Kevin O’Leary has returned to buying new cryptocurrency positions for the next market cycle while watching for a major stock exchange to adopt blockchain infrastructure, a development he expects could influence which network gains institutional traction.

According to comments made to The Block at the Avalanche Summit in New York, the O’Leary Ventures chairman said he is placing new bets as he tries to identify which blockchain could gain widespread use and where that adoption will emerge.

“I’m back in the saddle buying new positions, putting my bets on for this next cycle,” O’Leary said.

His investment approach is focused less on picking individual crypto assets in isolation and more on determining which underlying network could become a standard for a major industry. Conversations with executives have yet to produce a clear answer, he said, because companies across different sectors are considering different blockchains.

O’Leary said he can speak directly with chief executives about the networks their companies are evaluating, but “none of them are saying the same thing.”

O’Leary sees exchange adoption as a watershed moment

A major stock exchange could provide one of the clearest signals, according to O’Leary, who described the first exchange to adopt a blockchain as a potential “watershed moment” for the crypto industry.

Once an exchange settles on a network, companies and financial institutions that interact with the venue could have an incentive to work with infrastructure that meets the same technical and compliance requirements. O’Leary presented that scenario as one possible route through which a particular blockchain could gain wider use.

Traditional exchanges are already moving parts of their infrastructure onchain. The New York Stock Exchange has been developing onchain settlement infrastructure for tokenized securities, with NYSE President Lynn Martin saying in August that work was continuing on a dedicated digital trading platform.

Intercontinental Exchange, NYSE’s parent company, later agreed to invest in tZERO and license its blockchain patents as the companies work on tokenized securities infrastructure. The planned platform is designed to support round the clock trading and immediate blockchain settlement, though regulatory approvals are still required.

Nasdaq has taken a separate route. Earlier in September, Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Kraken parent Payward at a $21 billion valuation as the companies expanded their work on tokenized equities and settlement. Nasdaq and Payward expect Nasdaq Equity Tokens to launch in the second quarter of 2027.

Regulators have been preparing for more securities activity to move onchain as well. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently granted tokenized securities venues five years of conditional relief to trade eligible tokenized U.S. stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. Eligible tokens must provide holders with the same rights and privileges as conventional shares under the five year exemption.

Crypto regulation remains on O’Leary’s agenda

O’Leary expects U.S. lawmakers to return to crypto market structure legislation despite the latest setback for the CLARITY Act.

The Senate failed to advance the bill this week after a cloture motion fell short of the 60 votes needed to begin formal debate. Crypto.news previously reported that the procedural vote failed after receiving 50 votes to 49.

O’Leary said he does not expect the legislation to pass before the midterm elections, but argued that work on digital asset taxation makes continued regulatory action likely.

“If you’re going to provide a tax policy on this asset, you want more regulation, not less,” he said.

His comments came as Congress made progress on a separate digital asset tax package. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act in a 38 to 5 vote on Sept. 16, moving the proposal toward possible consideration by the full House.

The crypto tax legislation includes an exception for qualifying blockchain network and transaction fees of up to $10, alongside proposed rules covering wash sales, stablecoins, crypto lending, mining, staking and broker reporting.

Seven Senate Democrats who opposed the CLARITY Act cloture motion have since indicated that negotiations are not over. Their effort leaves open the possibility of further talks, though the failed procedural vote has kept the bill from entering formal Senate debate.

O’Leary’s current position differs from the timeline he gave earlier in 2026. In January, he expressed hope that U.S. crypto market structure legislation could clear Congress before the midterms. By June, he was arguing that legislation could become an important catalyst for institutional participation, particularly among pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

Bitcoin allocation could reach 1% to 3%

For Bitcoin, O’Leary framed potential institutional exposure against allocations already made to another alternative asset, gold.

He said Bitcoin could eventually account for between 1% and 3% of alternative asset allocations, using institutional gold holdings as a comparison. His upper range is consistent with comments he made earlier this year when discussing how much Bitcoin large investors may be willing to hold.

In February, O’Leary said some institutions were reluctant to move beyond roughly 3% Bitcoin exposure because of concerns surrounding quantum computing and the network’s long term security. Developers have been discussing proposals intended to reduce Bitcoin’s exposure to future quantum attacks, while the risk has become part of the institutional debate around allocation limits.

O’Leary remains focused on investments outside digital assets as well, particularly the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence.

Instead of concentrating his AI investments on individual models, he said he is investing in the power infrastructure required to run them. Projects cited by O’Leary include investments in Norway, Finland, Alberta and Utah, along with exposure to uranium as demand for electricity from data centers grows.

Crypto-focused venture capital firm Dragonfly’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, proposed winding down the Zcash developer fund after it expires under current rules in 2028.

“I’m of the opinion that this should be the final Dev Fund,” wrote Qureshi in a Friday X post, arguing that the fund is large enough to fund remaining work on Zcash and that it risks being “politicized” as it approaches $100 million in value.

The Zcash development fund held 63,962 Zcash (ZEC) tokens at press time, worth about $95 million, according to ZecStats.

The remarks follow a broader industry debate that stemmed from the fund’s increasing value, following the ZEC token’s rally. Others argued that Zcash should maintain its development fund. Paradigm founder Matt Huang argued in a Wednesday X post that the fund is particularly important “in this age of AI cyber capabilities” and rapid quantum progress. 

Zcash pools, including the dev fund, also known as the lockbox. Source: ZecStats

The ZEC development fund is a protocol development fund that accrues 0.1875 ZEC tokens per block, representing 12% of the block subsidy under the NU6 upgrade. Its balance sits outside circulation until governance disbursement.

Related: Zcash holders back 25-second blocks, vote to keep ZEC halving schedule

Industry split over who should control the ZEC development fund?

Industry watchers are also debating who should control the development fund. Dragonfly’s Haseeb said that the fund’s control shouldn’t move toward “pure token holder voting,” but showed support for a partial model, under which token holders would elect temporary councils.

Huang agreed with this view, adding that pure token holder governance may introduce “unpredictability that could limit long-term trust as a monetary asset” and proposed a hybrid model combining additional forms of governance. 

Maxime Desalle, investment analyst at Winklevoss Capital, suggested that the Zcash community “completely get rid” of the development fund, which would solve all the governance disputes surrounding it, writing in a Thursday X post. 

In a previous post on Sept. 9, Desalle argued that the fund may hurt the security of Zcash while recreating the dependencies and bureaucracies that many welfare states suffer from.

In a Sept. 1 X post, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said that the Zcash Community Grants Committee was among the main reasons that Zcash “has survived and grown to where it is today.” On Sept. 14, Wilcox clarified that the committee only accounts for 40% of the development fund.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions 

That said, many of those golden crosses did produce impressive three-month gains (check Today’s Signal). Five of the 10 crosses that survived long enough to reach the three-month mark posted gains ranging from 85% to more than 1,000%, including a 1,009.6% run following the April 2017 cross and a 135% gain after the February 2021 cross.

Right now, XRP’s 50-day average sits about 2% below its 200-day average, the closest since its last golden cross in August 2024.

Meanwhile, analysts are optimistic about bitcoin’s price prospects, given the cryptocurrency has weathered this week’s storm, marked by the Clarity Act setback and a Federal Reserve rate increase. The cryptocurrency is trading near $78,000, roughly unchanged from a week ago.

But its dominance rate, or share of total crypto market cap, has dropped to a one-month low of under 59%. That implies a rotation into altcoins and many of them, such as UNI, NEAR and ARB have surged by nearly 30% in 24 hours.

Silver (SI=F) December futures opened at $65.76 per ounce on Friday, September 18, 2026, down 0.5% from Thursday’s close but more than $2 higher than yesterday’s opening price. Silver prices surged this morning, reaching $67.47 as of 7:05 a.m. ET.

Until today, silver prices bounced around the $63 to $64 range, but broke out of those bookends by a wide margin this morning. Today’s opening price set the highest opening price of the week, and silver is surging this morning, hitting a high of $67.89.

The Fed’s decision to raise rates for the first time in three years, combined with the ongoing restoration of Saudi Arabia’s key East-West pipeline, has prompted inflation concerns to fade among investors.

And oil prices are responding as well. Wednesday morning, Brent crude (BZ=F) prices were over $107 a barrel. Yesterday at this time, prices were at over $99 a barrel, and this morning, they’re $98.51 as of 7:05 a.m. ET.

Current price of silver

The opening price of silver futures on Friday, September 18, 2026, was 0.5% lower compared to Thursday’s closing price. Here’s how today’s opening silver price has changed versus last week, month, and year: 

• One week ago: +3.9%

• One month ago: -0.8%

• One year ago: +57.7%

For context, silver’s year-over-year growth was 173.3% on May 14.

24/7 silver price tracking: Don’t forget you can monitor the current price of silver on Yahoo Finance 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Want to learn more about the current top-performing companies in the silver industry? Explore a list of the top-performing companies using the Yahoo Finance Screener. You can create your own screeners with over 150 different screening criteria.

Investing in silver? Here’s how to avoid taxes. 

Do you have to pay taxes on silver? Yes. Silver is a capital asset, so when you sell it for more than you paid, the gain is taxable and reported on Schedule D of your federal return.

Many investors assume holding silver for more than a year qualifies them for the same long-term capital gains rates as stocks (0%, 15% or 20%).

Spoiler: It doesn’t.

The 28% collectible tax trap

The IRS classifies physical precious metals — including bars, rounds, and coins — as collectibles. That classification changes the tax math in a big way.

Short-term gains

If you hold silver for one year or less, your profit is taxed as ordinary income. Depending on your tax bracket, that could go as high as 37%.

Long-term gains

If you hold silver for more than one year, your gain is taxed at your ordinary income rate — but no more than 28%.

Here’s what that looks like in real life:

• If you’re in the 10%, 12%, 22% or 24% bracket, your silver gain is taxed at that same rate.

• If you’re in the 32%, 35% or 37% bracket, you’re capped at 28%.

So if you’re a middle-income earner accustomed to paying 15% on stock gains, silver can cost you more, maybe 22% or 24%, depending on your adjusted gross income.

If you’re in the top brackets, the 28% cap is technically a discount versus 35% or 37% — but it’s still higher than the 20% max long-term capital gains rate on stocks.

That difference adds up quickly when you’re talking five- or six-figure gains.

Learn more: How to avoid taxes when investing in silver

Price of silver chart

Whether you’re tracking the price of silver since last month or last year, the price-of-silver chart below shows the precious metal’s value journey so far this year.

More silver coverage from the Yahoo Finance team: 

Bitcoin (BTC) is showing strong signs that its latest long-term floor is already in, according to a classic trading indicator.

Key points:

• In August, the Fisher Transform indicator delivered a monthly bullish crossover for only the fourth time in Bitcoin’s history, according to Willy Woo.
• Previous monthly crossovers accompanied the end of Bitcoin bear markets, including in late 2022, when the Fisher Transform Indicator hit -3.83.
• A bullish divergence continued on weekly time frames, echoing the closing stages of the 2022 BTC price downtrend.

Analyst sees evidence of clean BTC price reversal

In an X thread on Friday, analyst Willy Woo flagged key readings from the Fisher Transform indicator, a price trend analysis tool created in 2002.

The indicator smooths an asset’s price action to create a readable trend-strength chart. Market prices tend to spend more time around extreme values than ordinary statistical data. The Fisher transform corrects this by applying a log-based transform. 

The indicator is formed of two trend lines, the Fisher line and the trigger line, that fluctuate on a scale with zero at its center. The trigger line is derived from the Fisher line, plotted with a delay of one period. 

Woo shows that for Bitcoin, a sharp upward reversal in Fisher, where its two trend lines cross over one another, has corresponded to bear-market bottoms when viewed on monthly time frames.

“BTC bottoms: 3 for 3 without fake out. Latest cross is the 4th on record,” he commented.

BTC/USD one-month chart with Fisher Transform data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The cross in question occurred during July at -2.26, and if it continues to play out, history suggests that BTC/USD will embark on a new macro uptrend. Woo, however, notes that price could still consolidate and continue lower, referencing a corresponding phenomenon during bull markets where Fisher delivered a bearish crossover, only to offer a fresh bullish one later.

This, he argues, is due to the presence of speculative traders during long-term BTC price uptrends, who influence market momentum because they are sensitive to short-term price moves. By contrast, during bear-market bottom phases, such traders are mostly absent, boosting the reliability of Fisher bottom signals.

“When price falls to a point where investors find value, buy-pressure fires back up but we are devoid of speculators. Price reverses more cleanly without the choppy fake outs seen in tops. Hence bottoms are easier to define. This is seen in many signals, also seen in the Fisher Transform here,” he added. 

Fisher bullish divergence tracks 2022 bear market

The weekly chart shows another Fisher bull structure in process throughout 2026. Here, the indicator hit its swing low of -2.85 at the end of December last year, with BTC/USD still at around $90,000. 

Related: Bitcoin treasuries buy just 5.9K BTC in three months as paper losses linger

BTC/USD one-week chart with Fisher Transform data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Since then, Fisher has delivered a succession of higher lows while price itself sees lower lows, creating a bullish divergence. The same pattern emerged in 2022, with a bullish divergence in Fisher accompanying the final six months of Bitcoin’s previous bear market.

BTC/USD one-week chart with Fisher Transform data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Despite various onchain metrics triggering bear-market reversal signals in recent months, doubts remain over whether Bitcoin’s 21-month lows near $57,000 on July 1 really marked a new cycle bottom.

Last week, Woo himself noted a lack of typical buyer interest at these lows, with bid-side activity suggesting that only a handful of large-volume investors were accumulating at the time.

Gold (GC=F) December futures opened at $4,381.60 per troy ounce on Friday, September 18, 2026, down 0.4% from Thursday’s closing price. Gold is moving upward this morning at $4,421.40 per troy ounce as of 6:46 a.m. ET.

Gold prices have held in the $4,300 range since last Friday, but this morning they broke above $4,400, hitting a weekly high of $4,439.80.

The Fed’s decision to raise rates for the first time in three years, combined with the ongoing restoration of Saudi Arabia’s key East-West pipeline, has prompted inflation concerns to fade among investors.

Oil prices continue to move lower as a result. On Wednesday at this time, Brent crude (BZ=F)prices were over $107 a barrel. Yesterday morning, prices were at over $99 a barrel, and this morning, they’re $98.46 as of 6:39 a.m. ET.

Current price of gold

The opening price of gold futures on Friday, September 18, 2026, was down 0.4% from Thursday’s closing price. Here’s a look at how the opening gold price has changed versus last week, month, and year:  

• One week ago: +0.5%

• One month ago: -2.1%

• One year ago: +18.7%

For context, the one-year gain for gold was 95.6% on Jan. 29.

24/7 gold price tracking: Don’t forget you can monitor the current price of gold on Yahoo Finance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Want to learn more about the current top-performing companies in the gold industry? Explore a list of the top-performing companies in the gold industry using the Yahoo Finance Screener. You can create your own screeners with over 150 different screening criteria.

How much gold should you own?

A gold investment can add stability and inflation protection to your portfolio. But it can also dilute your gains when stock prices are rising quickly. Finding the right balance between gold’s diversification benefits and profiting from growth potential in other assets can be challenging. 

Even the experts are divided on how to achieve the correct balance. Below, five experts explain their recommended gold allocations, which range from 0% to 20%. 

Learn more: How to invest in gold in 4 steps

No gold: Trade-off is too high 

Robert R. Johnson, professor at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, does not advocate gold investing. In his words, “while having a small position in precious metals may dampen portfolio volatility in the short-run, the tradeoff between slightly dampened volatility and the lost long-term return is certainly not a prudent one, particularly for Gen Z/millennials with long investing time horizons.”

2% to 5% allocation, depending on the situation 

Brett Elliott, director of content and SEO at American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX), recommends setting an allocation that aligns with your investing goals. 

Growth-oriented investors may be comfortable with an allocation of 10% or 15%, according to Elliott. But income investors will prefer a smaller position, because gold provides no yield. A 2% to 5% gold allocation can provide some resiliency without an excessive drag on income potential. 

Learn more: Who decides what gold is worth? How gold prices are determined.

5% to 8% gold allocation 

Blake McLaughlin, executive vice president at Axcap Ventures, said historical data support a gold allocation of 5% to 8%. “Gold may not offer the outsized return potential of private investments, but the metal holds a set of attributes that are increasingly hard to ignore,” according to McLaughlin. Those attributes include the metal’s resilience amid economic uncertainty and geopolitical unrest. 

5% to 15% gold allocation 

Thomas Winmill, portfolio manager at Midas Funds, believes most investors will benefit from a long-term gold allocation of 5% to 15%. Winmill specifically advocates investing in gold mining companies through a mutual fund. 

Your risk tolerance and current mix of financial versus hard assets can guide you to an appropriate allocation, according to Winmill. 

1. Risk tolerance: Keep your allocation percentage low if you tend to panic in volatile cycles.  

2. Financial vs. hard assets: Financial assets are stocks and bonds. Hard assets include tangible items like real estate, gold, collectibles, classic cars, and equipment. If you have no home equity and your wealth is primarily in financial assets, you can set your gold allocation higher. Or, if your home is paid for and more valuable than your stock portfolio, gold investing may not be necessary.  

Learn more: Thinking of buying gold? Here’s what investors should watch for.

20% gold allocation

Vince Stanzione, CEO and founder at First Information, recommends a 20% gold allocation, specifically in physical gold or a gold ETF. Stanzione argues for a higher exposure to gold as a wealth protection strategy. As he says, “gold keeps with inflation and gold retains its purchasing power,” while paper currencies are devaluing around the world.   

Learn more: Gold IRA: Benefits, risks, and how it differs from a traditional IRA

Price of gold chart

Whether you’re tracking the price of gold since last month or last year, the price-of-gold chart below shows the precious metal’s change in value so far this year.