News about crypto

According to SoSoValue data, US spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs recorded net outflows of $549 million last week, with Bitcoin ETFs losing $229 million and Ether funds $320 million. It was a second straight weekly outflow for Bitcoin ETFs and a third for Ether funds, though the pace slowed from the previous week's $1.22 billion. Spot Ether ETFs have seen roughly $955 million in net outflows in October so far, more than in any other month this year. Ether fell 5% over seven days to about $2,433 and Bitcoin dipped 1.3% to $82,783, per CoinGecko. Even so, both fund groups remain positive for 2026 year-to-date, with Bitcoin ETFs at about $259 million and Ether ETFs at about $610 million in net inflows.

BlackRock's crypto funds drew a net $7.9 billion of inflows in Q3, reversing $2.2 billion of outflows in the first half of 2026. Its digital asset holdings rose 63% to $79.6 billion by end-September from $48.8 billion at end-June, with $22.9 billion of the $30.8 billion gain coming from price increases. Still, assets remain 23% below the nearly $104 billion a year earlier, as market value losses of $30.6 billion over 12 months outweighed $6.3 billion of net inflows. CoinShares data show institutions held about 264,000 BTC through US spot bitcoin ETFs at end-Q2, up 1.3% from the prior quarter. The article notes that ETF ownership does not always signal long-term bets, as some positions may serve hedging or client asset management.

A Bitcoin wallet dormant since 2013 moved all 411.45 of its BTC, now worth about $34 million, to a new address on Sunday. The owner bought most of the coins when they were worth about $54,000 and held through major market swings as the value rose more than 600-fold. Blockchain data from Arkham Intelligence shows the funds have not gone to an exchange, and the move to a modern SegWit address suggests a security upgrade rather than an imminent sale. Several other long-dormant wallets have also woken up this month, but experts note that most of the coins moved to new private wallets.

The team behind Zakura, a newer version of the software that runs the Zcash network, proposes giving every ZEC swap made through NEAR Intents its own viewing key. This would stop a refund address posted on NEAR's public chain from exposing a user's wider payment history to a future quantum computer. Spending keys would stay with users, and private information retrieval would let wallets locate refunds without revealing which addresses they are checking. Zakura says compatible wallets could adopt the feature within weeks, ahead of Zcash developers' January target for quantum-resistant payments. No quantum computer capable of recovering these keys has yet been demonstrated.

South Korean finance officials are reportedly set to meet major crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, DigitalX and Gopax, on Tuesday, days after a lawmaker introduced a bill that could delay the crypto tax by two years. The tax has already been postponed three times and is currently scheduled to start in January 2027. An exchange official said unresolved transaction standards and limited time to prepare infrastructure support a delay. Democratic Party lawmaker Park Min-gyu's bill would push the start date to January 1 of the second year after Korea begins sharing data under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework; with the first data exchange expected in 2027, taxation would begin in 2029.

A XRP Ledger bug-fix package is expected to take effect around 09:34 UTC on Oct. 23 after reaching the 29 validator votes needed for approval. The fixes relate to Ripple's proposed uncollateralized lending system, which remains inactive because its lending and vault amendments have only 19 and 21 votes. The package also closes a loophole that let accounts permitted only to burn tokens create new ones, and revises vault rounding and loan-default rules. Even if both amendments reached 29 votes today, the article notes lending could not go live before early November, since neither has started its two-week countdown.

Deutsche Bank plans to extend its crypto custody service to Asia in 2027, with a German launch expected within weeks but still subject to regulatory approval. The initial offering will support bitcoin, ether and stablecoins USDC, EURC and EURAU, with the bank managing clients' wallets and private keys so corporate and institutional clients can hold and transfer crypto. The bank also plans stablecoin conversion, tokenized deposits and digital bond issuance services, as part of a target of roughly 8% compound annual revenue growth in its corporate bank from 2025 to 2028. It received BaFin authorization under MiCA on October 12 and has worked with Bitpanda and Taurus, joining rivals such as Standard Chartered and BBVA in offering crypto custody.

Layer-1 blockchain Qubic halted its network after an attacker exploited weakly generated wallet seeds to drain about $1.4 million from more than 1,400 accounts, according to the project. The vulnerability affected wallets created with any browser on iPhone or iPad, Safari on Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or the Qubic iOS app before July 2025, with 2.94 trillion QU stolen. Qubic says 87.1% of the funds remain frozen on its network, while 12.9% was sent to MEXC, whose team froze the receiving account within about an hour. The team has fixed the flaw in web wallet version 4.26.4, is identifying affected wallets, and will let Computors vote on a recovery plan; no restart date has been announced. The article links the incident to a series of weak-seed attacks in recent years.

Nine issuers, including Broadcom, Verizon and UnitedHealth, have objected to having their shares traded on OKXICE's planned tokenized-stock platform, according to an October 15 notice. The venue would offer around-the-clock trading under the SEC's temporary Innovation Exemption, with tokens backed one-for-one by underlying shares. Nasdaq has said it will opt out of the framework because the venue does not display best prices in real time or report to the consolidated tape. TD Securities analysts found that reliance on temporary exemptive relief rather than permanent rules has made issuers and institutions reluctant to invest in the trading infrastructure.

HEX founder Richard Schueler (Richard Heart) was detained in Istanbul on October 14, and the HEX market cap fell from $561 million to $315 million this week. Police seized $7.15 million in cash, along with firearms and ammunition, in an early-morning raid in Istanbul's Beşiktaş district and 15 related addresses, and impounded luxury vehicles registered to his wife. Ledger unveiled Atom, an $849 device expected to ship in summer 2027, days after confirming that wallets sold through an Asian reseller contained malicious implants, an incident tied to more than $90 million stolen. Starknet opened a vote to transform from an Ethereum L2 into a post-quantum L1, with more than 99% of votes cast so far in favor, but its token lost almost 50% of its value this week.

Ondo's tokenized Treasury product USDY has grown to about $2.33 billion, slightly above the $2.2 billion held by BlackRock's BUIDL, yet the ONDO token fell 9% in the week ending October 17, 2026 and trades around 44 cents. The article explains that USDY pays yield to its holders, while ONDO is mainly a governance token with no role in USDY creation or redemption. Ondo is a private company that does not disclose how much of its yield-gap revenue it earns, and its US expansion, including FINRA approval for Oasis Pro Markets on July 23, settles in fiat or stablecoins rather than ONDO. The article also notes that BlackRock still earns fees as Ondo grows, and that USDY's lead over BUIDL is narrow. ONDO's market cap is about $2.13 billion, while its fully diluted valuation of about $4.38 billion, including all 10 billion tokens, makes it appear more affordable than USDY.

Patrick Witt, executive director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets at the White House, announced last week that he is leaving government to return to the private sector. The White House currently has no publicly named crypto head, and no successor has been named, following the earlier departures of Harry Jung and Bo Hines. While Washington focuses on next month's midterm elections, the executive branch continues rulemaking on digital assets, and a White House official said crypto and the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act remain a focus for Trump. Any crypto legislation after a new Congress takes office will likely still need a White House liaison.

Apple's stock keeps setting records, closing at $343 and up 26.7% for the year, after crossing a $5 trillion market value. Bitcoin has not set a new high in 2026; it trades around $81,977, 35% below its $126,080 peak and down 6.8% year to date. The article notes Apple returns cash through dividends and buybacks (a 4% dividend increase and an additional $100 billion for buybacks), whereas Bitcoin generates no earnings or dividends and its volatility could hurt retirees who may have to sell to cover expenses. It also flags Apple's risks, including a P/E of about 45 times earnings and rising memory costs, but notes Apple has beaten EPS estimates for nine consecutive quarters and iPhone revenue rose 22%. The author concludes Apple is the better choice for retirement funds, and says this view could shift if Apple misses its 9% to 11% revenue guidance while Bitcoin climbs back above $126,080.

Crypto prices are recovering after a year-long slump: as of Oct. 16, Bitcoin was up 28% over three months, while Solana gained 40% but remained 65% below its all-time high from last year, trading around $105. The author argues this decline does not reflect Solana's ecosystem growth, as the chain generated more fees than any other network over the past 30 days, its stablecoin supply hit an all-time high of $16.5 billion, and it ranks third in tokenized asset value. Samsung named Solana as a partner for USDC access through Samsung Wallet, and Securitize launched tokenized versions of 12 U.S. megacap stocks on the chain. The author also notes risks, including dependence on crypto sentiment, a 2025 peak driven by meme coin activity, and uncertain adoption, but considers Solana worth a closer look for investors willing to take on risk.

Latvia could allow residents to pay personal taxes in cryptocurrency as early as next year, according to Didzis Dejus, an adviser to the prime minister, with the Finance Ministry having agreed to the plan while technical work with a payment provider remains. On October 15, parliament passed a law taxing withdrawals from crypto investment accounts that exceed deposits rather than individual trades, along with a one-time declaration process. Holders can settle past obligations by paying 10% of their declared assets' market value at the end of 2026, with declarations filed from April 1 to May 31, 2027 and tax due by July 23. Dejus said this would help people who bought crypto years ago but lack records of what they paid. Timing may depend on the next government, as Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs' United List won the October 3 election but still needs coalition partners.

On October 16, Bloomberg Intelligence's Mike McGlone said Bitcoin could fall toward $10,000 if US stocks drop 20% amid tighter central bank policy, a target he has repeated throughout 2026. Bitcoin trades near $82,000 as of October 18, about 35% below its all-time high of roughly $126,080 set in early October 2025. CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju argued that spot ETFs have absorbed $58 billion and treasury companies hold 1.3 million BTC, and that on-chain cost basis points to a floor near $30,000; a $10,000 price would imply an MVRV ratio of 0.2, below the worst historical bottom of 0.6. Technical analyst Michaël van de Poppe called the chart “not bad at all” and believes the next move is more likely to be upward.

According to blockchain analytics firm Allium, stablecoin supply barely grew this year, reaching about $305 billion by end-September (up 0.4% year to date), while stablecoin payments hit $482 billion in the first nine months, up 45% from a year earlier. The number of payments rose 71% to over 1 billion, and stablecoin-linked card spending reached $3.9 billion, ten times the prior year's level, with purchases under $50 accounting for 84% of the increase in card transactions. This week, Mastercard launched its Global Money Platform with BVNK, Stripe partnered with Plasma on multi-currency cards, and Visa said Inyo Global became the first provider to use Visa Direct's stablecoin prefunding service commercially. Still, only $2.4 trillion, or 2.5%, of $97.9 trillion in raw stablecoin transfers was classified as end-user activity, and stablecoin cards accounted for just 0.03% of Visa's $4 trillion in second-quarter payment volume.

According to DeFiLlama, Solana holds $15.5 billion in U.S. dollar stablecoins as of October 17, 2026, while Ethereum has about $143.9 billion, roughly 9.3 times larger. Yet SOL fell 6.5% over the past week to $103, and U.S. spot Solana ETFs have recorded net outflows in every session since October 5, totaling $54.9 million through October 16. The article argues stablecoin balances do not directly indicate SOL demand, since parked dollars, concentrated holdings and minimal network fees make the link weak. Solana ETF net assets fell from $1.96 billion on September 25 to $1.62 billion by October 16, though total net inflows still stand at $1.56 billion. The Alpenglow upgrade, scheduled for mainnet activation on October 21, aims to cut transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds, but traders may already have priced it in.

A new BIS working paper using US data from 2019 to 2025 finds that when banks raise deposit rates, stablecoin market growth slows. Over a typical 10-week span, stablecoin market capitalisation grew about 15%, but a one-basis-point rise in deposit rates cut that to roughly 12% under the baseline estimate and about 6% under a method designed to isolate cause and effect. The authors exploited the fact that banks rarely raise savings rates until the federal funds rate passes about 3%, and the link was stronger for Circle's USDC than for Tether's USDT. They say regulators should weigh whether stablecoin issuers can pay holders yield, and note the paper reflects the authors' views, not necessarily the BIS's.

Hacken says hackers stole $1.18 billion from crypto projects in the third quarter across 107 incidents, up 55% from the previous quarter. About $906.8 million of that came from compromised suppliers or developer tools, uninstalled security fixes, or components excluded from the latest security review. Hacken warns that audit badges can give investors a false sense of security, since reviews often omit wallets, signing systems and third-party software that attackers target. The biggest incident was the September attack on Bitget, which lost at least $352 million after hackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party security product.

Bitwise's Ryan Rasmussen says bitcoin could end the year above $100,000, citing institutional buying through ETFs and corporate purchases, demand for hard assets, and clearer regulation. LO:TECH's Adam Morgan McCarthy is more cautious, forecasting an $85,000–$95,000 range by year-end as the Fed's September hike and a December hike priced at roughly 75% weigh on the market. Inflation data released October 14 showed consumer prices up 0.6% from the previous month, with gasoline accounting for more than half of the rise. Laser Digital's Luca Invernizzi sees leverage largely flushed out and a possible short squeeze if bitcoin breaks above $90K, while bitcoin traded around $81,500 at publication.

Circle Internet Group paid $819 million to more than 150 partners distributing USDC in the first half of 2026, according to Circle president Kash Razzaghi, in a payment that works like revenue sharing from the reserve income behind USDC. The payment encourages partners to keep USDC as their default dollar token, though Circle did not disclose how the amount is split among them. As of October 18, Ripple's RLUSD had a market cap of around $2.4 billion versus $72.3 billion for USDC, and about $58 million in 24-hour trading compared with $8.4 billion for USDC. Ripple is narrowing the gap through integrations such as Cross River Bank's service, which is limited to some U.S. states and carries no exclusive terms or volume guarantees. XRP was trading at about $1.30, down 6.9% over the past week.

Authorities in Ghana and Nigeria arrested 28 people in a crackdown on West African scam networks, including cryptocurrency investment fraud, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Private-sector partners flagged $11 million in funds that could be frozen, a figure not yet confirmed as recovered, while some crypto seizures were reported without values. Coinbase and Binance joined blockchain analytics firms Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs, and Coinbase said it prevented more than $415,000 in potential losses. Meta removed more than 3.7 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups, and participants provided leads on more than 30 suspected scam centers. The operation, hosted by the UK's National Crime Agency, was the first joint effort focused on West Africa, and 117 trafficking victims in Ghana were awaiting repatriation to Nigeria.

Cysic suspended its cross-chain bridge after an attacker exploited a processing flaw to mint 10 million CYS on BNB Smart Chain on Saturday. Preliminary findings point to unauthorized access to a database supporting the bridge. The company blacklisted the recipient address on the token contract, where about 2.8 million CYS remained with transfers restricted. Cysic says the incident was limited to bridge message processing and minting, did not affect the mainnet, and did not result in the theft or unauthorized transfer of existing CYS or other assets in user wallets. The company added that the mint size does not establish the final dollar loss, has hired a security firm, and plans to publish a follow-up report.