend.
The MACD indicator fell to -41.36, below its Signal line, to produce a negative histogram. This confirmed that bearish pressure has continued to dominate the market.
The $2,400-support level will remain crucial since a breakdown below it could expose ETH to another corrective leg. Especially if the bears continue to maintain control.
Source: TradingView Final Summary Ethereum’s exchange outflows continued for a fourth potential week despite persistent price weakness. ETH remained above $2,400, but bearish indicators increased the risk of a further fall.
Solana is rapidly closing the RWA gap with Ethereum as its tokenised market share grows from 4.5% to 26% in one year.
Solana’s on-chain economy is growing beyond meme coins. In fact, a new report suggests that real-world assets (RWAs) are emerging as one of its fastest-growing sectors.
Castle Labs found that Solana’s tokenized RWA market grew by more than 600% over the past year as it rose from $700 million to $4.3 billion. That puts it well ahead of Ethereum, where the tokenized market grew just 7% over the same period, from $15.5 billion to $16.6 billion.
For context, Solana’s RWA market was only 4.5% of Ethereum’s size a year ago. It now stands at 26%.
Solana’s Onchain Economy The growth comes as Solana builds out its DeFi ecosystem and attracts more assets beyond speculative trading. The network now offers access to US Treasury debt, asset-backed credit, tokenized stocks, commodities, and curated investment strategies. Tokenized stocks, for one, have been a major part of this expansion. Their market value on Solana jumped from $63 million to $455 million.
The report said more than $65 million in tokenized equities on the chain are being used to earn yield. Much of this activity is driven by xStocks, whose assets can be used as collateral on lending platforms such as Kamino and Jupiter Lend. This gives holders more options than simply buying and holding tokenized shares.
Castle Labs said that the same trend was seen across other RWA categories. Ondo-related reinsurance exposure is available through ONyc from OnRe, while Hastra offers PRIME and AUTO, backed by home and consumer auto loans. Maple Finance has also expanded to Solana with syrupUSDC. These products are bringing yield-bearing assets into the network and creating new opportunities for lenders and borrowers.
DeFi Ecosystem Gains Momentum The RWA expansion is also helping support Solana’s wider DeFi growth. Lending protocols can use tokenized assets as collateral, while users can borrow against them and put their capital to work elsewhere. As more assets arrive, that activity can create additional demand for lending and borrowing, Castle Labs explained.
You may also like: Solana Network Growth Jumps 124%: Here’s Why It Could Matter for SOL 82 Million Samsung Galaxy Devices Could Soon Get Native Solana Stablecoin Transfers Tokenized Stocks Surge 395% in a Year, But DeFi Adoption Remains Surprisingly Low Additionally, Solana has become a major force in onchain application revenue. It generated over $193 million over the past 30 days. This figure, interestingly, is nearly twice Hyperliquid’s $86.5 million. Consumer applications still account for around 80% of that revenue. Launchpads, trading terminals, wallets, and other platforms have contributed to the total.
Cardano Leios, an upgrade aimed at increasing the blockchain’s data throughput, has become the primary milestone for what founder Charles Hoskinson describes as a “complete” Cardano network. While this standard reflects Hoskinson’s personal view and not the project’s formal development roadmap, it underscores the significance he assigns to the Leios upgrade reaching the mainnet.
Hoskinson names Leios the finishing touchHoskinson clarified that Cardano would meet his definition of completion only after the Leios throughput upgrade is operational on the mainnet. His statement positions Leios as the final major component in Cardano’s original framework, following developments such as decentralized consensus, on-chain governance, formal methods, the eUTXO ledger, Plutus smart contracts, scalability, and multiple independent node clients.
Hoskinson described Leios as the ultimate element to complete Cardano in his personal vision, adding that its progress is relevant to millions of ADA holders, not just the development team.
He emphasized that Cardano’s governance can still enable future upgrades and changes, indicating that this milestone reflects only his subjective view on the platform’s maturity rather than an end to all progress.
In addition, Hoskinson hinted at an ambitious privacy-focused partner network called Midnight, which he called the “magnum opus” of his career. However, he stopped short of releasing technical details, a launch timeline, or specific features for this new project.
Hoskinson stated that he was developing a unique concept for Midnight, which he claimed could address many current issues in the cryptocurrency industry, but he did not provide a design or product roadmap.
Cardano is a public blockchain platform known for its approach to security and scalability through peer-reviewed research and layered architecture. Hoskinson, who previously co-founded Ethereum, leads its development through IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong).
Leios is an extension to Cardano’s Ouroboros proof-of-stake protocol, designed to increase data throughput. With Leios, block producers create larger endorser blocks alongside standard Praos blocks, while a committee weighted by staking share certifies the transaction data. This structure allows increased capacity without replacing the current Praos consensus mechanism.
Endorser transactions that pass committee certification are admitted to the ledger using the existing chain rules. The aim is to scale Cardano’s handling of transaction data, ensuring increased performance without compromising consensus.
Mini dictionary: Ouroboros Praos, the consensus protocol currently used on Cardano’s mainnet, is a proof-of-stake algorithm that manages block production and staking rewards while maintaining security and decentralization.
Testnet milestones and technical contextThe Leios system is still in public testing. The Musashi Dojo testnet, launched on June 23, reached a peak throughput of 26.8 transaction kilobytes per second (TxkB/s) in its “Earth” phase. By comparison, Cardano’s mainnet running only Praos records approximately 4.51 TxkB/s, placing the testnet outcome at about six times current production capacity.
MetricPraos MainnetLeios Testnet (Musashi Dojo)Peak throughput (TxkB/s)4.5126.8Tested modeProductionPublic testnet (Earth phase)It is important to distinguish TxkB/s from transactions per second (TPS). The TxkB/s figure reflects the amount of transaction data processed per second, not the number of transactions themselves. This metric quantifies data load, which may increase with transaction complexity or size and does not imply direct TPS growth.
The Musashi Dojo trial involved full protocol usage, including Praos and endorser blocks, stake voting, and certification. Testing generated over 127,000 blocks and 30,000 endorser blocks, along with nearly 8,000 certificates. Developers identified five technical incidents such as chain forks and synchronization issues, describing these as implementation bugs rather than design flaws.
Linear Leios, representing the initial rollout, is expected in the first phase of the Dijkstra hard fork set for late 2026. Its deployment will depend on Cardano’s on-chain governance approval by DReps, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee. Stake pools will need to register BLS keys for voting, and throughput parameters will be raised gradually in stages after the upgrade’s activation.
Charles Hoskinson believes that Cardano will be complete after the deployment of Leios. For the network founder, this upgrade must bring the processing capacity that the blockchain still lacks. But between technical ambitions and field reality, several steps remain to be taken.
In brief
Charles Hoskinson states that Cardano will be complete after Leios, once decentralized consensus, open governance, eUTXO, Plutus and scaling capacity are combined.
Leios aims for processing capacity two to thirty times higher than the current one. In September, a test demonstrated a throughput of about 1,000 transactions per second.
The public testnet Musashi Dojo started in June and continues its trials. Arrival on the main network is still expected this year.
Leios, the last step according to Hoskinson
It all starts with a question asked on X: Is Cardano finally finished? Charles Hoskinson answers bluntly: “After Leios, yes.” In other words, he considers that this upgrade will combine the main features he wants for the network.
In his response, he notably mentions decentralized consensus, open governance, the eUTXO accounting model, the Plutus language, scaling, formal methods, several independent node implementations, and millions of ADA holders. For him, Leios therefore represents much more than a simple technical improvement.
Furthermore, the founder recently mentioned a concept linked to Midnight, the privacy-focused blockchain within the ecosystem. In his message on X, he presents this idea as the major project of his career, without revealing the details.
Leios promises a much faster network
Specifically, Leios must improve Cardano’s throughput without compromising its decentralization. The current protocol, Ouroboros Praos, favors security. Leios plans to add approval blocks and committee validation to speed up transaction processing.
The announced gains vary according to estimates. The documentation mentions a capacity multiplied by two to thirty, while some statements by Hoskinson advance more ambitious goals. Input Output highlighted a test conducted in September, with about 1,000 transactions per second. The first steps however aim at more modest levels.
To monitor progress, developers launched the public testnet Musashi Dojo on June 23. It advances through five phases and is currently in the Fire phase. Deployment on the main network remains planned before the end of the year, subject to test results and technical decisions.
Will Cardano really be finished?
Ultimately, it depends on the definition of the word “complete.” Some community members believe Cardano cannot claim this status as long as Leios, Hydra and other roadmap elements do not operate on the main network.
Hoskinson defends an approach based on research and progressive development. He mentions a new era of exponential growth for crypto, while favoring scientific advances.
However, Cardano’s success does not depend solely on its technical performance. The ADA price remains far from its peaks, while token sales by large whales in early October remind us that investor confidence follows its own dynamics.
Ultimately, Leios could mark the culmination of Hoskinson’s initial vision. But for users, Cardano will only be truly complete if its promises translate into concrete results.
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Fenelon L.
Passionné par le Bitcoin, j'aime explorer les méandres de la blockchain et des cryptos et je partage mes découvertes avec la communauté. Mon rêve est de vivre dans un monde où la vie privée et la liberté financière sont garanties pour tous, et je crois fermement que Bitcoin est l'outil qui peut rendre cela possible.
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.
Binance's tokenised equities platform bStocks has passed $1 billion in assets under management less than four months after its June 2026 launch, with support from PancakeSwap on BNB Chain.
Binance's tokenised equities platform @bstocksfinance has passed $1 billion in assets under management, less than four months after it launched. The exchange said the figure is based on Dune Research onchain data as of Oct. 15, according to Yahoo Finance's syndicated Unchained report.
From five listings to nearly 100The tokens went live on June 11, 2026, with five listings. Crypto Daily reported that the exchange now offers nearly 100, covering U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs. Each token is backed 1:1 by the underlying security and can be redeemed for the security itself rather than its cash value.
Binance said cumulative trading volume has topped $40 billion since launch, an average of more than $300 million a day. Users have also moved $6 billion between direct stock positions and bStocks at 1:1 parity, per the same report. The tokens trade around the clock, settle onchain and can be moved between the exchange and self-custodial wallets.
Binance describes bStocks as the fastest tokenised equity product to reach $1 billion. Unchained noted that the release did not name the products it measured against, and that it could not find a public Dune dashboard tracking bStocks. It also pointed out that Ondo Global Markets said in May its tokenised stocks had crossed $1 billion in total value locked less than eight months after launch, which is a different measure.
PancakeSwap and independent dataDistribution has not been limited to Binance's own platform. @PancakeSwap began offering bStocks on BNB Chain in June. PancakeSwap's launch post listed Tesla, Nvidia, Circle, Micron and Sandisk as the first five supported stocks, issued as BEP-20 tokens with self-custody. In August, PancakeSwap said the full suite of 67 bStocks assets was available on the platform.
Third-party data points in the same direction. Unchained said rwa.xyz data on Oct. 16 ranked bStocks first among tokenised stock platforms at $1.2 billion, in a market of about $3.5 billion. Ondo was second with $893.7 million and xStocks third with $600.4 million.
There are limits on access. Unchained reported that the tokens are not shares and are offered only to non-U.S. persons under an Abu Dhabi prospectus. PancakeSwap-related coverage has also noted that bStocks do not carry voting rights or direct legal shareholder status in the underlying companies.
Sources:
Unchained: Binance's bStocks lead tokenized stocks after crossing $1 billionCrypto Daily: bStocks cross $1 billion in four monthsPancakeSwap: bStocks are live on PancakeSwap
, /PRNewswire/ -- На саммите Huawei Network Summit 2026 Europe компания Huawei представила обновленное интеллектуальное сетевое решение Stellar Intelligent Network Solution для европейского региона в рамках философии «Безопасная и интеллектуальная связь». Этот шаг подтверждает усилия Huawei по продвижению концепции полностью интеллектуальной сети в разных отраслях вместе с клиентами и партнерами.
Обновление охватывает Stellar Intelligent Fabric, Stellar Intelligent WAN и Stellar Intelligent Campus Network.
Huawei
Stellar Intelligent Fabric
Huawei использует свои собственные коммутаторы 100T для создания двухслойной многоплоскостной архитектуры, которая в четыре раза увеличивает масштабы сети и сокращает количество коммутаторов и оптических модулей на 30 %, снижая общую стоимость владения (TCO). Кроме того, алгоритм балансировки нагрузки сетевых пакетов (NPLB) компании повышает использование канала в масштабах всей сети до 98 %, а эффективность обучения и вывода более чем на 7 %.
В сетевых средах с несколькими поставщиками технология Huawei xFlow обеспечивает интеллектуальный анализ всего потока и облегчает разграничение неисправностей в течение одной минуты, решая проблемы клиентов. Между тем, ИИ Eagle-Eye Engine от Huawei выполняет анализ первопричин за считанные минуты, значительно повышая устойчивость сети центра обработки данных.
Stellar Intelligent WAN
Алгоритм Starnet от Huawei обеспечивает более 95 % эффективности межрегиональных вычислений и сокращает расходы на частные линии на 60 %, что еще больше снижает расходы предприятий на удаленные вычисления. Новейшая запатентованная технология разделения послойных моделей сохраняет необработанные данные в локальной среде и исключает риски утечки.
Эксклюзивная внутренняя плата безопасности Huawei обнаруживает и блокирует вторжения в режиме реального времени и отслеживает угрозы за считанные минуты с точностью более 95 %. Первая в своем роде встроенная плата Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) интегрирует связь и квантовую безопасность, сокращая затраты на развертывание более чем на 60 %. На сетевом уровне решение по защите данных на основе APN6 обеспечивает безопасность конфиденциальных данных для каждой отрасли.
Stellar Intelligent Campus Network
Технология координации по нескольким точкам доступа Huawei и эксклюзивные интеллектуальные антенны с динамическим зумом снижают беспроводные помехи на 84 % и обеспечивают вдвое большую производительность сети, чем в среднем по отрасли. Кроме того, полная серия коммутаторов Multi-GE и гибкое лицензирование прав на использование (RTU) снижают совокупную стоимость владения сетями кампуса 10 Гбит/с более чем на 30 %. В сегменте эксплуатации и технического обслуживания сети Huawei повышает автономность сети в части данных, алгоритмов и инструментов, сокращая среднее время ремонта (MTTR) до 5 минут.
Локальный интеллектуальный вывод на коммутаторах позволяет обнаруживать аномалии в реальном времени, сокращая время обнаружения угрозы с 5 минут до менее 10 секунд. Кроме того, эксклюзивный Wi-Fi Shield и сквозная постквантовая криптография (PQC) обеспечивают квантово-безопасную проводную и беспроводную связь. Более 20 встроенных интеллектуальных алгоритмов в шлюзах удаленных офисов повышают уровень обнаружения неизвестных угроз до 95 % с блокировкой на уровне миллисекунд.
Компания Huawei представила больше продуктов eKit SME Network среднего и высокого класса, разработанных специально для малых и средних предприятий, и отличающихся повышенной безопасностью и производительностью. Основные моменты включают конвергентные шлюзы серии Aura10/AR580 (которые интегрируют функции безопасности, такие как антивирус и IPS) для рабочих мест, основные коммутаторы серии S630 10GE (которые объединяют функции коммутации и WAC для управления до 1 тыс. точек доступа) для отелей и AP362H (которые оснащены встроенными интеллектуальными антеннами для увеличения прибыли в 1,6 раза) для магазинов.
Чтобы соответствовать европейским экологическим и низкоуглеродным требованиям, Huawei разработала трехуровневую систему энергосбережения. Благодаря энергосбережению на уровне устройств, сетей и операций эта структура создает интеллектуальную, низкоуглеродную сетевую основу для клиентов.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Op de Huawei Network Summit 2026 Europe onthulde Huawei zijn bijgewerkte Stellar Intelligent Network Solution voor de Europese regio onder de filosofie van "Veilige en Intelligente Connectiviteit". Deze stap onderstreept nogmaals de inspanningen van Huawei om samen met klanten en partners de intelligentie in alle sectoren verder te ontwikkelen.
De upgrade omvat Stellar Intelligent Fabric, Stellar Intelligent WAN en Stellar Intelligent Campus Network.
Huawei Stellar Intelligent Fabric
Huawei maakt gebruik van zijn zelfontwikkelde 100T-switches om een tweelaagse multi-plane architectuur te bouwen die de netwerkschaal verviervoudigt en het aantal switches en optische modules met 30% vermindert, waardoor de totale eigendomskosten (TCO) worden verlaagd. Bovendien verhoogt het Network Packet Load Balancing (NPLB)-algoritme het netwerkbrede linkgebruik tot 98% en verhoogt de trainings- en inferentieprestaties met meer dan 7%.
In netwerkomgevingen met meerdere leveranciers maakt Huawei's xFlow-technologie intelligente full-flow-analyse mogelijk en vergemakkelijkt foutdemarcatie binnen één minuut, waardoor de zorgen van klanten worden weggenomen. Ondertussen voltooit Huawei's AI Eagle-Eye Engine de analyse van de oorzaak in enkele minuten, waardoor de veerkracht van het datacenternetwerk sterk wordt verbeterd.
Stellar Intelligent WAN
Het verliesvrije Starnet-algoritme van Huawei bereikt een rekenrendement van meer dan 95% tussen verschillende regio's en verlaagt de kosten voor vaste verbindingen met 60%, waardoor de kosten voor cloudcomputing op afstand voor bedrijven nog verder dalen. Dankzij de nieuwste, eigen technologie voor het laaggewijs opsplitsen van modellen blijven de ruwe gegevens lokaal opgeslagen en worden risico's op gegevenslekken uitgesloten.
Het exclusieve, intrinsieke beveiligingsbord van Huawei detecteert en blokkeert indringing in realtime en volgt bedreigingen in minuten met meer dan 95% nauwkeurigheid. Het eerste in zijn soort ingebouwde Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) -bord integreert communicatie en kwantumbeveiliging en verlaagt de implementatiekosten met meer dan 60%. Op de netwerklaag zorgt de op APN6 gebaseerde datafencing-oplossing ervoor dat gevoelige gegevens veilig blijven voor elke sector.
Stellar Intelligent Campus-netwerk
Huawei's multi-AP-coördinatietechnologie en exclusieve, slimme antennes met dynamische zoom verminderen draadloze interferentie met 84% en leveren twee keer de gemiddelde netwerkprestaties in de sector. Bovendien verminderen de volledige reeks multi-GE-schakelaars en de flexibele licentie voor het recht om te gebruiken (RTU) de TCO van campusnetwerken van 10 Gbps met meer dan 30%. In netwerk O&M verbetert Huawei de autonomie van het netwerk in gegevens, algoritmes en tools, waardoor de gemiddelde tijd tot reparatie (MTTR) binnen 5 minuten wordt verkort.
Lokale intelligente inferentie op schakelaars maakt het mogelijk om onregelmatigheden in realtime te detecteren, waardoor de tijd voor het detecteren van dreigingen van 5 minuten tot minder dan 10 seconden wordt verkort. Plus, exclusieve Wi-Fi Shield en end-to-end Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) zorgen voor kwantum-veilige, bedrade en draadloze verbindingen. Meer dan 20 ingebouwde slimme inline-algoritmen in branche-gateways verhogen de detectie van onbekende bedreigingen tot 95% met blokkering op milliseconde-niveau.
Op maat gemaakt voor het MKB onthulde Huawei meer mid-range tot high-end eKit SME Network-producten met verbeterde beveiliging en prestaties. Hoogtepunten zijn Aura10/AR580 series converged gateways (die beveiligingsfuncties zoals antivirus en IPS integreren) voor werkplekken, S630 series 10GE core switches (die switching- en WAC-functies samenvoegen om tot 1K AP's te beheren) voor hotels en AP362H AP's (met ingebouwde slimme antennes om de winst met 1,6x te verhogen) voor winkels.
Om aan de Europese eisen inzake groene en koolstofarme energie te voldoen, heeft Huawei een energiebesparend kader op drie niveaus ontwikkeld. Met energiebesparing op apparaat-, netwerk- en bedrijfsniveau bouwt dit kader een intelligente, koolstofarme netwerkbasis voor klanten.
, /PRNewswire/ -- In occasione dello Huawei Network Summit 2026 Europe, Huawei ha presentato la soluzione Stellar Intelligent Network aggiornata per l'Europa, basata sulla filosofia della "Connettività sicura e intelligente". Questa iniziativa conferma l'impegno di Huawei a promuovere l'intelligenza in tutti i settori insieme a clienti e partner.
L'aggiornamento riguarda Stellar Intelligent Fabric, Stellar Intelligent WAN e Stellar Intelligent Campus Network.
Huawei Stellar Intelligent Fabric
Huawei sfrutta gli switch 100T sviluppati interamente per realizzare un'architettura multipiano a due livelli, che quadruplica la capacità della rete e riduce del 30% il numero di switch e moduli ottici, abbattendo così il costo totale di proprietà (TCO). Inoltre, l'algoritmo Network Packet Load Balancing (NPLB) porta l'utilizzo dei collegamenti dell'intera rete al 98% e aumenta le prestazioni di addestramento e inferenza di oltre il 7%.
Negli ambienti di rete multivendor, la tecnologia xFlow di Huawei consente l'analisi intelligente di tutti i flussi e permette di individuare l'origine dei guasti entro un minuto, risolvendo le criticità dei clienti. Nel frattempo, l'AI Eagle-Eye Engine di Huawei completa l'analisi delle cause principali in pochi minuti, migliorando notevolmente la resilienza delle reti dei data center.
Stellar Intelligent WAN
L'algoritmo lossless Starnet di Huawei garantisce un'efficienza di calcolo tra regioni superiore al 95% e riduce del 60% i costi delle linee dedicate, abbassando ulteriormente le spese sostenute dalle aziende per il calcolo da remoto. La più recente tecnologia proprietaria di partizionamento dei modelli per livelli mantiene i dati grezzi in locale ed elimina i rischi di fuga di dati.
L'esclusiva scheda di sicurezza intrinseca di Huawei rileva e blocca le intrusioni in tempo reale e rintraccia le minacce in pochi minuti, con una precisione superiore al 95%. La prima scheda Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) integrata nel suo genere combina comunicazione e sicurezza quantistica, riducendo al contempo i costi di distribuzione di oltre il 60%. A livello di rete, la soluzione di isolamento dei dati basata su APN6 protegge i dati sensibili di ogni settore.
Stellar Intelligent Campus Network
La tecnologia di coordinamento multi-AP di Huawei e le esclusive antenne intelligenti con zoom dinamico riducono le interferenze wireless dell'84% e offrono prestazioni di rete doppie rispetto alla media del settore. Inoltre, la gamma completa di switch multi-GE e le licenze flessibili RTU (Right to Use) riducono, di oltre il 30%, il TCO delle reti per campus a 10 Gbps. Nella gestione operativa e manutenzione della rete, Huawei migliora l'autonomia della rete a livello di dati, algoritmi e strumenti, riducendo il tempo medio di riparazione (MTTR) a meno di 5 minuti.
L'inferenza intelligente locale sugli switch consente il rilevamento delle anomalie in tempo reale, riducendo il tempo necessario per individuare le minacce da 5 minuti a meno di 10 secondi. Inoltre, le esclusive tecnologie Wi-Fi Shield e Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) end-to-end garantiscono connessioni cablate e wireless resistenti agli attacchi quantistici. Gli oltre 20 algoritmi intelligenti inline integrati nei gateway delle filiali portano al 95% il tasso di rilevamento delle minacce sconosciute, bloccandole nell'ordine dei millisecondi.
Pensando alle esigenze delle PMI, Huawei ha presentato nuovi prodotti eKit SME Network di fascia medio-alta, caratterizzati da prestazioni e funzionalità di sicurezza migliorate. Tra i prodotti principali figurano i gateway convergenti delle serie Aura10/AR580, che integrano funzioni di sicurezza come antivirus e IPS, destinati agli ambienti di lavoro; gli switch core 10GE della serie S630, che combinano le funzioni di switching e WAC per gestire fino a 1.000 AP, destinati agli hotel; e gli AP362H, dotati di antenne intelligenti integrate che aumentano il guadagno di 1,6 volte, destinati ai negozi.
Per soddisfare i requisiti europei di conformità ambientale e riduzione delle emissioni di carbonio, Huawei ha sviluppato un framework di risparmio energetico articolato su tre livelli. Grazie al risparmio energetico a livello di dispositivi, rete e gestione operativa, questo framework offre ai clienti un'infrastruttura di rete intelligente e a basse emissioni di carbonio.
USDC issuer Circle generated roughly $1.4 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026 while settling more than $36 trillion in onchain transactions, the company disclosed on October 16 in a post laying out the economics behind its stablecoin.
The figures come from a company blog post by Chief Commercial Officer Kash Razzaghi, who framed the disclosure as an answer to newer stablecoin issuers that claim incumbents keep too much of the economics.
How USDC’s Revenue Is Distributed Of the roughly $1.4 billion in first-half revenue, Circle paid about $819 million, or roughly 59 cents of every dollar, to USDC distribution partners and transaction costs. About $473 million, or 34 cents per dollar, went toward licenses, banking relationships, settlement liquidity, compliance programs, and blockchain integrations, the post said. Circle reported about 7 cents of net profit per dollar of revenue.
Circle also said it minted and redeemed more than $315 billion of USDC in the period, about $1.7 billion every day, and that USDC carried roughly 77% of global stablecoin transaction volume in June, up from 60% a year earlier.
Why Circle Is Publishing the Numbers Razzaghi positioned the disclosure as a rebuttal to new entrants that promise to share a “substantial majority” of their economics with partners. A stablecoin “that distributes everything but funds nothing” leaves out the cost of redemption, compliance, and resilience, he wrote, adding that without that foundation a stablecoin “is not a digital dollar; it is a token.”
The post also detailed redemption terms: all Circle customers can redeem USDC for free through standard banking rails, settling in up to two business days, while payment flows on the Circle Payments Network and platform customers can now redeem free in near real time.
USDC’s Scale and the Partner Network The disclosure underlines USDC’s distribution footprint. Coinbase, Circle’s largest partner, reported average USDC balances of $20 billion in the second quarter, up 44% year over year, while Binance in September signed a five-year commercial agreement and invested $100 million in Circle. More than 150 partners hold an economic interest in USDC’s growth, according to the post.
Circle said it holds more than 55 licenses and registrations, including an OCC national trust bank charter and MiCA compliance, and operates natively on more than 35 blockchains. Its partner network spans wallets, exchanges, banks, and payment networks, a group that includes Coinbase, which recently expanded enterprise stablecoin payments with Marqeta.
AUTHOR
Entrepreneur and freelance writer based in Nakuru, Kenya. I cover cryptocurrency, the Blockchain technology, and financial topics. It’s my joy to transform the simplest phrases in a way they reach a reader’s heart to help them discover how crypto is disrupting the world as we have known it. I believe in transforming the world, one word at a time.
Visa’s stablecoin prefunding now lets eligible businesses fund cross-border payouts with USDC through Inyo Global.
Inyo, a licensed US money transmitter, reached production ahead of Visa’s crypto-native partners.
Visa’s earlier pilot partner BVNK now belongs to Mastercard.
Fees, blockchains, corridors and volumes remain undisclosed.
Visa’s stablecoin prefunding on Visa Direct, its real-time payout network, has moved into commercial use, and the first company to switch it on is Inyo Global, a licensed US money transmitter that built its business on consumer remittances before turning to payments infrastructure. Under the arrangement announced on October 15, eligible Inyo clients can top up the balances that back their international payouts with USDC at any hour of the week, and by Visa’s account the deployment is the first to reach commercial production, ahead of both crypto infrastructure firms Visa named as Visa Direct partners earlier in 2026.
That sequencing reveals more about how card networks are adopting stablecoins than the launch itself does. Visa’s January partner BVNK now belongs to Mastercard, the zerohash integration announced in August has not yet been tied to a named production client, and the company that crossed the line first is a payments processor that treats USDC as one more funding option next to bank wires.
How a Remitter Overtook the Crypto Specialists
Visa opened its prefunding pilot in September 2025 with USDC and EURC, then spent the following year bringing in outside infrastructure. In January it chose London-based BVNK, which already processed more than $30 billion in stablecoin payments a year and had taken an investment from Visa Ventures in May 2025, to power prefunding and stablecoin payouts in select markets. Mastercard agreed to buy BVNK for up to $1.8 billion in March and completed the acquisition on August 3, and two days after that closing Visa named zerohash as a second provider for prefunding and payouts.
Visa Direct’s stablecoin partner trail
Sep 2025 – Visa opens a prefunding pilot with USDC and EURC
Jan 2026 – BVNK chosen to power Visa Direct stablecoin services
Mar 2026 – Mastercard agrees to buy BVNK for up to $1.8B
Aug 2026 – Mastercard closes the deal, Visa adds zerohash
Oct 15, 2026 – Inyo goes live with USDC prefunding
The October release mentions neither BVNK nor zerohash. Visa’s official announcement credits Inyo, an existing Visa Direct processor, as the first enabler and says availability depends on client eligibility and geography. Vira Platonova, global head of Visa Direct, presented the launch as the moment experiments turned into live implementations, saying “the next chapter for stablecoins is adoption.”
Why Inyo Was Ready First
Inyo already sat inside Visa Direct before stablecoins entered the picture. Visa’s partner listing for Inyo describes a US-headquartered licensed provider that handles onboarding, fraud checks, compliance, payment acceptance and payouts across a network of more than 180 countries, with clients that include payroll providers, payment facilitators, banks and merchants. Robson Dantas, Inyo’s co-founder and chief product and technology officer, said customers reach the new funding method through the same APIs they already use, so the stablecoin step requires no separate integration on their side.
The regulated pieces sit under one roof as well. Inyo’s money transmission runs through Golden Money Transfer Inc., registered with FinCEN as a money services business, while its stablecoin services run through InyoX Inc., a Montana corporation that lists Circle as its issuance partner for USDC and EURC. A processor holding both the fiat licenses and the token infrastructure can connect to Visa’s funding rail without a third vendor in the middle, which offers a plausible explanation for why it moved faster than firms still integrating with Visa from the outside.
The Cash Stuck Behind Bank Cutoffs
Prefunding is the deposit a payout provider places with a network in advance, so transfers to recipients have funds to draw from. Bank wires stop at cutoff times and pause over weekends and holidays, which forces a money transmitter expecting heavy Saturday remittance traffic to send extra cash on Friday and leave it idle until customers use it. USDC moves on blockchains that never close, allowing an eligible firm to replenish its balance on a Sunday night in near real time. Under the design of the 2025 prefunding pilot, Visa treated the stablecoin balance as available funding while recipients still received local currency, and the production version keeps the token on the sender’s side of the transaction.
Mastercard Holds Visa’s Former Test Partner
The BVNK deal adds a competitive layer that the press release leaves unspoken. Mastercard chose to own stablecoin infrastructure outright by absorbing a firm Visa Ventures had invested in and Visa had selected for its own pilots, while Visa is building through outside partners and its own Visa Stablecoin Platform, which entered beta in July with Open USD as its first token. Inyo also connects clients to Mastercard Send and local banks, so the first production processor on Visa’s stablecoin rail runs a multi-network business with no exclusive tie to either card company.
What Treasury Teams Still Can’t Price
For Inyo clients in eligible markets, the immediate change is the option to hold smaller cash buffers ahead of weekends and holidays, although Visa has published no figure on cost or working-capital savings. Other Visa Direct users need a processor that has completed the same integration, and Visa has given no date for the next one. Before comparing the service with bank prefunding, finance teams need the details Visa left out, starting with the blockchain that carries the USDC, the custody arrangement, the qualifying payout corridors, the price and whether unused balances can be redeemed back into USDC through the same API.
For Circle, the launch places USDC inside a card network’s payout workflow, yet without volume data its effect on USDC demand cannot be measured. Visa’s wider stablecoin figures show growth in neighbouring products while leaving that question open: its stablecoin settlement run rate reached $7 billion in April, up 50% from the prior quarter across nine blockchains, and on October 1 it reported more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs with payment volume up about 200% year over year. Those numbers track different services and say nothing about Visa Direct prefunding flows.
Platonova is scheduled to appear at several sessions during Money20/20 USA, which runs October 18-21 in Las Vegas, the first public setting since the launch where Visa could face direct questions on corridors and pricing. Visa also carries an open commitment on the recipient side, because its stablecoin wallet payouts pilot from November 2025 was expected to reach wider availability in the second half of 2026, subject to local regulation, and with the final quarter already under way that rollout will show whether Visa Direct can deliver stablecoins to recipients as well as accept them from senders.
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.
Could Circle’s USDC be the key catalyst for crypto’s Q4 cycle?
So far, Q4 has started with the stablecoin market cap struggling to break above the $310 billion-mark, suggesting that liquidity across the crypto market remains too weak to fuel breakout rallies.
Bitcoin’s 2.5% correction and failure to reclaim the $90K-range further reinforced this trend. So, with limited liquidity, buying pressure is low, possibly limiting the upside for the market.
Additionally, the persistent selling pressure across key Bitcoin market segments could trigger a demand-supply imbalance. With low liquidity on one side, and sell-pressure on the other, the market might find it difficult to generate enough buying power to recover strongly.
Source: DeFiLlama Meanwhile, DeFi activity has been flashing another warning sign.
As seen in the chart above, total value locked (TVL) across DeFi protocols has dropped by over $6 billion so far this month. This, after a $30 billion jump in Q3, sending TVL to a multi-month high of $98 billion in late September. The recent sell-off suggested that DeFi liquidity may be cooling, raising concerns about whether the market has enough fresh capital to support a “sustained” Q4 rally.
According to AMBCrypto, this is where Circle’s latest report gains credibility. The stablecoin issuer allocated around $1.4 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026. Of this, $819 million went towards USDC distribution partners and transaction costs, while $473 million was invested in infrastructure, compliance, and product development. The key takeaway? Circle is clearly investing its revenues in order to increase the adoption of USDC and strengthen its business.
So naturally, if Circle [USDC] boosts the use cases for the stablecoin and attracts more users to the ecosystem, it might drive fresh liquidity into the crypto market. The key question now is whether the “renewed” attention to the stablecoin prompts a Q3-style rally in the fourth quarter.
Can Circle’s USDC become the liquidity catalyst crypto needs in Q4? Despite a bearish start to Q4, Circle is already using its resources to scale the adoption of USDC.
According to CEO Jeremy Allaire, the company is set to enter around 40 emerging markets in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, fueled by the rising organic demand for stablecoins. His remarks were supported by the data published in the company’s report, which revealed that USDC processed over $36 trillion in on-chain transaction value and around 77% of total stablecoin transaction volumes in June, compared to 60% at the same time last year.
So, as USDC adoption grows, Circle’s expansion into new markets is likely to drive its popularity.
That is why the chart below is so important. USDC market cap rose by $3 billion in the Q3, while USDT market value decreased by a half a percent. This divergence is evidence of the increasing dominance of USDC.
Source: TradingView However, this trend didn’t play out in isolation.
Rather, USDC growth coincided with Circle’s 31% hike over the same period. This demonstrates that the two factors, namely the increase in demand for stablecoins and the development of the company’s own business, reinforce each other.
With Circle now building a similar growth narrative, a repeat of this cycle seems extremely plausible. Back then, USDC’s momentum coincided with the total crypto market cap increasing by 40%, illustrating how a rise in the usage of stablecoins can drive a bull run.
Final Summary Circle’s expansion into 40 new markets could bring more liquidity into crypto.
USDC’s growth coincided with a 40% rise in total crypto market cap, raising hopes for another rally.
Visa moves stablecoins from the lab to commercial operations. The payment giant has just put Visa Direct’s stablecoin capabilities into production with Inyo Global. Eligible businesses will notably be able to use USDC to pre-finance their cross-border payments 24/7. The change comes as Visa’s stablecoin settlements now exceed an annualized pace of $20 billion.
In brief
Visa Direct officially moves from pilot to commercial deployment.
Inyo Global becomes the first player to offer pre-financing in USDC.
Visa’s stablecoin settlements exceed $20 billion at an annualized pace.
Visa puts stablecoins at the heart of Visa Direct
The change was officialized on October 15. Inyo Global becomes the first processor to put Visa Direct’s stablecoin pre-financing into production. The company already provides payment infrastructure to fintechs, banks, and money transfer companies in a network covering over 180 countries.
Its eligible clients can now use crypto (USDC) to finance their Visa Direct operations. The principle addresses a very concrete problem. To ensure international payments, companies often have to immobilize funds in advance on different bank accounts. Opening hours and weekends can also delay their ability to fund these accounts.
With USDC, financing can work 24/7. Visa had started testing this model of stablecoin payments in the United States as early as 2025. The program was supposed to be expanded in 2026.
This step has arrived. The final beneficiary is not necessarily paid in crypto. Visa Direct still allows converting funds and paying out in local currency. The stablecoin mainly operates in the infrastructure behind the payment.
From $7 to $20 billion in a few months
Visa is not starting from zero anymore. In April, its stablecoin settlement program reached around $7 billion annualized. The group had then added five additional blockchains to its infrastructure.
A few months later, the figure exceeds $20 billion. Visa talks about a multiplication greater than fifteen times year-over-year. The group also counts more than 160 card programs linked to stablecoins. The payment volumes achieved with these programs increased by nearly 200% year-over-year in the second fiscal quarter.
The trend goes beyond just experimentation with Inyo. In July, Visa was already testing stablecoins with M-Pesa and Onafriq in the DRC. The goal was also to simplify settling cross-border payments without necessarily changing the end-user experience.
At the beginning of October, Visa also indicated that almost 17% of the volume of its stablecoin-linked cards now came from programs aimed at businesses. Stablecoins are gradually moving out of the crypto-only market. They are becoming a treasury tool.
Visa does not replace banks with USDC
Commercial deployment does not mean that Visa is abandoning traditional rails. Its model remains hybrid. Stablecoins serve where they can reduce delays or avoid immobilizing too much liquidity. The Visa Direct network then continues to connect cards, bank accounts, wallets, and local currencies.
This is indeed the stance Visa has defended for several months: the stablecoin does not necessarily have to replace traditional currency. It can become an additional layer to move money between different infrastructures.
The evolution is particularly visible in card payments. USDC and USDT already represent 84% of expenses made with certain crypto cards. Visa now has another field: financing international payments themselves. Inyo Global opens the first commercial door. Other processors can follow. The pilot phase is over for this part of the system. Stablecoins enter production.
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Lydie M.
Enseignante et ingénieure IT, Lydie découvre le Bitcoin en 2022 et plonge dans l’univers des cryptomonnaies. Elle vulgarise des sujets complexes, décrypte les enjeux du Web3 et défend une vision d’un futur numérique ouvert, inclusif et décentralisé.
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.
The world's largest payment network has moved stablecoin prefunding from pilot to production via Inyo Global, making USDC a live funding source for payouts across 180-plus countries.
On October 15, 2026, Visa announced that its stablecoin capabilities are moving from pilot stage to commercial deployment. That sentence reads like a press release, but the structural shift underneath it is real. The world’s largest payment network is now accepting USDC as a production-grade funding source for cross-border payouts, not running another controlled test.
The first enabler to cross this threshold is Inyo Global, a Visa Direct processor that serves money transmitters, fintechs, banks, and payment businesses. Through the integration, these institutions can prefund cross-border payouts with USDC in near real time, around the clock, across more than 180 countries. The stablecoin sits on the funding leg; recipients get settled in local fiat on the other end.
The mechanics are deliberately unglamorous. As Robson Dantas, CPTO and co-founder at Inyo Global, put it: No infrastructure overhaul. No new compliance stack for the client. Just a faster way to fund the existing pipes.
That ordinariness is exactly what makes this significant. We have covered this exact beat moving from speculative to structural over the past two months. In August, Visa deployed stablecoin capabilities through Zero Hash across 18 billion endpoints, which at the time looked like a production-grade integration. We also tracked the company searching for a new settlement partner after Mastercard acquired BVNK for roughly $1.8 billion, pulling the rug out from under Visa’s existing infrastructure.
What changes now is the status. Inyo Global is not a pilot partner running a sandbox test. It is a commercial enabler with a client base that can access stablecoin prefunding through production APIs today. And the model is repeatable: plug a processor into Visa Direct’s stablecoin prefunding capability, and every business on that processor’s platform gets access without doing any technical work themselves. Visa has made clear it intends to bring additional enablers online.
The regulatory timing is not accidental. With the GENIUS Act’s effective date of January 18, 2027 approaching, institutions need production track records, not pilot announcements. The agencies missed their rulemaking deadlines; the industry is building the infrastructure anyway and letting the compliance layer catch up.
Vira Platonova, Global Head of Visa Direct, framed the moment plainly: It is a dry, professional way of saying that the technology is no longer the interesting part. The deployment is. Platonova will discuss stablecoins reshaping global money movement at Money20/20 USA sessions next week, where the question will shift from whether stablecoin settlement works at scale to how fast the next enablers come online.
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NEAR weekly TD sequential sell signal puts $4.30 support in focus, with $3.76 below it.
Zcash’s bearish Parabolic SAR flip comes as ZEC tests $1,100, with $850 as the next downside level.
BNB’s daily SuperTrend sell signal puts $710 support at risk, with $680 as the next level to watch.
Analysts warn of downside risks, but confirmed support breaks matter more than historical signal outcomes.
Three altcoins are flashing bearish technical signals as NEAR Protocol, Zcash (ZEC), and BNB face critical support tests.
Market analyst Ali Charts identified sell signals across the three assets using the TD Sequential, Parabolic SAR, and SuperTrend indicators. Each signal has preceded a substantial correction in a previous comparable setup.
However, past price movements do not guarantee similar outcomes this time. Traders are now watching key support levels for signs of whether the current pullbacks will deepen.
NEAR, Zcash, and BNB Sell Signals Put Support Levels in Focus
According to Ali Charts, NEAR’s weekly TD sequential indicator has flashed a sell signal.
The last comparable signal preceded a 32% correction. NEAR has already fallen 24%, with $4.30 identified as immediate support. A break below that level could expose the $3.76 area.
3 ALTCOINS SHOW SELL SIGNALS
1/5 🧵👇
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) October 17, 2026
However, analyst Giannis Andreou highlights a longer-term bullish structure. He says NEAR has broken above a falling trendline stretching back to its 2022 peak. The breakout preceded a rally toward $6, while $3.73 remains the key level buyers must defend.
If NEAR holds that support, Andreou identifies $7.60 as the next major resistance. The $9 region represents a potential neckline for a multi-year double-bottom pattern.
A confirmed breakout above that neckline could strengthen the case for a move toward $20.59. Losing $3.73, however, would weaken the bullish structure.
Zcash faces a separate warning from its Parabolic SAR indicator. The indicator’s dots have moved above the price, suggesting bearish momentum.
Ali Charts notes that the previous bearish flip preceded a 54% retracement. ZEC has already pulled back 25%, while $1,100 and $850 mark the levels traders are monitoring.
Analyst Ardi offers a broader interpretation of Zcash’s price action. He describes the pullback as mean reversion following an overheated rally toward $1,600.
Under this framework, prices can retreat toward their historical average before consolidating or attempting another advance.
Can BNB, NEAR, and Zcash Avoid Deeper Corrections?
BNB’s daily SuperTrend indicator has also flipped to a sell signal, according to Ali Charts.
The previous comparable flip preceded a 26% decline, while BNB has fallen 8% so far. Ali identifies $710 as support and $680 as the next downside level if buyers fail to defend it.
CoinGecko data puts BNB at $713.73, down 0.98% over 24 hours and 4.67% over seven days. Its reported daily trading volume stands at $504.96 million, providing additional context for the ongoing pullback.
BNB price on CoinGecko
Analyst Don Wedge identifies a falling wedge on BNB’s daily chart following its $1,370 peak.
Price faced rejection near the upper boundary around $800 and subsequently retreated toward $730. He places the lower wedge boundary near $540, with a daily close above the upper trendline potentially targeting $1,601.
These technical readings present different scenarios rather than confirmed price outcomes.
Sell signals suggest caution, but support breaks would provide stronger evidence of further downside. For traders, the immediate focus remains on whether NEAR holds $4.30, ZEC defends $1,100, and BNB maintains $710.
All three altcoins face bearish technical warnings, but their next moves depend on how price responds at critical support levels.
The Zcash (ZEC) price has once again stayed in negative territory today after recording a robust run over the past few months. Notably, the recent decline could be attributed to a topsy-turvy scenario in the broader crypto market.
Amid this, Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said that the privacy coin is still likely to be in its early stage, in terms of adoption. On the other hand, a recent report from a renowned market expert showed that the hackers are leaning towards Zcash (ZEC) for money laundering, which has sparked discussions among market participants.
Gemini Co-Founder Says Zcash is in Early Stages
Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini, recently highlighted the limited adoption of Zcash among mainstream crypto participants. His remarks came after a discussion at TOKEN2049, where his twin brother Cameron Winklevoss asked attendees about their ZEC holdings.
According to Tyler, only around 10 people raised their hands among “thousands of people” present in the “room”. He viewed the response as evidence that Zcash adoption is still in the early stage, which has gained notable traction from market participants.
Source: X
Meanwhile, the observation has also sparked discussions on the long-term potential of the privacy coin. For context, Zcash (ZEC) price has recorded gains of over 425% over the past 12 months, indicating robust interest from investors towards the asset.
However, despite its recent market performance, Zcash may still have considerable room to expand its user base, as hinted by the Gemini co-founder. Notably, Zcash distinguishes itself through privacy features that allow users to shield transaction details.
Although this capability appeals to individuals seeking greater financial confidentiality, it also creates challenges for investigators attempting to trace suspicious transfers. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Winklevoss Asset Services has recently filed for a Spot Zcash ETF with the US SEC, highlighting their growing interest into the asset.
Hackers Increasingly Turn to ZEC for Stolen Funds
While the Gemini co-founder highlighted the adoption potential of Zcash, a separate report raised concerns about its use in illicit financial activity. Wu Blockchain reported that on-chain analyst Specter observed that more threat actors or hackers are moving stolen assets into ZEC.
Meanwhile, the report followed blockchain investigator ZachXBT’s disclosure concerning the Bitget exploiter, who allegedly used Zcash to shield stolen assets. Subsequent transactions reportedly involved funds linked to the Cryptobills Ledger security incident and the $12 million Triple-A exploit.
These developments suggest that attackers may be exploiting privacy features to complicate fund tracing. However, the reported transactions do not establish that Zcash itself is responsible for the underlying crimes.
