Crypto
Chinese AI funding surges as us rivals pursue trillion-dollar valuations
Artificial intelligence companies are continuing to pursue multibillion-dollar funding rounds and stock market listings, as investors continue to pour capital into the race to develop more powerful models as the race between U.S. and China continues.
China’s DeepSeek is nearing a funding round of at least $12 billion, backed by Tencent and battery maker CATL, ahead of a planned IPO in early 2027, according to a report by Bloomerg. Demand could push the raise to around $15 billion, exceeding its initial target.
The financing follows the release of DeepSeek’s V4 Flash model, which strengthened its competitiveness against OpenAI and Anthropic on cost and performance.
Moonshot AI, the company behind the Kimi chatbot, has completed its final private funding round at a $50 billion valuation meanwhile. It is targeting a Hong Kong IPO in the first quarter of 2027 that could raise up to $5 billion. Annual recurring revenue is expected to reach $2 billion by December, double its current level.
Crypto
Hedera Price Slides 23% From September Peak — Can HBAR Reclaim $0.12 in October?
Hedera price has become one of the more closely watched charts in the broader cryptocurrency market this week, after HBAR tumbled roughly 23% from its late-September peak near $0.131 to trade close to $0.101. The sharp reversal has left traders split over whether the token can stabilize above the psychologically important $0.10 level and mount a fresh push toward $0.12 before October closes out.
The pullback follows a brisk late-September rally that briefly carried Hedera to its highest level in weeks, only for momentum to fade just as quickly. On Binance’s HBAR/USDT daily chart, the token has recently traded between roughly $0.10019 and $0.10489, hovering just above the round-number support that many traders see as the line in the sand for this correction. A slip below that zone would likely reopen a path toward lower liquidation clusters that market-data trackers such as CoinGlass have flagged in the sub-$0.10 range.
Hedera Price Faces a Wall of Resistance Overhead
Chart watchers point to a cluster of technical hurdles standing between HBAR and a meaningful October rebound. The daily Ichimoku conversion line currently sits at $0.11166, well above the token’s latest price, while the base line is marked at $0.10146 — a level HBAR has recently struggled to hold. That leaves Hedera sandwiched below two separate resistance markers, with the larger gap to the conversion line underscoring how much ground buyers would need to recover just to flip short-term momentum back in their favor.
Adding a sliver of encouragement, the forward-looking Ichimoku cloud has turned green, spanning roughly $0.09762 to $0.10656. That shift suggests underlying conditions aren’t uniformly bearish, even as the token trades beneath its immediate daily indicators. Meanwhile, the Aroon indicator shows Aroon Up readings easing to 50% from a stronger late-September posture, while Aroon Down remains pinned at zero — a mixed signal that reflects fading upward momentum without yet confirming a fresh downtrend.
Weekly Charts Tell a More Optimistic Story
Zooming out, the picture for Hedera price brightens somewhat. On the weekly chart, HBAR sits near $0.10126, comfortably above the Supertrend support line at $0.06943 — a gap of roughly 31%. That Supertrend indicator has flipped green following the recent bounce, and the weekly Awesome Oscillator has moved into positive territory for the first time after an extended stretch of negative readings, hinting at firmer underlying momentum than the daily chart’s sharp pullback might suggest on its own.
Still, a formidable ceiling looms further out. Weekly charts show horizontal resistance marked at $0.14051, a zone that has repeatedly acted as a turning point in past market cycles. Reaching it from current levels would require HBAR to climb nearly 39%, a tall order given the token has yet to reclaim even its late-September high of $0.131.
What Traders Are Watching Next
For the bullish case to play out this month, analysts suggest Hedera price would first need to clear $0.11166 on the daily chart, opening the door to a test of $0.12 and eventually the recent $0.131 peak. Only a sustained break above $0.131 would put the much larger $0.14051 weekly resistance meaningfully in play.
Independent analyst Giannis Andreou, writing on X on October 5, flagged $0.12 to $0.15 as Hedera’s next major weekly resistance zone, while suggesting a recovery scenario hinges on support holding somewhere between $0.085 and $0.10. That view echoes the broader technical consensus: Hedera’s near-term fate rests on whether $0.10 holds as a floor, even as longer-term weekly indicators retain a cautiously bullish tilt.
The divergence between daily weakness and weekly resilience is a familiar pattern in cryptocurrency markets, where a token can post a bullish longer-term signal while still absorbing a sharp short-term correction — particularly when support lines on higher timeframes sit far beneath current trading levels. For now, Hedera price remains in a holding pattern, with $0.10 as the line separating consolidation from a deeper retreat, and $0.12 standing as the next meaningful target should buyers regain control before October ends.
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Crypto
Crypto’s campaign arm, Fairshake, sets lists of U.S. House favorites it’ll spend on
The crypto industry’s leading political action committee, Fairshake, released another list of candidates it’s supporting for the November elections, backing 13 Democrats and 19 Republicans — all incumbents — in their U.S. House of Representatives races.
The candidates tend to be safe bets to return to Congress, potentially further reinforcing the existing support for crypto policies in Congress. Atop all those names, six of them are getting a million dollars each in support from Fairshake and its affiliates, according to a spokesman for the super PAC.
“Fairshake has always been and always will be an issue-focused organization,” said Spokesman Geoff Vetter in a statement. “We back pro-crypto candidates who support American innovation in both parties.”
The top recipients on the Republican side are three well-known names in crypto circles, including French Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who led the charge for crypto legislation in the House; Bill Huizenga, a senior member of that committee, and Bryan Steil, another member who also leads the subcommittee on digital assets.
Crypto
Trump administration is dumping money into cratering nuclear stocks
The stock prices of most publicly-traded nuclear companies that have received a loan, contract, or financial incentive from Donald Trump’s administration have declined since receiving that favor.
Trump’s administration has handed the nuclear industry tens of billions of dollars of incentives in the past year, including a new $4.2 billion federal loan to Ohio nuclear plant operator Vistra announced today.
Vistra’s stock price is down 9% year-to-date (YTD).
Another $80 billion proposal between Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management would have handed the US government 20% of future profits or equity in the public-private partnership.
Cameco stock has declined 3% YTD.
Despite a 22% boost in its stock price when that deal was announced in October, its shares are 12% lower today than the date of that deal. Brookfield Asset Management, the second party to that deal, has lost 15% YTD, and has performed even worse when measured from the October announcement date.
On October 29, Nuclear power company NuScale said its private partner ENTRA1 Energy stands to receive up to $25 billion of US-Japanese investment under Trump’s international trade deal. Politico described ENTRA1 as a three-year-old startup with a skeleton staff.
NuScale’s stock is down 81% since that announcement.
Read more: Trump-related American Bitcoin has lost more than 90% of its value
Trump nuclear incentives precede lower stock prices
In November 2025, publicly-traded Constellation Energy secured a $1 billion loan to restart its Crane nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Its stock is down 19% since that news.
In December 2025, Holtec, which owns a nuclear plant in Michigan, received a $400 million award from the Energy Department after drawing at least six disbursements from a $1.52 billion guarantee that the Biden administration finalized.
Holtec then suspended its IPO for retail shareholders this month.
On January 6, 2026, Centrus Energy won a $900 million uranium enrichment task order from the US Energy Department.
Its shares are down 54% since it received that Trump administration contract.
On June 23, the Energy Department offered a conditional $17.5 billion loan for equipment on 10 Westinghouse reactors, co-owned by Cameco.
Cameco stock is down 15% since that date.
On August 17, X-energy learned that it will receive another $1 billion in Energy Department cost-sharing for nuclear generators. X-energy priced its April IPO at $23 per share, and the stock now trades below $15.
It’s also 10% below its intraday high on the day it received that $1 billion Trump administration incentive.
On August 26, Trump’s US Army awarded up to $2.2 billion to nuclear microreactor builders, including BWX Technologies.
BWX Technologies stock has traded flat since that news, after losing more than 20% YTD.
On September 8, NextEra Energy closed on a federal loan of up to $1.9 billion in September to restart Iowa’s only nuclear power plant.
NextEra stock is already down 7% within four weeks.
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Crypto
Pokémon Card NFTs Rake In $11M a Month as Crypto Meets Collectibles Mania
TITLE: Pokémon Card NFTs Rake In $11M a Month as Crypto Meets Collectibles Mania
KEYWORD: pokémon card nfts
DESCRIPTION: DeFi platforms turning Pokémon cards into NFTs generated $11 million last month, riding a collectibles boom that is reshaping crypto speculation.
Pokémon card NFTs have quietly become one of the most lucrative niches in decentralized finance, with onchain marketplaces generating roughly $11 million in revenue last month alone, according to data compiled by analytics platform DefiLlama. The figure marks a striking validation of an idea that, just a year ago, looked more like a crypto curiosity than a viable business.
The concept is simple on paper but reflects a clever fusion of two red-hot markets: collectible trading cards and blockchain speculation. Platforms built on networks like Solana and Polygon allow collectors to send in physical Pokémon cards, One Piece cards, and sports cards for verification and storage. In exchange, owners receive a digital token — a non-fungible tokenized representation of the card — that can be bought, sold, or traded instantly online, without ever touching the physical item.
Why Pokémon Card NFTs Took Off
The timing could hardly be better. Pokémon cards have become one of the best-performing collectible assets of the last two decades. According to the Card Ladder Index, the cards have delivered a cumulative return of roughly 4,000% since 2004 — dwarfing the S&P 500’s 513% gain over the same stretch. Nostalgia among millennial collectors, renewed interest from younger fans, and a pandemic-era surge in collecting have combined to push demand to extraordinary levels.
Manufacturers are struggling to keep pace. Card factories reportedly churn out more than 10 billion Pokémon cards a year, yet shortages persist, and unopened packs from popular sets routinely resell well above their suggested retail price. That scarcity has turned ordinary cardboard into a genuine speculative asset class, attracting investors who might never have considered collectibles before.
That’s where crypto’s structural advantages come in. Trading physical cards at scale is cumbersome — buyers and sellers must deal with authentication, shipping, insurance, and auction fees, especially when dealing in bulk or trying to offload large pallets of inventory. Pokémon card NFTs solve much of that friction by letting the underlying cards sit in secure storage while ownership changes hands purely onchain, similar in spirit to how gold-backed exchange-traded funds made bullion trading far more accessible than physically moving bars of metal.
Gacha Machines and Digital Pack Openings
Beyond simple buying and selling, several platforms have introduced “gacha” mechanics that replicate the thrill of opening a fresh pack. Users pay a fixed price for a chance at a randomly assigned card, which could turn out to be worth far more than what they paid — or considerably less. The mechanic borrows directly from loot-box style gaming economies and has proven popular with users chasing the dopamine hit of a potential big pull, all without leaving their crypto wallets.
The popularity of these mechanisms has helped push combined monthly revenue for trading-card marketplaces into eight figures, a remarkable outcome for a DeFi sector often associated with more experimental or short-lived trends. It also highlights how crypto infrastructure is increasingly being repurposed to tokenize real-world assets with genuine retail demand, rather than purely speculative onchain tokens.
Risks Lurking Behind the Boom
Still, the rise of Pokémon card NFTs carries clear risks. Flagship cards — such as first-edition Charizards from 1999, now fetching up to $550,000 in pristine condition compared with $1,500 to $2,000 a decade ago — have already appreciated dramatically, raising questions about how much further prices can realistically climb.
There is also a structural vulnerability built into the redemption process. While platforms allow holders to exchange their digital tokens for the physical cards, doing so requires shipping and processing time. In a sharp downturn, that lag could force NFT holders to sell at a discount to account for the delay, meaning token prices could fall faster and harder than the physical card market itself if sentiment sours.
The sector has also drawn scrutiny over trust issues. Earlier this year, investors in a separate platform claiming to let users speculate on Pokémon card prices said they lost the vast majority of their money, underscoring that not every operator in this niche has handled custody and verification responsibly.
For now, though, enthusiasm shows little sign of cooling. With physical card shortages persisting and crypto-native investors eager for new onchain assets backed by tangible value, Pokémon card NFTs look set to remain one of DeFi’s more unexpected growth stories — at least until the broader collectibles market decides whether its historic run still has room to run.
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Crypto
Will Vivek Ramaswamy Focus on Crypto in his Gubernatorial Run?
Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy couldn’t stop praising the virtues of cryptocurrency.
Running to be the 2024 Republican nominee in the race for the White House, Ramaswamy sprinkled his stump speeches with praise for Bitcoin (BTC) and token mining operations while strongly standing against central bank digital currencies.
Now, presidential candidate Ramaswamy is running to be the next governor of Ohio. And while he isn’t exactly distancing himself from positions on digital assets, he isn’t putting them at the forefront of his campaign despite substantial exposure to crypto investments and the Buckeye state’s interests.

2023 X post on CBDCs. Source: Vivek Ramaswamy
In his 2024 presidential run, Ramaswamy was frequently issuing statements in opposition to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), praising Bitcoin (BTC) and its mining operations and often attending industry events as a keynote speaker.
After Donald Trump won the presidential race, he tapped Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, alongside Elon Musk. Ramaswamy left having never officially been a part of the administration.
Before announcing a run for the Ohio governor’s office in February 2025, he posted in support of the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act, a state bill that would allow the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. In September 2025, Strive, the asset manager that he co-founded in 2022, announced plans to enter the digital asset market with a Bitcoin Bond ETF, focused on bonds issued by companies acquiring BTC.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Ramaswamy campaign but did not receive a response to repeated requests for an interview.
Crypto as a gubernatorial candidate
Following the official launch of his campaign, Ramaswamy initially kept up much of the same rhetoric he had espoused during his presidential run, also speaking at the Bitcoin for America conference in March and Bitcoin 2025 in May.
His campaign website accepts donations in crypto, and he has financial support from the co-founders of the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial: Chase Herro, Zak Folkman and Zachary Witkoff, all of whom donated the maximum allowable amount of $16,615 each.
Other entities associated with the crypto industry have also donated millions of dollars to Ramaswamy’s Super political action committee (PAC) “V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims,” including $20 million from Susquehanna International Group co-founder Jeff Yass, $6 million from NYDIG founder Ross Stevens, $5 million from billionaire Elon Musk and $5,000 from the Bitcoin Voter Project.
Ramaswamy has maintained his stake in Strive, which reported holding 23,156 BTC worth about $2 billion as of Aug. 28. An August filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed the candidate owned 5,693,897 shares in the company, worth more than $170 million as of Sept. 26. He also reported personally holding more than $1,000 in BTC and Ether (ETH) as of April through a Coinbase wallet.
Related: US midterm election mirrors 2024 as crypto PACs move into Ohio races
In September 2026, just weeks away from the election, Ramaswamy’s public statements on digital assets and related policies appear to have waned in contrast to his 2024 and even 2025 rhetoric. He had not addressed a Sept. 17 notice from Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announcing the acceptance of cryptocurrency to pay for state fees and services as of the time of publication.
What’s different for Ohio voters in 2026? Data centers, for one
Ohio voters could be part of the reason for Ramaswamy appearing to tone down the talk on crypto. The state was already the target of more than $40 million in spending by industry-aligned groups in 2024 to support Republican Bernie Moreno’s Senate run.
Two years ago, Moreno defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, but history is beginning to repeat itself: Brown is now running against Republican Jon Husted for another chance in the Senate in next month’s election. The Fairshake PAC has pledged to initially spend $30 million opposing the Democrat again, already reporting $11 million in ad buys.
To be sure, a poll conducted by the Digital Currency Group in May 2024, months before the election, suggested that Ohio voters were “more negative towards crypto” compared to those in other US states, with 79% of the state’s respondents saying that they had never held crypto and 77% holding negative views on the digital currency.
Sentiment on data centers has also become a controversial campaign issue for Ohio politicians in 2026. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 166 data centers in Ohio as of April, giving the state more locations than any other in the country. It’s also home to many crypto mining operations, including Cipher Mining, Bitdeer and BIT Mining.
Public polling also showed that a majority of Ohio residents do not support data centers in their communities. Ramaswamy pledged in August that any center built in an Ohio community would result in no electricity cost for residents and lower property taxes, while his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, has proposed that “all costs for gas, water and electricity needs to be covered by data centers and their investors, not Ohio taxpayers or our communities.”
As of Sept. 22, an average of RealClearPolling data showed Acton with a one-point lead over Ramaswamy, making the race essentially a toss up. An event contract on Kalshi at last look on Monday had more than $2 million in bets and favored the Democratic candidate with a 66% chance of winning the governor’s race, with similar odds on a Polymarket contract.
Magazine: Winners and losers of the SEC’s new tokenized stocks rules
Crypto
Crypto’s Real Economy Held Steady at $9.4 Trillion Despite a $2.1 Trillion Market Wipeout
Cryptocurrency just survived its roughest stretch since 2022, and the data suggests it wasn’t luck that kept it standing. Two new reports released this fall paint a picture of a digital asset economy that has quietly matured beyond price speculation, becoming something closer to financial infrastructure for millions of people living with broken banks, collapsing currencies, or no reliable banking access at all.
The first, Chainalysis’s 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, tracked what happened between July 2025 and June 2026 — a period that included Bitcoin hitting an all-time high before suffering its largest-ever dollar retreat, a $67,000 drop from peak to trough. The overall crypto market cap cratered by roughly 50%, a $2.1 trillion contraction that marked the worst downturn since the cascading collapses and scandals of 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
Yet the underlying “crypto economy” — a blend of service inflows, peer-to-peer transfers, and cross-border activity — barely flinched. It dipped just 1.6%, from $9.5 trillion to $9.4 trillion. For a market that lost half its paper value, that’s a remarkably small hit, and Chainalysis argues it’s proof that something other than speculative trading is now driving activity on-chain.
Where cryptocurrency adoption is actually happening
Chainalysis overhauled its methodology this year, ranking countries across four measures: service flows, domestic peer-to-peer activity, cross-border transfers, and on-chain balances. The country that came out on top might surprise casual observers of the industry: Brazil, which recorded $252.5 billion in activity and placed in the top four globally across every single factor the index tracks — second in cross-border flows, third in total service flows and peer-to-peer activity, and fourth in on-chain balances.
Brazil’s showing underscores a broader theme running through this year’s data — emerging markets, not Western financial hubs, are leading the charge. For wealthy investors, crypto might be a tech upgrade or a tokenized-asset experiment. But in much of the Global South, it functions as something far more practical: a way to move money quickly, dodge capital controls, and hedge against currencies that can lose value overnight.
Cornell’s survey backs up the trend
That split in how people use crypto is reinforced by a separate study out of Cornell University, which surveyed nearly 26,000 people across 25 countries for its new Bitcoin Adoption Index. The findings echo Chainalysis’s: the countries with the highest share of people who have ever owned bitcoin are not wealthy financial centers, but places where national currencies have been unstable and access to dollars or dependable banking is limited. El Salvador, Venezuela, and Nigeria topped that list.
“Ranked by the share of all respondents who have ever owned bitcoin, the leaders are not wealthy financial centers — they are economies where the national currency has been unstable and everyday access to dollars or reliable banking is hard,” the Cornell report stated. “In each, bitcoin functions less as a speculative bet and more as a practical workaround.”
Ella Hough, a Bitcoin Advocacy Associate at Strategy and Junior Fellow at Cornell’s Brooks School Tech Policy Institute, put it plainly: “Bitcoin works the same everywhere, but people’s need for it does not. Across 25 countries, we found that people are more likely to see Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom where currencies are less stable, banking access is limited, or monetary controls are tighter.”
Interestingly, the research also found that deep technical understanding isn’t a prerequisite for cryptocurrency adoption. A full 58% of those surveyed didn’t know bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million coins. People don’t need to understand the protocol to find it useful — they just need it to solve a problem the traditional system can’t.
Voices from the front lines
The Cornell researchers, working with Morning Consult, the Cornell Bitcoin Club, the Human Rights Foundation, and the Reynolds Foundation, interviewed people directly rather than relying solely on transaction data. The testimonies they gathered are telling. A Venezuelan respondent described bitcoin as “faster, cleaner, and much less risky” than other ways of obtaining dollars in a country still gripped by currency controls and the legacy of hyperinflation. A Salvadoran interviewee offered a more philosophical take: “When nobody controls [bitcoin], it means we all have control of it.” And a Nigerian respondent, describing travel across the continent, said simply: “I’ve been to six African countries and whenever I go there, I don’t fear it because I know I can spend my bitcoin.”
Those three countries aren’t newcomers to this story. Venezuela’s bitcoin uptake took off years ago as hyperinflation gutted the bolívar and government restrictions made dollars hard to come by. El Salvador made headlines in 2021 by adopting bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar, even as its own president has acknowledged that getting ordinary citizens to actually use it in daily life has been a struggle — though the government continues to add bitcoin to its reserves. Nigeria, meanwhile, has logged some of the highest transaction volumes anywhere in the world, with many residents turning to bitcoin savings as a hedge against the naira’s steep decline.
What it means for the future of cryptocurrency
Taken together, the two reports suggest cryptocurrency adoption is becoming less dependent on bull-market euphoria and more rooted in everyday necessity. That’s a meaningful shift for an industry long criticized as a speculative casino. When a market loses half its value and the underlying economic activity barely moves, it implies a growing base of users who aren’t logging on to chase price swings — they’re logging on because the banking system failed them, or because stablecoins let them move value across borders faster and cheaper than conventional channels allow.
None of this means volatility is gone, or that cryptocurrency has shed its risks. Bitcoin’s swing from an all-time high to a $67,000 drawdown in the same reporting period is a reminder of just how turbulent these markets remain. But for a growing number of people in Brazil, Venezuela, Nigeria, El Salvador, and beyond, that volatility is apparently a secondary concern next to the more basic question of whether they can access, save, or move their money at all. As both research efforts suggest, that’s precisely where cryptocurrency adoption is proving most durable — not in trading screens, but in the daily lives of people the traditional financial system has left behind.
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Crypto
Ether’s liquidity shrank vs bitcoin in Q3. XRP bids piled up
Ether had $13 million to $14 million in depth within 0.15% of its market price. In simple terms, that’s roughly how much money was sitting in orders close enough to the price that clearing it would move ether by just 0.15%. Depth this close to the price matters most for everyday trades, and for large orders that traders want filled without moving the market.
The data undercuts a popular idea in markets that rising prices pull in more traders, and more traders mean deeper order books. That didn’t happen with ether.
That said, ether is still fairly easy to trade.
“ETH remains fairly liquid at this range [within 0.15% of the market price], with most exchanges maintaining over $1 million in depth on each side,” CoinGecko said.
And ether isn’t the only major token with thinner markets.
Liquidity in solana’s SOL, ether’s main rival, has also shrunk, though CoinGecko measured it over a wider range. “The overall liquidity for SOL has shrunk considerably since 2025,” the firm said.
SOL’s depth within 2% of the market price fell from about $28 million on each side of the order book last year to around $20 million this year. Depth at 2% shows how much money sits in orders further from the current price. It’s a gauge of how much selling or buying pressure the market can absorb before the price makes a bigger move, the kind seen during a sharp rally or sell-off. So while ether’s thinning shows up right next to the price, SOL’s shows up in its ability to handle larger swings.
Crypto
Porsche scraps NFT project with floor price down 96%
Porsche has written off its 911 NFT project PIONΞERS CIRCLE, leaving buyers with digital artworks that are down 96%.
PIONΞERS CIRCLE gave NFT holders access to various events, awards, and other opportunities that came with purchasing one of the NFTs modelled after the Porsche 911.
Porsche didn’t exactly explain why it shut the project down, but emphasised that it was a place for “experimentation” and a “shared adventure.”
“As this journey draws to a close, Porsche continues to evolve, adapting to new opportunities and shaping the future in its own way,” the company’s X statement read.

Read more: 32 NFT predictions that aged like milk
It cost 0.911 ETH, worth roughly $1,400, to mint one of Porsche’s 911 NFTs when the project launched in 2023.
The collection’s floor price reached a high of over 3 ETH (then worth $5,100) one month later.
Since then, the floor price has fallen over 96% to just 0.077 ETH (~$200). The current floor price is 85% less than the 0.911 ETH mint price at launch.
Despite the shutdown, Porsche says the NFTs “will remain with their respective holders and continue to exist on the blockchain.”
Porsche NFT shutdown follows layoffs
Last year Porsche fell out of Germany’s DAX stock index following a poor year for profits.
Michael Leiters took over the company in January 2026 as it was already scaling down its “ultra-ambitious” production of electric vehicles.
This year, Porsche reportedly said it would cut 3,900 jobs by 2030, and another 5,000 by 2035.
Chinese deliveries also reportedly plunged by 32% in the first half of 2026, while deliveries overall fell by 16.5%.
Porsche still managed to report a 34% rise in profit, but its XETRA stock price is down almost 39% across the last year.
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Crypto
US Treasury Targets Tren de Aragua’s Crypto Laundering Network Tied to ATM Heists
A sprawling crypto laundering operation tied to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has been exposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, which this week sanctioned ten individuals accused of helping launder tens of millions of dollars stolen from American ATMs using digital currency.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced the designations on September 30, naming a network accused of orchestrating a so-called “jackpotting” scheme that drained at least $40.73 million from U.S. financial institutions. According to Treasury officials, the stolen cash was funneled through cryptocurrency transactions designed to obscure its origin and move value across borders in support of Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. government has formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
A fugitive mastermind and his crypto laundering trail
At the center of the scheme is Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, known by the alias “Prometheus,” who sits on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Aguirre is accused of engineering the malware used to force ATMs to spit out cash on command, then relying on crypto laundering techniques to convert and move the proceeds without detection. He faces charges including bank fraud, burglary, money laundering, and providing material support to a terrorist organization.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, which traced the on-chain footprint of the operation, identified seven crypto addresses belonging to Aguirre and his associates that were sanctioned as part of the action. Those addresses functioned as deposit wallets at a major cryptocurrency exchange, giving investigators a window into how the stolen funds were processed and distributed through the network.
Six other individuals were named alongside Aguirre in the Treasury action: Carlos Javier Martinez Armenta, Alejandro Mejia Castillo, Jose Dario Galeano Bazurto, Eric Gabriel Cardenas Arzola, Oscar Leonardo Martinez Pirona, and Anthony Wuiliam Hernandez Guerrero. Investigators say these associates played supporting roles in the broader financing scheme that bankrolled Tren de Aragua’s U.S. operations.
How the ATM “jackpotting” scheme worked
“Jackpotting” refers to a cyberattack technique in which criminals physically install malware on automated teller machines, tricking them into dispensing cash without ever debiting an account. According to a December 2025 indictment, Aguirre’s crews infected ATMs with a malware strain known as Ploutus, deploying it through small, inexpensive computers called Raspberry Pis that were connected directly to compromised machines.
Once the cash was physically retrieved, the group turned to cryptocurrency to clean the proceeds and move value across borders efficiently, a pattern increasingly common among transnational criminal organizations seeking to avoid the scrutiny that comes with bulk cash smuggling. Treasury officials say Aguirre directed crews dispatched into the United States from a logistics network based in Mexico and Venezuela, coordinating the thefts and the subsequent laundering remotely.
Crypto laundering links to broader criminal networks
Chainalysis investigators who mapped the wallets connected to the sanctioned individuals found that their counterparties had exposure to established money laundering infrastructure used by a range of illicit actors, including Colombian and Mexican criminal organizations and Venezuelan-based launderers. That overlap suggests the Tren de Aragua crypto laundering pipeline did not operate in isolation but instead tapped into shared financial plumbing already used for drug trafficking and smuggling proceeds.
The findings underscore a trend blockchain analysts have flagged repeatedly in recent years: digital assets have become a preferred tool for organized crime groups looking to move illicit proceeds quickly and across jurisdictions, even as law enforcement agencies get better at tracing those same transactions after the fact. Chainalysis has noted that sanctioned wallets, once flagged, effectively become radioactive to legitimate exchanges, cutting off access to much of the formal financial system.
For U.S. authorities, the designations represent both a disruption tactic and a warning shot to the broader Tren de Aragua network, which has expanded its footprint in American cities in recent years through extortion, trafficking, and now sophisticated bank fraud schemes. By sanctioning the crypto addresses directly, Treasury aims to choke off the financial rails the gang relies on, even as Aguirre himself remains at large.
Investigators say the case illustrates how deeply cryptocurrency has become embedded in the financing structures of organized crime, and how crypto laundering investigations now require piecing together cross-border networks spanning multiple countries and criminal enterprises rather than tracking a single bad actor.
Crypto
Top 5 Companies To Watch For Investors in Q4 2026
The biggest IPO in history, a memory-maker up 277% this year, and an Ethereum treasury closing in on 5% of supply are set to define this quarter. These 5 companies across AI and crypto carry the stories investors will follow through December.
1. Anthropic
Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, filed to go public in the US after its last funding round was valued at $965 billion. Recently, its prospectus gave investors a look at the numbers behind the company.
- Revenue increased 12x to nearly $4.6 billion by the end of 2025
- Net loss also increased to $42 billion
- The company is committing $518 billion to computing infrastructure over the next decade.
- A quarter of its revenue comes from only two unnamed customers.
Anthropic is likely to be the biggest and most highly anticipated IPO in stock market history. However, the risks are hard to ignore. The company’s whole financial bet is based on how AI continues to develop and is perceived over the next decade.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi are working on the deal. The target valuation is around $2 trillion. At that level, Anthropic would overtake SpaceX’s $1.77 trillion June debut as the largest IPO in history.
2. Micron Technology
- The AI memory leader: Micron is the only US-based producer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component used in AI accelerators.
- Stock momentum: Micron shares are up roughly 277% in 2026, making it one of the year’s strongest AI trades.
- Growth is still accelerating: Fiscal Q4 revenue reached a record $54.23 billion, while DRAM revenue jumped 343% to $39.8 billion.
- Key catalysts ahead: Buybacks begin on December 9, while Micron’s next earnings report is expected in mid-to-late December.
Wall Street has also become more bullish.
D.A. Davidson raised its target to $2,100, Rosenblatt moved to $1,900, and Barclays maintained a $2,000 target.
Goldman Sachs remains more cautious, raising its target to $1,250 while keeping a Hold rating. The wide range of forecasts shows that expectations are already high, making Micron’s next earnings report particularly important.
3. Nvidia
- The AI bellwether: Nvidia supplies the accelerators powering much of the AI buildout, so its results often set the tone for the wider sector.
- New record high: The stock hit an intraday record of about $237.83 on October 2 and closed at $233.95, up roughly 25% in 2026.
- Big quarter ahead: Fiscal third-quarter earnings are expected on November 17, with Nvidia guiding for about $108 billion in revenue.
- Wall Street sees more upside: Every tracked analyst rates Nvidia a Buy, with price targets ranging from $275 to $400.
Wall Street remains heavily bullish. Bernstein has the highest target at $400, followed by Rosenblatt at $390. Cantor Fitzgerald and Bank of America sit at $350, while several major firms cluster around $300 to $325.
Even Barclays, the most cautious of the tracked bulls, has a $275 target. That still implies further upside from current levels. With Nvidia already near record highs, the November earnings report will show whether its growth can keep pace with those expectations.
4. Blockchain.com
- IPO before year-end: Blockchain.com filed a confidential S-1 in May and is targeting a public listing before the end of 2026.
- $4 billion to $6 billion valuation: Bloomberg reported that the company wants to raise about $500 million.
- A major valuation reset: The proposed range is well below the $14 billion valuation Blockchain.com reached in 2022.
- A test for crypto IPOs: Its debut could show whether public markets are ready to back another large crypto company after several weak 2025 listings.
Blockchain.com is pitching investors on adjusted profits in each of the past three years, which could help it stand out in a difficult IPO market.
BeInCrypto previously tracked how many 2025 crypto listings fell below their offer prices, while Kraken delayed its own IPO until 2027.
Blockchain.com is also expanding beyond its core crypto business, signing an agreement with the NYSE on September 23 to give users access to tokenized US equities.
5. BitMine Immersion Technologies
- The biggest ETH treasury: BitMine is the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company and has been buying ETH every week since June 30, 2025.
- Almost at its 5% target: Holdings passed 6 million ETH on September 27, equal to about 4.9% of supply and roughly 98% of the way to its goal.
- Staking adds income: Around 84% of its ETH is staked, with annualized staking revenue projected at about $358 million.
- The key Q4 catalyst: BitMine needs roughly another 100,000 ETH to reach 5% of supply, a milestone Tom Lee has said could come before year-end.
The bigger question is what happens once BitMine reaches that target. The company has built its ETH position mainly through equity issuance, which exposes shareholders to dilution.
That matters because crypto treasury stocks have struggled with the same problem this year, with only four of the top 20 trading above the value of their holdings.
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The post Top 5 Companies To Watch For Investors in Q4 2026 appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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