Crypto
CLARITY Act Setback Puts Coinbase Under Regulatory Focus
Crypto market participants are watching two very different developments this week: a stalled bid for U.S. regulatory “market-structure” clarity, and new attempts to monetize crypto assets—ranging from layer-2 revenue projections to Ether staking and treasury strategies. While lawmakers failed to move the CLARITY Act forward in the Senate, strategists and companies continued to refine their assumptions about how regulation, onchain finance, and emerging AI risks could reshape incentives.
The legislative snag matters because it directly affects how U.S. crypto exchanges may register, which assets can be traded, and who can participate on platforms—issues that tend to influence both compliance costs and product roadmaps. Meanwhile, corporate and research teams offered fresh forecasts and operational updates, from Standard Chartered’s bullish view on Arbitrum’s economics to Bitmine’s staking revenue outlook and warnings from Phemex’s CEO about AI-driven security pressures.
Key takeaways
- The U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to bring it to the floor for debate.
- Saxo Bank strategist Ruben Dalfovo argued Coinbase faces more direct CLARITY Act exposure than many other crypto-linked businesses due to trading market-structure rules.
- Standard Chartered expects Arbitrum to outperform major tokens through 2030, citing revenue-sharing dynamics and expanding onchain activity by traditional finance.
- Bitmine projected $334 million in annualized staking revenue from its Ether holdings, with more than 5 million ETH reportedly staked.
- Phemex CEO Federico Variola said AI is weakening crypto liquidity while escalating the cybersecurity burden and enabling attackers.
CLARITY Act stalls—why the clock is now even tighter
According to the coverage of the vote, the CLARITY Act did not move forward in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. The bill failed to secure the 60 votes required to proceed to a floor debate, a procedural outcome that narrows the path for legislative action this year. With the U.S. midterm elections scheduled for Nov. 3, the Senate calendar is described as tightening, which increases uncertainty around when (or whether) similar market-structure rules could be revisited.
That timing risk is especially relevant for firms with U.S.-facing trading operations. In a Wednesday note cited in the article, Saxo Bank strategist Ruben Dalfovo highlighted that Coinbase’s exposure is more immediate because new rules could affect registration requirements, the range of tradable assets, and platform participation criteria. In contrast, he characterized other companies as having exposure that is either more indirectly tied to market-structure rules or driven more by different economic variables.
Coinbase highlighted, but equity moves show broader concern
Dalfovo’s framing focused on how trading infrastructure is shaped by regulation. If the CLARITY Act had advanced, it could have clarified how exchanges must operate under U.S. market-structure expectations, potentially reducing compliance friction and enabling clearer product planning. With the bill sidelined, the uncertainty remains, and market pricing appears to have reacted accordingly.
Following the procedural failure, the article reports that shares of Coinbase, Circle, and Strategy declined by roughly 5% to 10%, with weakness continuing into the next day. For investors, that pattern suggests the market is not treating the legislative setback as a narrow corporate-event risk. Instead, it appears to be priced as a broader signal that regulatory clarity may be delayed, which can affect expectations for adoption, institutional participation, and near-term business development in the U.S.
What remains unclear is how long the delay will last and whether the next legislative attempt would prioritize the same market-structure provisions. Traders may also watch for alternative regulatory routes—such as agency guidance or enforcement actions—that could still influence exchange operations even without a new statute advancing.
Standard Chartered’s Arbitrum thesis: onchain finance could change revenue math
While regulation was a headline driver, research teams were also looking forward through the lens of onchain economics. Standard Chartered’s view, as reported, is that Arbitrum could outperform Bitcoin and Ether through 2030, supported by traditional finance firms moving assets onchain and changing how network economics are generated.
In the cited note, Geoff Kendrick—Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research—said Arbitrum receives 10% of net protocol revenue from companies building on it. The research points to new activity as a catalyst, especially the Robinhood Chain launch in July, which the report says has materially altered Arbitrum’s economics. The article further claims that September revenue is expected to reach $5 million, described as more than five times the prior level.
Based on that revenue-sharing framework and additional assumptions, Kendrick projected ARB at $10 by 2030. The article frames this as a major jump from levels around $0.14 at the time of reporting, noting that ARB had gained 86% over the preceding month.
Standard Chartered’s broader model also depends on tokenized assets reaching $39 billion and forecasts of $4 trillion by 2028. The key uncertainty for readers is whether those adoption targets arrive fast enough to translate into sustained protocol revenue. Layer-2 revenue can be sensitive to user activity, wallet and exchange integration, and the competitive landscape among scaling networks—so investors treating this as an investment thesis may want to monitor actual growth in net protocol revenue, not just token price performance.
Bitmine leans on staking: projected $334 million annualized from Ether treasury
On the corporate side, Bitmine’s approach centers on earning recurring income from its Ether treasury through staking. The article says Bitmine projects $334 million in annualized staking revenue based on its reported $15.8 billion crypto treasury and indicates that more than 5 million ETH is now staked to generate ongoing income even during volatile market conditions.
Bitmine reportedly added 27,180 ETH last week, bringing holdings to 5.95 million ETH valued at $15.4 billion. The article states that this represents roughly 4.9% of Ether’s circulating supply. It also claims that more than 5.06 million ETH is staked and uses current rates to estimate $334 million in annualized revenue.
The report also compares this strategy with Bitcoin-treasury-style approaches by emphasizing the staking component: unlike holdings that rely primarily on price appreciation, staking revenue provides a recurring cashflow-like mechanic (even though it remains exposed to network conditions and staking dynamics). It cites Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking ETF as having 84.6% of its ETH staked, according to the fund’s webpage.
Separately, the article notes that Strategy—contrasting with treasury staking economics—went a second straight week without buying Bitcoin, using $139.3 million to repurchase preferred stock. That side-by-side distinction matters for investors trying to interpret sector performance: in the same broader “treasury strategy” theme, different firms are effectively betting on different return drivers—token price versus staking yield.
AI’s double-edged impact: liquidity drain and higher cyber risk
The operational risk theme arrived in another segment of the reporting, where Phemex CEO Federico Variola argued that AI has been a “net negative” for crypto. In his comments, he said AI is diverting liquidity away from the industry while also enabling attackers, raising cybersecurity costs—particularly for smaller teams without the resources to respond quickly.
The article ties this warning to an example from July: attackers allegedly drained roughly $116 million in Bitcoin from more than 5,200 addresses associated with a Coldcard hardware wallet flaw. The coverage suggests the flaw was widely believed to have been identified through malicious AI use. It also references Coinkite CEO Rodolfo Novak, who warned that AI-assisted code review can outpace experienced experts.
Variola’s broader takeaway is that AI threats could make self-custody and DeFi less attractive for retail users, potentially pushing the ecosystem toward greater centralization. He said AI agents could still offer practical value for portfolio building and trading decision-making, but he argued they would not fully replace human judgment. The article also includes a counterpoint from CertiK’s Natalie Newson, who said AI can be “one of the biggest defenses.”
For readers, the near-term question is not whether AI will impact crypto security, but how quickly defenses and operational practices will adapt. Expect ongoing focus on secure development processes, faster incident response, and whether security tooling keeps pace with attacker tooling—especially as attackers increasingly automate discovery and exploitation.
Going forward, the most important watch items are whether future legislative attempts revive parts of the CLARITY Act framework before the midterms, and whether onchain and corporate revenue strategies—like L2 revenue sharing and Ether staking—can prove resilient despite regulatory uncertainty and rising AI-linked security threats.
Cryptocurrency is edging further into the financial mainstream this year, even as the industry’s relationship with traditional banking and regulators remains fraught in key markets like the United Kingdom. From Morgan Stanley’s new laboratory for testing tokenized finance to a British parliamentary group’s pointed letter to bank chief executives, the story of crypto in late 2026 is one of institutions moving cautiously toward digital assets while grappling with unresolved questions about risk, access and regulatory readiness.
On Wall Street, the direction of travel is unmistakable. Morgan Stanley has launched a Digital Asset Lab dedicated to testing stablecoins, tokenized deposits, central bank digital currencies, money-market funds and decentralized finance vaults, according to reporting by Bloomberg. The lab, part of the bank’s existing network of innovation hubs, allows employees to experiment with blockchain-based applications without touching Morgan Stanley’s core systems — a sandbox approach that mirrors, in miniature, the kind of controlled testing environments regulators elsewhere are trying to build.
Megan Brewer, who leads market innovation and labs at the bank, told Bloomberg the team is exploring how software might execute investment strategies around the clock, a question that goes to the heart of what tokenization promises: markets and money that never sleep. The lab’s remit spans the technical distinction between a tokenized deposit, which represents a claim on money held at a bank, and a stablecoin, which is backed by a separate pool of assets — a distinction that has become increasingly important as regulators worldwide try to draw clear lines around different forms of digital money.
This research effort builds on products Morgan Stanley has already brought to market. In April, the firm launched a Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio designed to help stablecoin issuers meet reserve requirements under the U.S. GENIUS Act, holding cash, short-dated Treasurys and repurchase agreements. Its E*TRADE platform completed a rollout letting eligible clients trade Bitcoin, Ether and Solana directly, while three separate exchange-traded products tracking those same assets have drawn tens of millions of dollars in inflows since launching earlier this year. Together, these moves suggest a major Wall Street institution treating crypto not as a speculative sideline but as infrastructure worth building out across trading, custody and reserve management.
The contrast with the United Kingdom is instructive. There, momentum is real but noticeably more contested. Lord Kulveer Ranger, co-chair of Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Digital Markets and Digital Money, recently offered a candid assessment of where the Bank of England stands on stablecoins and the prospect of a digital pound. His verdict, after 18 months of engagement: the Bank is listening, but it is cautious — and caution alone, he argues, will not be enough to keep Britain competitive.
Ranger’s core complaint is about tempo. While the Bank of England takes its time absorbing feedback on systemic stablecoin rules, other jurisdictions are moving ahead with their own frameworks, some more permissive and some more experimental. Capital and confidence, he warns, do not wait for perfect policy alignment. He points to the Bank’s Digital Securities Sandbox — a testing ground for distributed ledger technology in capital markets — as a case in point: enthusiasm within the Bank has not translated into enthusiasm among firms, many of whom see sandbox participation as costly in time and resources with an unclear payoff. Without a credible bridge from experimentation to real-world deployment, he argues, elegant regulatory frameworks risk attracting interest without retaining commitment.
That tension between innovation and caution is playing out concretely in the banking sector itself. In August, the UK’s Crypto and Digital Assets APPG wrote directly to the chief executives of every major British bank, demanding explanations for why crypto and digital asset firms continue to struggle to open basic bank accounts. The letter, signed by co-chairs Gurinder Singh Josan and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, cited persistent reports of firms being shut out of banking services or having crypto-related payments restricted outright — even as the UK moves toward a comprehensive regulatory regime for the sector.
The APPG’s language was blunt: banking access, the letter said, “could be one of the single biggest barriers to growth” for UK crypto businesses, with the potential to undermine the very regulatory regime the government is trying to build and to influence whether firms choose to invest in Britain at all. Notably, the group acknowledged that banks have legitimate obligations to guard against financial crime, but argued that decisions should be based on individual firms’ risk profiles rather than blanket sector-wide exclusion. That view echoes an assurance given in Parliament back in March by Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby, who told MPs that firms authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority should not face banking restrictions simply for operating in crypto.
The letter is now feeding into a formal Parliamentary Inquiry into banking access for the sector, which gathered written evidence from banks, crypto businesses and regulators through the end of August before a report and recommendations to government.
Taken together, these developments capture an industry at an awkward but consequential midpoint. In the United States, a heavyweight institution like Morgan Stanley is quietly normalizing crypto exposure across trading platforms, exchange-traded products and now dedicated research infrastructure, treating stablecoins and tokenization as inevitable features of modern finance rather than fringe experiments. In Britain, meanwhile, the debate remains more elemental: not just how sophisticated the regulatory framework should be, but whether crypto businesses can even get a bank account in the first place.
Both stories point to the same underlying reality. Cryptocurrency’s next phase of growth will be determined less by technological breakthroughs than by the willingness of banks, regulators and central banks to treat digital assets as a normal, if carefully managed, part of the financial system. Wall Street appears to be answering that question with capital and infrastructure. Westminster and Threadneedle Street, for now, are still working out the terms.
Iran War Polymarket odds price a US announcement ending the naval blockade of Iran no earlier than March 31, 2027, with the contract trading at 74.5% Yes to 25.5% No as of mid-morning on Tuesday, 29 September, according to live pricing on the platform.
The event has logged over $33M in cumulative volume since launch, and the highest-priced outcome sitting nine months out raises an obvious question: if US-Iran talks are genuinely progressing, why is the smart money betting on delay rather than a near-term resolution?
Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out Big on Polymarket
Iran War Polymarket Odds: What is the Diplomatic Backdrop Traders Are Watching?
Pricing is influenced by ongoing negotiations, as Reuters reported on September 24. U.S. and Iranian negotiators are considering a phased deal where Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. economic blockade. Both sides are hesitant to yield leverage; the U.S. maintains economic pressure, while Iran controls a key shipping artery for global oil.
However, current conditions do not trigger resolution under market rules. Polymarket specifies that only official announcements from the U.S. government can count for contract resolution, excluding speculation or conditional statements.
This discrepancy between market sentiment and strict legal requirements is causing outcome expectations to shift later in the timeline. Observers can also see how the Iran-U.S. ceasefire proposal is affecting Bitcoin price expectations, reflecting broader risk sentiment.
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 27, 2026
Iran says it struck 19 ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the past two nights, Fars News Agency reported Sunday, after Kpler reported over 20 million barrels of crude and products exiting the US blockade line as 7-day average.
Iranian forces hit 12 vessels Friday night and 7… https://t.co/UnVeYf99k0 pic.twitter.com/LP8tZknZqo
What the Full Ladder of Contracts Actually Shows
Polymarket’s blockade market features multiple deadline contracts that gauge the odds of a qualifying announcement on specific dates. These contracts can’t be combined into a single event probability, as each one represents a distinct bet.
Together, they suggest traders expect the diplomatic process to extend beyond the current news cycle. Once a qualifying announcement is made, it resolves as “Yes,” even if the blockade later continues or if a partial concession is made; such concessions do not qualify.
This distinction is important, as past U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreements have quickly unraveled, reflecting a tendency for narrower resolutions, similar to market bets on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which require specific triggers for resolution.
Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out Big on Polymarket
Total volume across the event stands at $33,486,973, with liquidity of $519,322 as of the last update at 09:07:57 UTC Tuesday. The March 31, 2027 contract – the current price leader – carries relatively thin volume of just $24,290, meaning its 74.5% Yes print reflects a smaller pool of capital than the headline number suggests.
The heaviest trading has run through nearer-dated contracts already priced for near-certain No outcomes: the September 30 deadline alone has drawn $5,238,179 in volume against a mere 3.3% Yes price, and October 31 has seen $2,604,557 change hands at 24.5% Yes.
December 31 sits between the two extremes at $2,596,836 in volume and 57.9%. Yes. That distribution suggests most capital has already been deployed betting against a quick resolution, leaving the March contract as a comparatively low-conviction, low-liquidity outlier at the top of the ladder, a dynamic worth weighing against how Polymarket’s NATO-related contracts have similarly shown thin markets producing headline-grabbing but fragile probability prints.
The post Iran War Polymarket Odds: $33.5M Placed on a 2027 Blockade End appeared first on Cryptonews.
BlockTower Capital founder Ari Paul has accused Coinbase of losing $25 million of his company’s funds while covering up over $1 billion worth of “massive and repeated hacks.”
Paul claims that at least a dozen firms are affected by the alleged cover-up, and that Coinbase “still wouldn’t return our money.”
He also claims that these major allegations are all he can say at the moment as there are “multiple legal processes still ongoing.”
Read more: Coinbase and Brian Armstrong are threatening to leave California… again
BlockTower Capital is a crypto and traditional asset investment firm founded in 2017 by Paul and Goldman Sachs executive, Matthew Goetz.
Two executives left the company in 2022 and 2023 for mysterious reasons, while the company also shuttered its $100 million Market-Neutral Fund in 2023.
Coinbase claims it isn’t covering up hacks
When asked for comment, Coinbase directed Protos to a support post that claimed the exchange “is not hiding a series of hacks and we certainly didn’t lose $1 bilion.”
It said that it advises customers on security practices like maintaining their API keys, and that like most other firms that offer access via API keys, “we do not retain the information necessary to transact on customer accounts.”
Coinbase refused to comment on specific clients.
Coinbase allegations made against Cobie
Paul was responding to a series of posts shared by Cobie, a prominent crypto investor who became a glorified customer support representative for Coinbase.
Cobie was pointing out to X user “Kuno” that they’d been ignoring the crypto exchange’s attempts to reach out to them.
Kuno, on the other hand, claimed they repeatedly approached Coinbase over $1.2 million it had allegedly stolen.
Cobie noted that Kuno was promoting a “shitcoin” and that the whole affair looks like “an entirely fake/scam report/engagement farm.”
Cobie hasn’t responded to Paul’s allegations at the time of writing.
Coinbase sued over $55M draining hack
Coinbase was sued back in May for allegedly withholding a portion of $55 million in crypto that was stolen in a draining hack in August 2024.
The victim claims he lost his crypto after clicking on a malicious link that spoofed Ethereum DeFi management tool “DefiSaver.”
Read more: Coinbase CEO admits content coins were a mistake
From here, he unknowingly authorized a smart contract permission that supposedly gave the thieves control of his crypto wallets.
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Key takeaways
- LINK rose about 6% while much of the crypto market retreated, extending its reported 30-day gain to 30.3%.
- Chainlink’s CCIP 2.0 launch gives institutions the option to add their own cross-chain transaction verifiers.
- LINK met resistance near $15, while the supplied chart analysis identifies $12-$13 as a potential support zone.
Chainlink’s LINK token outperformed a weaker crypto market following the launch of Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) 2.0.
The token gained about 6% in the session described in the supplied analysis, taking its 30-day advance to 30.3% and its year-to-date return into positive territory.
The upgrade gives financial institutions more control over transactions that move data or assets between blockchains.
Traders appeared to welcome the announcement, though LINK’s approach to $15 brought a technical test after its recent rally.
CCIP 2.0 adds institution-operated verifiers
Cross-chain transfers require a way to confirm that an action occurred on one blockchain before a corresponding action is completed on another. CCIP provides that communication layer.
With version 2.0, institutions and asset issuers can add Cross-Chain Verifiers to apply their own checks alongside Chainlink’s default verification network. Chainlink says starter kits will let users run those verifiers on infrastructure including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
The added checks could matter to firms with internal security or compliance requirements. An issuer, for example, may want a transfer to proceed only after its own verifier has approved it.
CCIP 2.0 also offers configurable compliance controls, fees, and execution options, allowing users to choose how a transaction is checked and completed. These features are optional; Chainlink says its existing verification network remains the default.
Speed is another part of the upgrade. CCIP 2.0 supports faster-than-finality transfers where a user’s chosen risk settings permit them.
Chainlink also says it is working to support Ethereum’s Fast Confirmation Rule when that feature launches. Its future integration should not be treated as a speed improvement already available for every Ethereum transfer.
The supplied market analysis reported an 89% jump in LINK trading volume following the CCIP 2.0 announcement.
Higher volume shows that more tokens changed hands during the move, but it does not, by itself, show whether buyers will remain in control.
The same analysis cited a recovery in Chainlink’s total value secured from about $43 billion in June to $57 billion in August. That metric describes value associated with assets using Chainlink services; it is distinct from revenue earned by Chainlink or the market value of the LINK token.
The product announcement gives traders a reason to reassess Chainlink’s role in institutional blockchain infrastructure. Even so, a network upgrade does not automatically create immediate demand for LINK. Adoption, usage, and the broader market’s direction will matter to whether the price move lasts.
Can LINK break above $15?
LINK’s advance encountered selling pressure near $15, a level the supplied daily-chart analysis identifies as immediate resistance.
It also noted a bearish divergence in the relative strength index: price strengthened while the momentum reading weakened. Such a signal can precede a pause or pullback, although it does not establish that one must occur.
If LINK retreats, the analysis places a possible support zone at 12–13. Holding that area could leave the broader recovery intact, while a decisive break below it would weaken the bullish setup.
A sustained move above $15 would shift attention toward higher levels, including the article’s $20 upside scenario. From $12, a rise to $20 would be roughly 67%, but that percentage describes a hypothetical entry and exit, not an expected return.
For now, the clearest test is whether LINK can absorb selling around $15 while maintaining support if the wider crypto market remains under pressure.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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
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.
Trade XRP on Bybit and Get a Chance to Win Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop
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.
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.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
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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%.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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