Connect with us

Crypto

Is MemeToro a scam? Key accusations about the project and $MT presale examined

Published

on

Image source: memetoro.com 

MemeToro is another speculative memecoin and prediction-market project wrapped in an AI narrative. Its trust scores sit between just 25% and 50% across automated website-checking platforms. The smart contracts meant to handle MemeToro’s future funding rounds and token launches haven’t been audited yet. MemeToro’s favorable media coverage has been distributed as paid PR.

That, more or less, is the case a handful of websites are making against MemeToro. At first glance, it can leave the project looking far more questionable than the full picture suggests.

At the same time, MemeToro has also been covered over the past few months by names like CoinGape, Invezz, Business Insider and many more, without the project being treated there as fraud. 

Much of that attention has focused on its AI Agent, which is being built to scan trends, filter possible meme ideas, and make the reasoning behind future launches more transparent. Just as importantly, MemeToro’s development is open-source, with the framework already taking shape on GitHub and regular code updates that anyone can follow. 

Advertisement

There’s an obvious irony in calling a project like this an outright scam without much stronger evidence. The claims are still worth checking, but against what MemeToro actually does, not just the headline.

What is MemeToro?

MemeToro is a memecoin launch platform being built on BNB Chain, with an AI agent at the center of how new token ideas come together. The agent follows trends across news, social media and culture, looks for meme-worthy concepts and turns the strongest ones into potential token launches.

Instead of stopping at a name or image, it builds a fuller proposal around each idea, including the reasoning behind it and the conditions for a possible release. If nothing looks suitable, it can simply pass and wait for a better opportunity.

MemeToro already has an early MVP of this process, while the full agent shown on the website remains in development. Further iterations of the platform also bring trading, prediction markets, staking and other memecoin-focused features into the same ecosystem.

Advertisement

What is the $MT token?

$MT is MemeToro’s native token and is separate from the individual memecoins that the platform’s agent will eventually propose. It runs on BNB Chain and has a fixed total supply of 1.2 billion tokens.

As of September 7, 2026, the $MT presale is in Stage 7, with each token priced at $0.00430. MemeToro shows $121,029 raised toward a $156,312 round target, while the website lists $0.05186 as the planned launch price. The presale supports crypto payments as well as card purchases through Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Image source: memetoro.com 
Image source: memetoro.com 

There’s visible buying activity around the presale too, with recent $MT purchases continuing to appear in the site’s feed across both Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Image source: memetoro.com
Image source: memetoro.com

$MT can be used in MemeToro’s future fixed-rate funding rounds alongside BNB and supported stablecoins. The token is also tied to staking, rewards, trading and prediction-market activity across the platform.

MemeToro review: What the accusations leave out

Once the basics of MemeToro and $MT are clear, the accusations are easier to assess on their own terms. That means tracing the numbers, trust scores, audit warnings and on-chain activity back to where they actually come from. That’s where some of the strongest-sounding risk signals start to look quite different.

Advertisement

MemeToro has low trust scores 

MemeToro has been rated between roughly 25% and 50% by automated website-checking services, which is a compelling number to point to when arguing that the project appears suspicious.

The main negatives cited are MemeToro’s relatively young domain, private WHOIS registration and the fact that there simply isn’t much historical reputation data attached to the website yet. That makes sense for a project that hasn’t been online for years, but none of those checks found the kind of thing that would make the score much more alarming, such as confirmed phishing or malware.

One of the services giving MemeToro a middling score actually lists several positives at the same time: 

In other words, the low rating is largely saying “this website is new and doesn’t have much history yet,” rather than identifying something concrete that makes MemeToro unsafe. Domain age by itself isn’t something that tells you whether a crypto project is legit or a scam. 

Advertisement

MemeToro uses paid PR to promote itself

MemeToro has been criticized for using paid coverage and comparison articles that mention competing presales such as Pepeto. In crypto, though, that’s hardly an unusual marketing strategy, and the wider PR activity around these projects puts that criticism into a bit more perspective.

One example is easy to trace through releases published on openPR. Around the same time MemeToro was being called out for paid comparisons and SEO-heavy headlines, Apeing was being promoted by Crypto Presale PR through big, promising headlines such as “next 100x crypto,” “next 1000x crypto” and “best crypto presale.” What makes the whole thing feel a little odd is that MemeToro wasn’t even the first project this account had gone after. The same PR agency had already published pieces attacking Bullski, with one outright framing it as a fraudulent clone, and MemeToro was next. 

In comparison, MemeToro’s own promotion looks relatively restrained, with most of it centered on the AI launch model, open-source development, staking and other platform features rather than “100x” or “1000x” style claims.

Sure, some of MemeToro’s coverage is paid, and that should be treated as marketing, but the project has also attracted substantial organic coverage, so it would be misleading to reduce its entire media presence to sponsored PR.

Advertisement

MemeToro’s smart contracts haven’t been audited

This one sounds pretty damning until the different contracts involved are separated. MemeToro already has a deployed $MT token contract, and the audit results around it are reassuring. Coinsult found no major red flags such as honeypot behavior, blacklisting or high fees,

Image source: Coinsult
Image source: Coinsult

BlockSAFU gave it its highest trust score of 100, 

Image source: Blocksafu
Image source: Blocksafu

and SolidProof’s audit also came back clean. Taken together, there’s little on the contract side that raises concern.

Image source: SolidProof 
Image source: SolidProof 

The contracts that haven’t been audited are the future fair-launch contracts that will eventually handle funding rounds, token launches, claims and refunds for the memecoins proposed by MemeToro’s agent. 

MemeToro says this pretty openly in its own GitHub. The contracts are still being worked on, aren’t meant to handle real funds yet, and are supposed to go through independent security reviews before they’re used in production.

So the more accurate version of the criticism isn’t that MemeToro has launched an unaudited financial system. It’s that part of the system hasn’t launched yet precisely because the contracts still need to be completed and audited.

The working MVP can already pick up trend signals, choose a concept and produce a draft proposal, but the funding, execution side and MemeToro AI agent only come later. Once that layer is ready, MemeToro plans to use fixed-rate funding rounds rather than the bonding-curve model common on platforms such as Pump.fun, with the smart contracts enforcing the published terms.

Advertisement

An unaudited contract already holding user funds would be one thing. A contract that is now in development, openly described as such and scheduled for review before production is something quite different.

MemeToro is just another meme coin project with an AI angle

It’s easy to look at MemeToro and assume the AI part is just another layer of branding around a meme coin. But here, the AI is meant to have an actual role in deciding what gets launched. It looks at what people are talking about, weighs different ideas, can reject them completely, and records the reasoning and sources behind whichever concept makes the cut.

The markets MemeToro is trying to connect aren’t particularly niche either. As of early September 2026, memecoins represent a roughly $33 billion market, while AI-agent tokens are worth another $3.2 billion. Prediction markets have grown much bigger still: Kalshi and Polymarket handled more than $45 billion in volume in August alone.

What MemeToro is really trying to do is combine those areas into one launch process: AI for finding and filtering ideas, transparent proposals showing why they were chosen, and eventually fixed-rate funding under published rules rather than a bonding curve. That makes the AI part feel less like a label added to the project and more like the thing tying the whole model together.

Advertisement

MemeToro’s whitepaper and website don’t match

MemeToro’s April whitepaper allocates 50% of the $MT supply to the public sale. The current tokenomics page shows roughly 71%.

That difference is real, but the two sources aren’t equally current. The whitepaper reflects an earlier version of the token allocation, while the website shows the breakdown being used for the presale now. In other words, the tokenomics changed, but the whitepaper wasn’t updated along with them.

That matters because some of the criticism treats the two figures as if MemeToro is presenting conflicting allocations at the same time. For anyone checking the presale today, the live website is the most reliable source. The whitepaper is simply carrying older numbers. That makes it a documentation issue, not something that really adds much weight to the MemeToro scam narrative.

86% of the $MT supply will be accessible to the market at launch

One of the sharper criticisms of MemeToro claims that roughly 71% of the total $MT supply is designated to the public sale. Add the 10% CEX reserve and 5% MemeToro trading allocation, the argument goes, and as much as 86% of all $MT could be sitting in or around the market from launch.

Advertisement

The problem is that this calculation treats allocation and circulating supply as though they were the same thing.

The 71% figure tells us how much of the overall supply has been set aside for the public sale. It doesn’t tell us that all of those tokens have actually been sold, claimed and placed into circulation. In fact, the same analysis that raises the alarm over the 71% allocation later argues that a large portion of those public-sale tokens may remain unsold. If they haven’t been sold, they obviously can’t all be sitting in presale buyers’ wallets ready to hit the market on day one.

The jump from 71% to 86% is even less straightforward. It comes from adding the CEX reserve and MemeToro trading allocations to the public-sale bucket. But, tokens reserved for exchange activity or liquidity aren’t automatically equivalent to freely circulating tokens available for holders to sell. Calling the entire combined amount “market accessible” makes the launch-day float sound much larger than the tokenomics table alone establishes.

There is a real distinction here that gets lost in the headline: 71% is an allocation figure, while circulating supply depends on how many tokens are actually sold and released. Those aren’t interchangeable numbers.

Advertisement

MemeToro claimed $118,562 raised, but only $63,966 appeared in its presale contracts

Another article raising concerns about MemeToro compared its advertised $118,562 raised with the figures from two public presale contracts on BNB Chain and Ethereum. Together, those contracts showed about $63,966, leaving roughly $54,600 that the author couldn’t account for through those two contracts alone.

Still, that comparison only works if those two contracts capture every way people can buy $MT. MemeToro’s presale doesn’t operate exclusively through direct on-chain purchases. The website also accepts card payments, as already mentioned. Purchases going through an external payment processor wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in the two contract counters the investigation checked.

The same criticism stops short of saying the missing amount was fabricated, because it recognizes other payment routes could exist. It actually lists card purchases, another payment processor and additional contracts among the possible explanations for the difference. 

MemeToro moved presale funds through bridges, swaps and Binance

MemeToro’s treasury wallet has also come under scrutiny. It sent money through bridge services and swap routers, made transfers to a Binance deposit address, and also transferred funds to wallets the author couldn’t identify. Framed as “unexplained outflows,” that can easily sound like something disappeared. However, the transactions themselves only show money moving.

Advertisement

A bridge is used to transfer assets between chains. A swap router exchanges one asset for another. Sending funds to Binance can mean conversion, custody, payments, liquidity preparation or any number of ordinary operational uses. None of those actions is unusual enough on its own to tell us what the money was ultimately used for.

There’s another detail that makes the accusation much harder to read as a clean trail of presale money. The same wallet also received funds that couldn’t be tied directly to presale purchases, so incoming and outgoing assets were mixed together. Even the article taking aim at MemeToro acknowledges that it would be irresponsible to assume every outgoing transaction was investor money.

To round things out, the treasury was active. But “the wallet moved funds” and “presale money went missing” are two very different statements, and the on-chain activity shown in the article casting doubt on MemeToro only proves the first one.

What we’re left with after reviewing MemeToro 

After looking through the presale, token setup, public GitHub work, audits and the main accusations around the project, MemeToro looks legit.

Advertisement

There’s enough here that can actually be checked. The AI idea isn’t just a landing-page promise, the MVP exists, development is public, and the $MT contract has already been through security reviews. A lot of the scarier claims appear much weaker once you get past the headline, especially the ones that treat token allocation as circulating supply, compare only part of the presale payment flow, or frame normal wallet movements as proof that funds disappeared.

MemeToro still has some features left to complete, but that’s not the same thing as there being no real platform behind it. At this point, the MemeToro scam label looks much harder to justify than the view that this is a genuine project in the middle of being built.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement




Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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. 



Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

“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.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto

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

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.”



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto

Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event

Published

on

Ripple price prediction: Elon Musk's Grok AI predicts that XRP could reach $40 by 2027 if a wild announcement is made in Q4

Elon Musk’s Grok AI predicts an extremely bullish price for Ripple (XRP) by January 1, 2027, that will blow the minds of even the most dedicated members of the Ripple Army.

If you’re holding a sizeable bag of XRP USD, you may want to sit down before reading this. Grok claims that $25–$40 is achievable by 2027, with a stretch target of $50+ under the assumption of a full-blown crypto bull market returning and being supercharged by an unprecedented institutional catalyst.

Ripple price prediction: Elon Musk's Grok AI predicts that XRP could reach $40 by 2027 if a wild announcement is made in Q4
SOURCE: Grok AI Predicts XRP Price

XRP currently trades near $1.50–$1.52 as of September 28, 2026, down nearly -3% over the past 24 hours and with a daily trading volume of $3.5Bn, up from $3.2Bn the day prior.

This outlook is extreme and leans far beyond standard institutional forecasts. It assumes not only a strong late-2026 bull market driven by liquidity and risk-on conditions, but also a once-in-a-generation catalyst.

What is the Catalyst that Grok AI Predicts Could Spark an XRP Run Toward $40

Advertisement

Major central banks (including the Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, and PBOC) announcing that the XRP Ledger will serve as a primary settlement layer for cross-border CBDC and tokenized asset flows, combined with large commercial banks being incentivized or required to hold XRP as a liquidity buffer, and revelations of massive sovereign wealth fund accumulation.

Under this highly speculative scenario, forced institutional demand collides with retail FOMO in a classic late-cycle mania, allowing XRP to move from the current ~$1.50 range through previous-cycle highs and into the mid-to-high double digits by early 2027.

This remains pure speculation and entertainment, not a base-case or even high-probability outlook. Crypto markets are extremely volatile, and the catalyst described above would require multiple extraordinary policy and institutional developments.

However, with Ripple’s case against the SEC dropped and its subsequent rise as a highly favored US-based digital asset company under President Trump, anything could be on the table for XRP if the perfect scenario aligns.

Advertisement

Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out 3.7X on Polymarket

Technical Analysis Supporting the Insane Grok AI XRP Price Prediction

Xrp (XRP)
24h7d30d1yAll time

On the higher timeframes, XRP has already established a constructive recovery base after reclaiming key moving averages from the mid-September lows near $1.25–$1.30. Price is consolidating in the $1.45–$1.55 region after testing highs near $1.63–$1.66.

In a normal bull market, a sustained break above $1.70–$2.00 would open the door to the prior cycle high near $3.65. Under the extreme institutional adoption scenario outlined above, that prior high would likely be cleared with significant force, triggering a series of measured-move and Fibonacci extension targets far beyond historical levels.

Advertisement

Aggressive projections from the multi-year base, combined with the kind of vertical price discovery seen in previous mania phases, could theoretically extend into the $25–$40+ zone if volume and momentum expand dramatically. RSI and momentum indicators would almost certainly reach deeply overbought levels during such a move, which is typical of parabolic advances.

Key nearer-term supports remain in the $1.40–$1.45 and $1.30 zones; holding those would keep the broader recovery structure intact while the market waits for (or prices in) any extraordinary catalysts.

Overall, while the current chart supports continued upside in a standard bull market, only an extreme surge in institutional demand and narrative intensity could justify the kind of multi-thousand-percent extension implied by the $25–$50 targets.

Earn $50 and Enter $300K Prize Draw on EdgeX

Advertisement

Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels

While the Grok AI prediction of a potential 30x run for XRP is exciting, presale plays have a stronger track record of producing such returns. It does explain why attention keeps drifting toward presale-stage plays with smaller denominators.

Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is one of those plays. It is an Ethereum-based meme token built around a 240-lb canine mascot and a “1000x leverage” trading-culture identity. The presale has raised $4.8M at a current price of $0.0002841, with dynamic APY staking live for holders.

Standout features include holder-only trading competitions with leaderboard rewards and a Maxi Fund treasury earmarked for liquidity and partnerships.

Advertisement

The meme-first, gym-bro marketing angle (“never skip leg day, never skip a pump”) is endearing. The accumulation numbers suggest plenty of traders are picking a side.

Get Ahead of Next Meme Coin Launch Here

Discover: The Best Token Presales

The post Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event appeared first on Cryptonews.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto

Trump Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards. Will Cars Really Get Cheaper?

Published

on

Trump Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards. Will Cars Really Get Cheaper?

When it was first proposed in December 2025, the rule was divisive, drawing ire from environmental advocates while garnering praise from auto-industry trade groups. The Administration finalized it last week with a signoff from President Donald Trump.

The President commented on the forthcoming rule Sept. 26, saying the new standards would “take the waste out of building cars in America.”

“That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The claim that the revisions will pass down cost savings to American buyers, however, relies on several factors, including automakers’ pricing decisions, fuel costs, and broader economic conditions.

Advertisement

What changes under Trump’s new fuel economy rule?

Former President Joe Biden’s regulations were put in place in 2024 to reduce car-based greenhouse gas emissions, decrease dependence on fossil fuels, and spur a transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. The Trump Administration has claimed that its revisions are more focused on bolstering the auto industry and making safer, newer cars more accessible. 



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto

The restaking gold rush is over, and top protocols are barely making a profit

Published

on

Restaking earns almost nothing (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

EigenLayer held $19.7 billion at its peak and liquid restaking tokens grew more than 1,000% in the first six weeks of 2024. But the services buying security never paid enough to cover both the base staking yield and a premium on top, so the second yield restaking promised never materialized.

On Sept. 8, DefiLlama’s restaking category held $10.02 billion and generated $99,977 in fees over the prior week. The liquid staking category, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million. Per dollar secured, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more.

Restaking earns almost nothing (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

Two developments then removed what was left of the incentive to restake. Points programs subsidizing deposits wound down through 2025, and slashing went live in April 2025. Slashing is the penalty that confiscates part of an operator’s staked ETH when it misbehaves, by going offline or signing conflicting messages, for example. So restaking suddenly carried a real, priced downside where before the risk had been theoretical. There was no extra yield to compensate.

Set ether.fi aside and the rest of the sector is small. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made $953,350 in combined gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the same five made $2.18 million. Puffer, which raised $23 million, recorded $21,590 for the quarter. Swell recorded $22,370.

What is left of liquid restaking, excludiing ether.fi (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

The income statements also show which part of these businesses was ever profitable, and it was not the restaking. On Kelp’s books, EIGEN token rewards appear at $460,600 in gross revenue and $460,600 in cost of revenue: they arrive and pass straight to depositors, leaving nothing with the protocol. Puffer and Swell book staking rewards the same way. Whatever profit these companies made came from the orinary staking fees charged underneath the restaking layer.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2025