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Blockstream Refuses Ransom Demand as Liquid Hackers Hold 600 BTC

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Crypto Breaking News

Blockstream says it will not negotiate with the parties it describes as hackers behind the recent Liquid Network incident, insisting that the demand for a bounty amounts to theft rather than “responsible disclosure.” In a statement posted Friday, the Bitcoin infrastructure firm said it engaged with the attackers in good faith to recover user funds, but will not comply with their conditions.

The dispute centers on remaining Bitcoin held after the Liquid federation network was disrupted earlier this month. Blockstream argues the actors’ behavior crossed a clear line: taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not an attempt to improve security.

Key takeaways

  • Blockstream rejects a demanded “bounty” payment and says the remaining funds should be returned voluntarily.
  • Following engagement attempts, Blockstream says it will escalate by working with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, and forensic specialists if funds aren’t returned.
  • The incident began after self-described “white-hat” actors withdrew roughly 4,000 BTC from Liquid’s federation wallet.
  • After bridge nodes were patched, about 3,400 BTC were returned, leaving approximately 598 BTC outstanding.
  • Liquid resumed block production with emergency updates, but transactions and transfers into or out of the network remained suspended at the time of the report.

Blockstream draws a hard line on “bounty” demands

Blockstream’s position is unambiguous: it will not pay to regain assets it says were taken without authorization. The company called the behavior “theft,” adding that it does not qualify as white-hat activity or responsible disclosure.

Blockstream also addressed the timing and intent of its interactions. According to the company, it worked with the hackers in good faith to attempt to recover user funds, but the firm will not accept the attackers’ demands.

Those demands, as described in the reporting, were presented via an onchain message. The message reportedly asked Blockstream to pay a bounty equal to 10% of the requested amount using its own funds, while threatening Liquid holders with a 15% loss if Blockstream did not comply. The onchain appeal was shared publicly by Jan3 CEO and former Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow.

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In its response, Blockstream urged the remaining Bitcoin holders to return what’s still at issue without further conditions. If voluntary return does not happen, the firm indicated it will pursue tracing and identification—leveraging cooperation with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, and forensic specialists.

What happened to Liquid—and what returned so far

Liquid is a Bitcoin sidechain that relies on a federation model. The disruption came after self-described “white-hat” actors removed roughly 4,000 BTC from Liquid’s federation wallet. At the time, the amount was reported as worth about $320 million.

Following that withdrawal, Liquid paused operations. The reported pause reflected the urgency of the situation: bridge-related components and network procedures needed emergency attention before normal activity could resume safely.

Later, after Blockstream said affected bridge nodes were patched, the actors returned 3,400 BTC. That left around 598 BTC still outstanding, according to the subsequent reporting referenced in this article.

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Blockstream’s latest statement frames the remaining balance as funds that should never have been withheld in the first place. The company’s escalation plan—moving from engagement to potential investigative and legal coordination—signals that it sees the situation less as a negotiated remediation and more as a recoverable loss that requires external enforcement support.

Liquid network status: resumed block production, suspended transfers

Liquid’s recovery has been partial and operationally cautious. After emergency software updates, the network resumed block production. However, the resumed production produced empty blocks, reflecting that core transaction flows were not fully restored immediately after the fixes.

At the same point in the timeline described in the article, transactions and Bitcoin transfers into and out of Liquid remained suspended. This matters for users because even when a network is “running” again in terms of producing blocks, it may still be functionally limited—particularly if transfers depend on bridge components or other safeguards that require additional validation.

The contrast between resumed block production and ongoing suspension of transfers highlights a common post-incident reality for sidechain and federation-based systems: restoring consensus activity is not the same as restoring end-to-end movement of assets. Users and integrators typically need certainty that both issuance and redemption pathways are secure before reactivating deposit and withdrawal workflows.

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Why Blockstream’s refusal to pay changes the dynamic

Refusing to pay a demanded bounty can matter as much for incentives as for outcomes. When attackers attempt to convert exposure into payment, companies must decide whether negotiating sets a precedent that encourages future incidents. Blockstream appears to be choosing the deterrence route—arguing that paying would legitimize unauthorized appropriation as a “disclosure” process.

The firm’s approach also shifts the practical path to resolution. Rather than relying on the attackers to continue responding to pressure, Blockstream is signaling a move toward forensic tracking and coordinated action with third parties that can help identify flows and locate responsible parties. That includes exchanges and service providers that may be able to freeze or trace funds, depending on jurisdiction and access.

There is also a tension in the broader narrative: the attackers previously described the actions as “white-hat,” and a portion of funds has already been returned after technical remediation. But Blockstream’s messaging stresses that returning some assets does not absolve withholding the remainder under a payment threat.

For Liquid users, the key uncertainty remains straightforward: whether the roughly 598 BTC still held in connection with the incident will be returned without further conditions. Even if the network resumes certain functions, asset recovery timelines may depend on the interaction between technical fixes, the ability to trace funds, and any legal or regulatory steps that follow.

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Going forward, traders, wallets, and bridge operators should watch for updates on whether Liquid transfers remain suspended, whether additional emergency patches are required, and—most importantly—whether the remaining Bitcoin is returned in line with Blockstream’s demand for voluntary restoration rather than conditional payment.

Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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Bitcoin beats gold, surge to $100,000 in play: Crypto Daily

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Bitcoin beats gold, surge to $100,000 in play: Crypto Daily

BTC’s move above $80,000 has triggered a “double-bottom breakout,” a technical analysis pattern confirming a bullish trend and opening the door for a rally to $100,000, according to Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments.

“Bitcoin is looking particularly interesting here as it challenges key resistance at $80k. If it breaks it will confirm a double bottom targeting $100K,” Timmer wrote on X on Friday.

A double bottom looks like the letter W on a price chart. The price drops to a low, bounces, falls back to roughly the same level, then rises again. The two dips show buyers stepping in at the same price twice. The peak in the middle of the W acts as resistance. A break above it suggests sellers have run out of steam and a new uptrend may be starting.

Timmer’s chart shows bitcoin’s two lows this year at $60,033 and $57,742, with the middle peak near $82,800.

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Chart patterns are not guarantees. Breakouts often fail, reversing quickly and trapping buyers who chased the move.

Still, the bullish setup is consistent with options traders positioning for more gains. The $90,000 call is the most popular bitcoin options bet on crypto exchange Deribit, with $2.45 billion in open interest. The $95,000 call follows with $2.33 billion, and the $100,000 call holds $1.79 billion. A call gives the buyer the right to buy at a set price and profits when the market rises above it.



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XRP Price in Danger: Positive Funding Masks a Fragile Setup

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XRP price trades near $1.49 as positive funding meets futures selling, with $1.37 support and $1.57 resistance shaping the next move.

XRP price hovers under $1.49 after three consecutive daily declines left the token losing the $1.50 support, even as a modest bounce pulled it off session lows. CoinGlass data showed the long-to-short ratio at 0.975, meaning short positions marginally outnumbered longs, while the funding rate sat at a positive 0.008%, the reading that determines whether long or short traders pay a periodic fee to hold perpetual futures.

XRP price trades near $1.49 as positive funding meets futures selling, with $1.37 support and $1.57 resistance shaping the next move.

XRP Long Short Ratio, Coinglass

That combination is the crux of the problem. Traders are still paying to stay long, yet the spot price has not moved in a way that rewards the bet, and the disconnect between heavy spot selling and futures demand is the setup that tends to unwind fast once a key level gives way.

A 0.975 long-to-short ratio is not a bearish signal in any decisive sense. It sits close enough to 1.0 that it reads as near-balanced positioning rather than a market leaning hard in either direction.

XRP price trades near $1.49 as positive funding meets futures selling, with $1.37 support and $1.57 resistance shaping the next move.

XRP Funding Rate, Coinglass

Funding tells a more interesting story on its own. A positive rate means demand for long exposure in crypto derivatives is real enough that longs are compensating shorts to hold the position, which typically signals conviction that price moves higher.

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However, it cuts both ways: if price falls further, those same leveraged longs become forced sellers, and a positive funding regime built on thin spot demand can flip into a liquidation cascade faster than one built on genuine accumulation.

CryptoQuant’s summary data flagged overheating conditions across both XRP’s spot and futures markets, alongside sell-side dominance in futures, meaning sellers have retained the upper hand in derivatives even as funding stays positive. That is the missing piece: positive funding shows traders are willing to hold bullish exposure, but it has not yet translated into enough buying pressure to absorb the futures selling and push through resistance.

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XRP Price and the $1.37 Support

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The daily chart still leans bullish on a longer timeframe. XRP held above its 50-day price exponential moving average near $1.365 and its 200-day EMA near $1.369 through the three-day slide, with the 100-day EMA sitting lower at $1.307 as a secondary reference.

Momentum has cooled rather than reversed. The RSI sat near 55, close to neutral, and the MACD flattened around zero, a pattern consistent with consolidation after an earlier advance rather than an active breakdown.

The level that matters most sits at $1.37, where the 50-day and 200-day EMAs converge into a single support band. A clean break below that zone opens the $1.30 area, and a deeper slide would eventually put the $1.00 psychological level in play, though XRP would need to fall substantially before that becomes the immediate focus. On the upside, reclaiming the $1.574 resistance level is the trigger that would strengthen the case for a move toward $1.90.

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What Happens Next for XRP?

Two scenarios frame the near-term path. If XRP holds the $1.37 zone, the market stays in a consolidation phase where positive funding continues to reflect trader appetite for long exposure, but that alone won’t confirm a breakout without a corresponding rise in open interest and spot volume.

Xrp (XRP)
24h7d30d1yAll time

If XRP price instead reclaims $1.574, the technical case for a run toward $1.90 gets meaningfully stronger, and that move would likely force shorts to cover into strength. The alternative is a sustained break below $1.37, which shifts focus to $1.30 as the next line of defense, with $1.00 as the deeper level only if that support also fails.

Either way, the current setup leaves no room for complacency on either side of the trade. Near-balanced positioning combined with positive funding and futures sell-side dominance is a fragile mix, and the next move in spot price will do more to settle the argument than another shift in the long-short ratio.

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The post XRP Price in Danger: Positive Funding Masks a Fragile Setup appeared first on Cryptonews.



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Bitcoin recovers to $84,000 while stocks fall on bond market pressure

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Bitcoin recovers to $84,000 while stocks fall on bond market pressure

Bitcoin recovered Monday’s losses to trade at $84,170 on Tuesday, up 0.82% since midnight UTC and 1.4% over 24 hours, with 72 of the 100 CoinDesk 100 constituents higher and the index adding 0.89% to 1,904.49.

The bid is arriving despite conditions that have been suppressing risk assets for a week, the 10-year Treasury yield sitting at 5.234% after ending Monday above 5.2%, near levels last seen in 2007, and the 30-year at 5.549% having topped 5.56% on Monday, around a 2004 high.

U.S. stocks fell for a second session on Monday, the Dow dropping more than 300 points and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite shedding 0.8% and 0.9%, with futures mixed on Tuesday morning.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is driving the move for the second time in a week, with the DeFi Select Index (DFX) gaining 5.0% since midnight, led by lending protocol token aave at 11% and curve dao token at 5.2%. The CoinDesk 80 rose 2.0% against the CoinDesk 5’s 1.3%, though the ranking inverts over 24 hours, where the CD5’s 1.7% beats the CD80’s 0.44%.

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The year’s second-largest XRP hack is spilling over to Bitcoin and Ethereum

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The year's second-largest XRP hack is spilling over to Bitcoin and Ethereum

The D’CENT wallet hack, the year’s second-largest drain of XRP behind the Bitget crypto exchange hack, has spilled beyond the XRP Ledger onto additional blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stellar. 

Hackers have drained more than 12.4 million XRP from more than 7,000 D’CENT wallets, still some way behind Bitget’s loss of 102.9 million XRP.

Although the wallet was popular among the XRP community, D’CENT users who owned assets of other blockchains have also lost their funds.

D’CENT’s own disclosure named Bitcoin, Tron, and Ethereum, for example. Even a Stellar user has lost XLM in the incident.

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Hackers are able to sweep funds across blockchains with one compromised recovery phrase for the multi-blockchain wallet.

IoTrust, the maker of D’CENT, confirmed at least 110 abnormal transfer reports, including non-XRP assets, per ZDNet Korea.

XRP holders lose $18 million in D’CENT hack

Drains of XRP are the most well-documented, due to the prominence of D’CENT among XRP holders.

At least six waves of theft occurred between September 15 and 20, emptying 6,678 wallets of 11.7 million XRP.

The thief stole from large wallets first, by hand, and soon wrote scripts to take funds from progressively smaller wallets.

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Warnings from D’CENT and other members of the XRP community couldn’t stop the drainage. Thieves took 640,370 additional XRP after September 21, bringing the tally to above 12.4 million.

By Friday, 6.3 million of those stolen XRP had crossed to Ethereum’s blockchain through the swap service THORChain.

As the theft spilled over to other blockchains, researchers admitted the scope of the losses, saying, “Most of it is no longer XRP.”

Read more: David Schwartz warns of hard fork because XRP nodes won’t upgrade

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In August, D’CENT was still touting its hardware wallets’ secure element, boasting that it was impervious to vulnerabilities linked to the Coldcard hack.

D’CENT now warns users that wallets they created using its app are vulnerable, urging them to create a fresh recovery phrase and immediately migrate everything, including tokens, NFTs, and any staked assets.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Analysts see 10-year Treasury yield hitting 6%. Bitcoin bulls shouldn’t panic

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Analysts see 10-year Treasury yield hitting 6%. Bitcoin bulls shouldn't panic

Market action since 2022 backs Thielen’s take. The 10-year yield more than doubled to 3.88% that year as the Fed raised interest rates rapidly, including several 50- and 75-basis-point hikes to fight inflation.

Bitcoin fell 64% that year. Fed tightening and rising yields added to the pain from crypto scams and blowups.

The picture has been different since. From the end of 2023, the 10-year yield has risen 135 basis points to 5.23%, the highest since 2007. Over the same stretch, bitcoin has roughly doubled to $86,000, even after pulling back from its October record above $126,000.

Thielen and others attribute much of the recent rise in yields to fiscal fears and a higher term premium. In plain English, investors want to be paid more to lock up their money in long-term bonds, given the uncertainty over inflation and government borrowing.

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Chicago-based Strategic Analytics made a similar point about gold, noting that it has tracked fiscal risk more closely than the Fed’s policy path since 2022.

“Since 2022, gold has increasingly tracked fiscal-risk perceptions – term premium, deficits, debt sustainability – rather than the Fed’s policy path. Gold is not defying real yields. It is pricing fiscal sustainability and currency debasement, which has become the marginal driver,” it said recently in a LinkedIn post.



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China has three new criteria for humanoid robot IPOs. Few, if any, meet them

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China has three new criteria for humanoid robot IPOs. Few, if any, meet them

Humanoid robots box during the 5th Global Digital Trade Expo on September 25, 2026 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — China’s securities regulator is raising the bar for public listings of humanoid robot startups, according to three sources familiar with the CSRC’s thinking.

It’s a sign of how one of the hottest sectors of the market is cooling, as investors globally assess whether artificial intelligence stocks are in a bubble.

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The Chinese regulator wants local “embodied AI” startups seeking to go public to meet three specific criteria, according to the sources, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

They are:

  • The “window guidance” requires that the humanoid applicants have sustainable revenue and commercial orders.
  • Losses must narrow, with one source saying a three-year forecast is needed.
  • The company must possess core technology such as robotic brain or hands.

Even if a startup only has to meet two of the three criteria, as one source indicated, it’s unclear which, if any, of the companies can do so.

That’s lowered expectations to just a handful, or none, of these startups making it to public markets, the sources said.

At least two dozen humanoid-related embodied AI companies have filed to list in Hong Kong alone, according to two of the sources. Hong Kong in May 2025 started letting tech companies file confidentially for IPOs.

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The Hong Kong stock exchange declined to comment. The China Securities Regulatory Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mainland China companies wanting to list in Hong Kong also need the CSRC’s blessing.

Unitree IPO impact

Scrutiny on China’s growing number of humanoid robot startups and their fast-growing valuations — supported by a mix of government and private sector funds — has grown over the last several weeks.

The industry’s posterchild, Unitree, got a regulatory fast-track to its listing in Shanghai on Aug. 19 as the World Robot Conference kicked off in Beijing.

But in a keynote a day later, founder Wang Xingxing cautioned that commercialization beyond dancing robots remained years away. It accentuated a debate that picked up in subsequent weeks on what humanoids can actually do — and whether industry startups were actually making money.

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China now has well over 100 humanoid companies, which fall under the national push for “embodied AI.” The term received Beijing’s support in the last two annual government work reports, although authorities have warned of a bubble in the humanoid robot industry.

Reflecting a rapid surge in interest, investment in the sector hit 47.09 billion yuan ($6.95 billion) in the second quarter, more than double that of the first quarter — and up over six times versus the same period last year, according to industry data provider Xiniu.

Unitree raised about about 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million) in its IPO on Aug. 19 with Shanghai-listed shares skyrocketing more than 460% in their debut to close at 845 yuan.

The stock had nearly halved in price as of Monday, at 459.65 yuan a share.

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Hong Kong-listed Ubtech has also tumbled more than 40% so far this year. The company, which went public in December 2023, still reported an operating loss for the first half of this year of 279 million yuan.

The share price decline contrasts with the flood of capital pouring into humanoid robotics companies over the last 12 months or so. The tech, often called “physical AI” in China, has been seen as a way for early-stage investors to benefit from the surge of interest in artificial intelligence models.

However, Rhodium Group analysis this month found that China’s AI companies only make about 10% the revenue of Anthropic and OpenAI. The ratio of valuation to revenue — especially for Chinese AI startups Moonshot and DeepSeek — was far higher than their U.S. rivals, the report said.

While expectations grow for the U.S. AI giants’ IPOs, chipmaker AMD said Monday it is acquiring World Labs for $8.2 billion in a stock deal. The startup, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is building AI models for creating virtual 3D environments frequently used in humanoid robot development.

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A SpaceX Starship Rocket Officially Reached Orbit. Why That’s So Significant

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A SpaceX Starship Rocket Officially Reached Orbit. Why That's So Significant

The launch this morning was both imperfect and stripped down to its orbital essentials. On the way up, one of the Starship’s six engines failed to burn properly, requiring the other engines to compensate for the missing thrust to get the ship in orbit. 

In addition, the return to Earth was simplified. SpaceX has made itself famous for safely landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 and Starship boosters—with 641 out of 688 Falcon 9 launches featuring this kind of recovery, allowing the boosters to be reused and make flying cheaper. Starship’s first stage, meantime, performs what has become known as a chopstick recovery, with the booster navigating its way back to the launch tower where two giant metal arms pluck it from the sky. For the current mission, the chopstick recovery was done away with to simplify the flight objectives; instead the first stage made a soft, engine-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship spacecraft was planned for a six-orbit, 10-hour mission, with the ship’s engines set to fire around the dinner hour Monday to bring the spacecraft down for a similar gentle, watery landing. 



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Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI

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30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.

Goldman Sachs’ Anshul Sehgal says bonds yielding 5% or more are not the best trade right now. He still favors AI infrastructure, which he sees as a far more asymmetric bet than the long bond.

Sehgal, a global co-head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) at the bank, laid out the view just a few days after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.

Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds

On Goldman’s The Markets, Sehgal said the 30-year Treasury, known as the long bond, had hovered around 5% for weeks. He noted that clients want to buy it at 5% or higher, yet he still sees little upside.

The yield has kept climbing since the recording, reaching 5.56% on September 29, a new 52-week high. Sehgal blamed structural pressure for the strain on the long end. Retiring baby boomers are buying fewer long bonds, and heavy long-dated borrowing tied to AI is crowding the market.

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Those pressures explain why the selloff can persist even without a fresh inflation shock. Fewer retirees buying long bonds and a steady flow of long-dated borrowing tied to AI both weigh on prices, and neither fades quickly.

Sehgal adds that fear over US debt sustainability makes investors less willing to hold the long end, which feeds on itself.

The takeaway is that a rising yield does not necessarily break his thesis. It may instead show why he sees limited reward in owning the bond, while the risk to his AI trade is that costlier long-term borrowing squeezes the levered companies he favors.

30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.
30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%. Image Source: CNBC

AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade

An asymmetric trade offers far more potential gain than risk. Sehgal applies that label to compute (AI computing power), data centers, and Neoclouds, which are cloud providers built to rent out that capacity.

“I think the asymmetric expression is being long compute.”

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

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The catch is leverage. Savers collecting higher interest have effectively financed the AI build-out, leaving equities more indebted than a year ago. Sehgal admits these are levered bets. Still, he thinks they can multiply in value, while the wider stock market looks less certain.

Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital

Sehgal says the Fed frames its September 16 hike as catch-up after five years above its inflation target. Schwab counts 16 of 19 Fed officials expecting another increase this year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also stressed three times that the Fed is easing back some stimulus rather than turning restrictive, Sehgal adds.

He argues that government interest payments flow to capital rather than workers, so higher rates curb household spending, a risk for the broader stock market.

He also rejects the debt-sustainability fears weighing on long bonds.

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“For me, that’s a red herring.”

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

Meanwhile, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder is cutting equities for bonds paying 7% to 8%, though his high-grade bond call still cautions against rushing into the 10-year Treasury.

Sehgal names the Middle East conflict as the top driver of policy and markets in the weeks ahead.

The post Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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BTC, ETH price news: Bitcoin slips to $83,000 as ZEC drops 12% and oil climbs again

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BTC, ETH price news: Bitcoin slips to $83,000 as ZEC drops 12% and oil climbs again

“Bitcoin has pulled back to $83K, testing the lower boundary of last week’s consolidation range,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “As with the market as a whole, a retest of the $82K region, where peaks were formed in May and early September, is entirely to be expected under current conditions.”

“Looking ahead, a sustained return to prices below $80K would be an important signal that the market is not ready to move higher for some time yet. If, however, this consolidation is soon followed by a new bullish momentum, it could send the leading cryptocurrency well above $90K,” he added.

The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.

Treasuries steadied in Asia after tumbling during U.S. trading, with the 10-year yield up one basis point to 5.25% after reaching its highest level since 2007 on Monday. A higher guaranteed return on government debt raises the bar for holding assets that pay no income, bitcoin among them.

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Brent rose more than 1% to nearly $107 a barrel, its second straight gain, as hopes for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough with Iran faded.

Pricier oil feeds into inflation, and traders have been adding to bets that the Fed will raise rates again. MSCI’s All Country World Index fell to its lowest since Sept. 18, and Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.3% after Monday’s tech-led selloff on Wall Street.



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Tether is a ‘lifeline’ for Iranian regime, Senate Dems say in new report

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Tether is a ‘lifeline’ for Iranian regime, Senate Dems say in new report

U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether is a go-to tool for the Iranian government to bypass sanctions, a new report from a group of Senate Democrats said.

Democrats on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence published a report Monday laying out the argument that Tether plays a key role in allowing Iran to conduct transactions that skirt international sanctions.

“Iran’s cryptocurrency-based shadow banking network has processed significant volumes of funds and implicates various Iranian interests,” the report said, adding that Tether has “repeatedly failed” to block Iran-connected wallets.

“USDT has become a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network,” the report said.

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When Tether does freeze wallets, it sometimes takes weeks, but the company also sometimes responds to requests without actually blacklisting wallets, the report claimed.

“Prior to 2024, Tether did not comprehensively and consistently freeze wallets designated by counter-terrorism agencies and continues to fail to proactively block clearly illicit wallets,” the report said. “This absence of deterrence invited abuse: terrorist organizations such as Hamas shifted from transacting in Bitcoin and a mix of cryptocurrencies to promoting USDT.”



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