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Pi Network ships Protocol 27 on a network with 14 million users and zero DeFi

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Pi Network's pivot to AI and identity infrastructure

The September 15 upgrade brings smart contracts, an AMM DEX, and RPC infrastructure to a chain that has never processed a single swap. Seven years of mobile mining come down to whether anyone builds on the other side.

Summary

  • Protocol 27 activates on Pi mainnet September 15, delivering smart contract authentication, an AMM DEX module, and public RPC server infrastructure to a chain whose total DeFi TVL is currently zero dollars.
  • Only 16.6 million of Pi’s 60 million engaged Pioneers have completed migration to mainnet, a 27.6% conversion rate that leaves nearly three quarters of the network’s claimed user base locked out of every Protocol 27 feature.
  • Pi trades at $0.098 with a market cap of $1.09 billion, down 96.7% from its $2.99 all-time high, on daily volume of just $7.85 million, a liquidity profile thinner than most top-200 tokens.
  • The Pi Launchpad testnet trial drew 242,000 participants and 15.92 million Test-Pi in commitments for its first project SLICE, but no mainnet launch date has been announced and testnet participation does not guarantee real capital deployment.
  • SocialChain Inc. has quietly repositioned Pi’s 1.09 million KYC validators and their 526 million completed verification tasks as “human infrastructure for AI,” a pivot toward AI training data production that no competitor is covering but that reframes the entire economic thesis of the network.

The most interesting thing about Pi Network is not the protocol upgrade scheduled for September 15. It is the gap between what Pi says it has built and what anyone can actually use.

Protocol 27 will activate smart contract authentication, an automated market maker DEX, and RPC server infrastructure on a mainnet that currently supports none of those things. On paper, this is the moment Pi transitions from a token distribution experiment to a functional Layer 1. In practice, the upgrade lands on a network where the DEX has only ever run on testnet, where 73% of claimed users have not migrated, and where daily trading volume would not fill a mid-tier Uniswap pool. The next ten days will answer a question that seven years of mobile mining have deferred: is there anything on the other side of the tap?

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This piece maps the technical payload of Protocol 27, stress-tests the migration and liquidity numbers, examines the AI pivot that SocialChain has been building in plain sight, and measures the gap between Pi’s infrastructure claims and their on-chain evidence.

What Protocol 27 actually ships

The upgrade arriving September 15 is the second major protocol activation in less than two months. Protocol 27 bundles three components that collectively turn Pi from a transfer-only chain into something that could theoretically support decentralized applications.

First, smart contract authentication. Pi’s mainnet has operated without programmable contract deployment since its February 2022 launch. Protocol 27 introduces an authentication layer that gates which contracts can execute on-chain, a design choice that preserves SocialChain’s control over what gets deployed while technically enabling third-party code.

Second, an AMM DEX. The decentralized exchange module has lived on Pi’s testnet since early 2026 but has never processed a mainnet transaction. Protocol 27 migrates it to production. The critical unknown is whether the DEX will launch with open trading pairs or remain restricted to SocialChain-approved assets.

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Third, RPC server infrastructure. Without public RPC endpoints, external developers cannot query the chain, index data, or build interfaces that interact with Pi without running a full node. Protocol 27 adds this plumbing.

The foundation was laid by Protocol v25, which activated July 22 and introduced BN254 elliptic curve cryptography, Poseidon hashing, and zero-knowledge proof support. Those are prerequisites for the contract verification system that Protocol 27 depends on. The two upgrades are sequential, not independent.

What is missing from the Protocol 27 changelog matters as much as what is included. There is no mention of permissionless contract deployment. There is no timeline for removing the authentication gate. The DEX module ships, but SocialChain has not published fee structures, liquidity provider incentives, or market-making parameters. These are not minor details. They determine whether Protocol 27 produces a functioning DeFi ecosystem or a controlled demonstration environment.

The migration wall

Pi claims 60 million engaged Pioneers. Only 16.6 million have completed mainnet migration. That 27.6% conversion rate is the single most important number in Pi’s ecosystem, and it is rarely discussed with the seriousness it deserves.

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Migration requires KYC verification, wallet creation, and an active confirmation step. Pi has built an internal KYC network of 1,094,680 human validators who have processed over 526 million verification tasks. The infrastructure exists. The bottleneck is not capacity. It is willingness.

Three explanations compete for why 43.4 million Pioneers have not migrated. The charitable reading: many are casual users who downloaded the app, tapped the mining button a few times, and moved on. The critical reading: migration requires identity verification that some users in Pi’s global base cannot or will not complete. The structural reading: users who mined Pi for years watched it lose 96.7% of its value after exchange listings and decided the migration effort was not worth the outcome.

Whatever the cause, the effect is concrete. Protocol 27’s smart contracts, DEX, and developer tools arrive on a network where nearly three quarters of the claimed user base cannot interact with them. The 16.6 million migrated wallets represent the actual addressable market for anything built on Pi after September 15.

For context, Solana has roughly 1.8 million daily active addresses. Polygon has about 400,000. Raw wallet counts and active usage are different metrics, and Pi has not published daily active address data. The 16.6 million figure counts wallets that exist, not wallets that transact.

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A DEX with no volume and a launchpad with no launch

The AMM DEX that Protocol 27 brings to mainnet has a testnet history and a mainnet void. No swap has ever been executed on Pi’s production chain. No liquidity pool has ever held real Pi tokens. The DEX module arrives with zero proven demand.

On testnet, the Pi Launchpad ran its first trial with SLICE, attracting 242,000 participants who committed 15.92 million Test-Pi. Those numbers sound encouraging until you remember that testnet tokens are free. Committing Test-Pi costs nothing and proves nothing about real capital deployment. The jump from testnet participation to mainnet liquidity provision has killed more DeFi launches than bad tokenomics.

Pi’s mainnet trading volume tells the liquidity story more directly. At $7.85 million in daily volume across Kraken, OKX, and smaller venues, Pi moves less capital per day than tokens ranked in the 300s by market cap. The token unlock schedule compounds this: approximately 1.21 billion Pi tokens are set to unlock through 2026, roughly 6.5 million per day. That is a constant sell pressure of about $637,000 daily at current prices, absorbed by a market that trades under $8 million.

The DEX needs to solve a bootstrapping problem that every new chain faces, but with a specific handicap. Pi’s user base was built on mobile mining, an activity that required no capital outlay and no DeFi literacy. Converting tap-to-mine users into liquidity providers who understand impermanent loss, yield farming, and AMM mechanics is a different kind of migration, and there is no KYC validator network to help with it.

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OpenPay, Pi’s payment protocol, shifted from testnet to mainnet on August 27. That is a real deployment with real transaction capability. But payments and DeFi serve different markets. OpenPay lets merchants accept Pi. The DEX needs traders who will provide liquidity, arbitrage price discrepancies, and maintain efficient markets. Those are different users with different motivations, and Pi has spent seven years cultivating the former while doing almost nothing to attract the latter.

The price tells a story the community does not want to hear

Pi trades at $0.098. Its market cap sits at $1.09 billion, ranking it 72nd. It has fallen 96.7% from its $2.99 all-time high.

The listing trajectory looked promising early. Kraken and OKX both added Pi in 2026, giving the token access to two of crypto’s largest order books. The listings did not arrest the decline. The pattern is familiar across crypto: exchange access creates a one-time price event, then fundamentals take over. Pi’s fundamentals are a 6.5 million token daily unlock against $7.85 million in volume.

The community response to the price collapse has followed a predictable arc. Early frustration gave way to narrative pivots. The current thesis circulating in Pi forums holds that Protocol 27 will catalyze a DeFi ecosystem that drives organic demand for the token, absorbing unlock pressure through staking, liquidity provision, and application usage. This thesis requires every link in a long chain to hold: the DEX must launch with sufficient liquidity, developers must build applications that generate transaction demand, users must transition from passive mining to active DeFi participation, and all of this must happen faster than 6.5 million new tokens enter circulation each day.

No chain in crypto history has executed that sequence starting from zero DeFi TVL while simultaneously running a major token unlock program. That does not mean Pi cannot be the first. It means the base rate for this outcome is zero.

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526 million tasks and the quiet AI pivot

Here is the section that matters and that nobody is writing about.

SocialChain has been building something underneath the KYC verification network that extends well beyond identity checking. The company’s 1.09 million human validators have completed 526 million discrete tasks. Those tasks involve reviewing documents, matching faces to IDs, making judgment calls about verification quality, and flagging anomalies. This is, by any functional definition, a distributed data labeling workforce.

In 2026, SocialChain began explicitly framing this capability as “human infrastructure for AI.” The positioning is not subtle. At Pi2Day on June 28, the network introduced PiVerify and Pi Sign-in alongside SoloHost’s catalog of 110 applications. PiVerify extends the KYC infrastructure into a general-purpose human verification layer. Pi Sign-in creates an authentication primitive tied to verified human identity.

The AI training data market is projected to reach $30 billion by 2030. The bottleneck is not compute or algorithms. It is high-quality labeled data produced by verified humans. Companies like Scale AI and Appen built billion-dollar businesses on workforces that are smaller, more expensive, and less globally distributed than what Pi has assembled almost as a byproduct of its mining verification system.

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Pi’s validators are KYC-verified, geographically distributed across 230 countries, and already trained on classification tasks. They work for Pi token rewards, not dollars. If SocialChain can redirect even a fraction of this workforce toward commercial AI data labeling, the economic model for Pi shifts from “speculative token with no utility” to “token that backs a labor marketplace with paying enterprise customers.”

This is not a guaranteed outcome. SocialChain has not announced enterprise partnerships for data labeling. The quality of Pi validator work product has not been independently benchmarked against Scale AI or Toloka standards. The compensation model, paying in Pi tokens that are down 96.7%, creates retention risk if validators decide the reward is not worth the effort.

But the structural asset is real. A million verified humans doing classification work at scale is something that money alone cannot replicate quickly. Pi’s Consensus 2026 sponsorship suggests SocialChain is actively marketing this capability to institutional audiences. Whether the market recognizes the asset before or after Protocol 27 will shape how the next chapter reads.

The centralization question that never goes away

SocialChain Inc., founded by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan at Stanford, controls the Pi protocol. This is not disputed. It is architectural.

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SocialChain decides when protocol upgrades activate. SocialChain determines which contracts pass the authentication gate in Protocol 27. SocialChain operates the core infrastructure. SocialChain controls the migration pipeline. In a crypto ecosystem that treats decentralization as a first principle, Pi operates closer to a corporate software platform than a public blockchain.

The network runs 420,000 Pi Node operators, a number that sounds decentralized until you examine what those nodes actually do. Pi nodes participate in consensus, but the protocol parameters, upgrade schedule, and governance decisions flow from SocialChain. Node operators execute; they do not decide. This is closer to Ripple’s relationship with XRP Ledger validators than to Ethereum’s relationship with its node operators.

The mining model draws the sharpest criticism. Pi “mining” involves opening an app and tapping a button every 24 hours. No proof of work is performed. No energy is expended. No computational resources are contributed. The referral system awards a 25% mining rate bonus for each invited user, a structure that critics characterize as multi-level marketing mechanics applied to token distribution.

Whether this matters depends on what you think blockchains are for. If decentralization is a prerequisite for a credible Layer 1, Pi fails the test and Protocol 27 does not change that. If you view Pi as a distribution mechanism that used mobile gaming mechanics to build a massive verified user base, and that user base is the actual product, then centralization is a feature that enabled scale.

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The honest answer is that both framings contain truth, and the tension between them is unresolved.

The developer gap

SocialChain published new developer documentation at docs.minepi.com on September 4, eleven days before Protocol 27 activates. The timing is telling.

A healthy developer ecosystem is not built in eleven days. Ethereum had years of developer tooling, hackathons, grants, and documentation before its DeFi ecosystem found product-market fit. Solana invested heavily in developer relations and tooling before its breakout year. Pi is shipping the infrastructure and the developer documentation in the same two-week window.

The 110 apps showcased through SoloHost at Pi2Day represent the current state of Pi development. Most are simple utilities, merchant tools, and social features built on Pi’s existing transfer-only functionality. None of them require smart contracts because smart contracts did not exist on Pi mainnet until now. Protocol 27 theoretically expands the design space, but the developers who would fill that space have had no production environment to work in and no mainnet documentation to work from until September 4.

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The counter-argument is that Pi’s developer community has been building on testnet for months. The SLICE launchpad trial, the DEX testing, and the various SoloHost applications represent real development activity. When Protocol 27 activates the mainnet smart contract layer, these developers will not be starting from zero. They will be deploying code that has been tested, revised, and stress-tested in a sandbox environment.

The question is scale. Testnet developers are a necessary but insufficient condition for a functioning ecosystem. Pi needs not just its existing builders but a wave of new developers who choose Pi over Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and every other chain competing for smart contract deployment. The developer documentation dropped eleven days before the upgrade. That is not a timeline that suggests confidence in organic developer migration.

What Pi2Day revealed about the real roadmap

The June 28 Pi2Day event is underexamined as a signal of where SocialChain is actually heading. Three announcements from that day matter more than Protocol 27 itself.

SoloHost launched with 110 applications, making it the first curated app marketplace on Pi. This is a platform play, not a protocol play. SocialChain is positioning itself as the distribution layer for Pi-native applications, taking on a role closer to Apple’s App Store than to Ethereum’s permissionless deployment model.

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Pi Sign-in introduced human-verified authentication as a service. Any application, on Pi or off it, could theoretically use Pi Sign-in to verify that a user is a real, KYC-checked human. In a digital environment increasingly flooded with bots and synthetic identities, verified humanness has value independent of blockchain.

PiVerify extended this further, creating an API-accessible verification layer. The combination of Pi Sign-in and PiVerify positions Pi’s identity infrastructure as a product that can generate revenue from external platforms, not just from the Pi ecosystem.

These three products share a common thread: they monetize Pi’s user base and verification infrastructure rather than the blockchain itself. Protocol 27 adds DeFi capability to the chain, but Pi2Day suggests SocialChain’s long-term revenue model may run through identity services and the human-for-AI labor marketplace rather than through transaction fees and DEX volume.

What to watch

  • DEX liquidity in the first 72 hours after Protocol 27. If total value locked does not reach $1 million within three days of the September 15 activation, the bootstrapping problem is real and the DeFi thesis needs revision.
  • Migration acceleration after the upgrade. Protocol 27 gives unmigrated Pioneers a concrete reason to complete KYC and move to mainnet. Watch whether the migration rate, currently stuck at 27.6%, accelerates meaningfully in the two weeks after September 15.
  • Enterprise announcements tied to the AI data labeling pivot. SocialChain needs to convert the “human infrastructure for AI” narrative into a signed contract with a recognizable enterprise customer. Consensus 2026 is the likely venue. No announcement by Q4 means the pivot is still aspirational.
  • Daily token unlock absorption. Track whether DEX staking, liquidity provision, and application usage create enough demand to offset the 6.5 million daily token unlocks without continued price erosion. The math is simple and publicly observable.
  • Developer deployment velocity post-Protocol 27. Count the number of unique smart contracts deployed to mainnet in the first 30 days. Fewer than 50 suggests the developer ecosystem is not ready. Fewer than 10 confirms it.

What is Protocol 27 and when does it activate?

Protocol 27 is a major Pi Network mainnet upgrade scheduled for September 15, 2026. It introduces smart contract authentication, an automated market maker decentralized exchange, and public RPC server infrastructure. These features collectively enable decentralized application development and DeFi functionality on Pi for the first time.

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What was Protocol v25 and how does it relate to Protocol 27?

Protocol v25 activated on July 22, 2026 and introduced BN254 elliptic curve cryptography, Poseidon hashing, and zero-knowledge proof support. These cryptographic primitives are prerequisites for Protocol 27’s smart contract authentication system. The two upgrades are sequential, with v25 laying the mathematical foundation that Protocol 27 builds on.

How many Pi users have migrated to mainnet?

As of September 2026, approximately 16.6 million of Pi’s 60 million engaged Pioneers have completed mainnet migration, representing a 27.6% conversion rate. Migration requires KYC verification, wallet creation, and an active confirmation step. Only migrated users will be able to interact with Protocol 27 features.

What is Pi’s current price and market position?

Pi trades at approximately $0.098 with a market capitalization of $1.09 billion, ranking it 72nd among cryptocurrencies. The token is down 96.7% from its all-time high of $2.99. Daily trading volume sits at approximately $7.85 million across exchanges including Kraken and OKX.

What is the Pi token unlock schedule?

Approximately 1.21 billion Pi tokens are scheduled to unlock throughout 2026, averaging roughly 6.5 million tokens per day. At current prices, this represents about $637,000 in daily potential sell pressure. The unlock schedule is a significant factor in Pi’s price dynamics and will interact directly with any demand generated by Protocol 27’s DeFi features.

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What is SocialChain’s human infrastructure for AI initiative?

SocialChain has repositioned Pi’s network of 1.09 million KYC validators, who have completed over 526 million verification tasks, as a distributed workforce for AI training data production. The validators are already experienced in classification and verification tasks, making them potential candidates for commercial data labeling work. No enterprise contracts have been publicly announced.

Who controls the Pi Network protocol?

SocialChain Inc., co-founded by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, controls Pi Network’s protocol development, upgrade schedule, and governance decisions. The network operates 420,000 Pi Node operators who participate in consensus but do not control protocol parameters. Protocol 27’s smart contract authentication gate means SocialChain will also determine which contracts can deploy to mainnet.

Is Pi Network a good investment?

This article examines Protocol 27’s technical features, the migration and liquidity data, and the strategic positioning of SocialChain’s human verification infrastructure. The token has declined 96.7% from its all-time high and faces ongoing dilution from daily token unlocks. Protocol 27 introduces functionality that could generate organic demand, but no mainnet DeFi activity exists to date. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions. Published September 9, 2026.

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

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30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.

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

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

Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds

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

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

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

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

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

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

AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade

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

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

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

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

Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital

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

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

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

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“For me, that’s a red herring.”

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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. 



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

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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.



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Goldman Sachs brings $100 billion Treasury fund into crypto’s institutional plumbing

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Goldman Sachs brings $100 billion Treasury fund into crypto’s institutional plumbing

“There’s a convergence now that you’re seeing between traditional market participants and digital asset market participants as well,” Lynq CEO Jerald David said in an interview with CoinDesk TV.

For firms using Lynq, FTIXX gives them somewhere to put cash between trades rather than leaving it sitting around. They can earn yield on the money and pull it out when they need it again.

That was a product Lynq’s clients had been asking for, David said. The network works with firms including B2C2, Wintermute, Galaxy ·, FalconX, Crypto.com and Fireblocks, whose businesses can require moving large amounts of money between trades. They wanted another option for putting that cash to work in the meantime.

“We needed to demonstrate that there was client demand,” David said. “Our clients were looking for a treasury asset on the platform that may have had a different yield profile than the other instrument that’s on there right now.”

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Getting FTIXX onto the network required some work. Lynq had to modify its technology, restrict access to U.S. clients and integrate with Mosaic, he said. Customers also need a relationship with tZERO Securities and must meet the required onboarding and eligibility checks.

Lynq itself runs on a private, permissioned Avalanche (AVAX) Layer 1 blockchain. Its network has more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms onboarded and more than $89 million in assets, according to the company.



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Crypto’s Widening Net: From Fed Bets to Blackjack Tables, Digital Assets Keep Blurring Old Boundaries

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If there is one throughline in this week’s crop of crypto headlines, it is that the industry has stopped pretending it is only about buying and holding coins. Across a handful of stories making the rounds, digital assets are shown pushing into territory once reserved for central bankers, casino floors, brokerage accounts and pre-IPO investors alike — a reminder that “crypto news” increasingly means finance news, gambling news and macro news rolled into one.

Take the growing chatter around prediction markets and Federal Reserve policy. Traders have been flocking to on-chain betting platforms to price the odds of late-2026 rate decisions, effectively turning monetary policy into a tradable asset class alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. That such markets exist at all is notable: a decade ago, speculating on FOMC outcomes required options contracts or futures desks.

Now it can happen peer-to-peer on a blockchain, with odds shifting in real time as economic data lands. The rise of these markets suggests crypto infrastructure is becoming a genuine alternative venue for hedging and speculating on the traditional economy, not just a parallel casino for digital tokens.

Speaking of casinos, the sector itself continues to evolve in ways that mirror shifts in consumer taste rather than technology alone. Reports on crypto gambling lobbies note that live-dealer blackjack tables are increasingly outnumbering roulette wheels—a seemingly small detail that says more about what crypto-native gamblers want.

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Live blackjack offers a sense of skill and control that pure-chance games like roulette can’t match, and operators appear to be responding by stacking their lobbies accordingly. It’s a small but telling sign that crypto casinos are maturing into product-driven businesses competing on experience, not just novelty.

Meanwhile, the boundary between crypto trading and traditional equities markets keeps eroding. New developments around Aave’s lending protocol reportedly let users borrow stablecoins against tokenized versions of tech stocks issued through Coinbase and built on the Base network.

If that model gains traction, it would mark a significant step in bringing real-world assets fully into DeFi’s collateral system — letting someone hold a tokenized slice of a Nasdaq darling and borrow against it the same way they might borrow against ETH or Bitcoin today. It’s the kind of integration that regulators, banks and crypto-native builders have all been circling for years, and its practical rollout matters more than the concept alone.

On the trading-platform side, perpetual futures exchanges continue to expand what counts as a “market.” One report describes a platform offering more than 120 perpetual contracts spanning everything from Bitcoin to pre-IPO robotics companies, letting traders apply leverage to assets that, in many cases, aren’t even publicly listed yet.

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This kind of expansion into speculative, illiquid corners of the private market — wrapped in crypto’s leverage-friendly perpetual format — raises real questions about price discovery and risk, even as it satisfies demand from traders hungry for exposure beyond the usual crypto majors.

Finally, there’s the steady drumbeat of token listings that keeps the broader ecosystem churning. A gambling-focused token tied to the Dexsport platform recently landed on the MEXC exchange, a move that typically brings a token more liquidity and visibility, if not necessarily more fundamental value. Listings like these remain a bread-and-butter event in crypto markets — routine, but still closely watched by holders hoping for a price bump and a wider trading audience.

Individually, none of these developments is likely to reshape the industry overnight. But together they sketch a familiar pattern in crypto’s ongoing evolution: infrastructure built for speculative tokens is steadily being repurposed for macro bets, tokenized equities, private-company exposure and gambling products alike.

The technology is proving flexible enough to wrap around almost anything with a price — which is exactly why regulators, investors and casual observers alike keep struggling to say where “crypto” ends and the rest of finance begins.

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Perplexity AI Predicts a Big Move for BTC in 2026 Even With Recent Dip

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Bitcoin price prediction: Microsoft Copilot AI predicts that if price momentum across the markets continues, BTC could hit $180K by 2027

Perplexity AI predicts that if a full-blown bull market returns in Q4, Bitcoin could reach $180,000 before January 1, 2027. The bullish range is estimated at $140,000 to $180,000, with a potential late-cycle surge that could push Bitcoin beyond $200,000.

Currently priced around $83,000, this would represent a gain of about 115% to reach $180,000. What’s noteworthy is that Bitcoin has already corrected significantly from its previous cycle high of about $126,200 on October 6, 2025, followed by a sharp decline during 2026.

Bitcoin has a history of producing substantial gains during strong market cycles. According to historical annual data, BTC gained approximately 154% in 2023 and 110% in 2024. If the current predictions hold true, we may see a similar increase on the horizon.

Bitcoin price prediction: Perplexity AI predicts that BTC could still rise to nearly $200K in 2026 even with it dropping -3% over the weekend
SOURCE: Perplexity AI Predicts Bitcoin Price

Perplexity AI Predicts Bitcoin to $180,000 if Bullish Catalysts Align: Does the Technical Analysis Back it Up?

Bitcoin recently broke out of a pattern of lower highs that had developed since May, reclaiming several key moving averages. According to Reuters’ technical analysis, $81,781 is considered important support, while $86,500 is a significant resistance level. Above that, the next technical targets are around $90,000 and $97,867.

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CryptoQuant has noted a similar trend, calling $81,700 a key level because it aligns with Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average. Resistance levels above this are near $86,600 and $88,700.

Bitcoin’s first major test is surpassing the $85,000 level, followed by the $86,000 to $88,000 range. Bitcoin has pushed through this area, which matters because a sustained breakout would remove one of the largest technical obstacles between its current price and the $100,000 level.

The next major milestone is approximately $98,000. Beyond that, the market will be approaching the all-time high of $126,200, where it gets particularly interesting.

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Once Bitcoin decisively breaks beyond $126,000, it will enter a phase of genuine price discovery. Historical resistance above that level is very limited. At that point, psychological targets such as $130,000, $140,000, and $150,000 could attract momentum traders and institutional investors.

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Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early Mover Upside as Bitcoin Drops Dangerously Close to $80,000

A -2.5% daily drop is not too much to worry about for whales and those already heavily positioned at a much lower price. However, for those who bought over $80,000, things could be getting uncomfortable, which is why presale opportunities prove so popular.

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The post Perplexity AI Predicts a Big Move for BTC in 2026 Even With Recent Dip appeared first on Cryptonews.




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XRP Price Slides 2.9% as $1.50 Reclaim Becomes Critical

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xrp logo

XRP lost its $1.50 price pivot today, sliding to $1.47 after a daily decline of about 3%. The break forces a binary question onto the chart: does the selling pressure showing up in spot-market volume resolve into a quick reclaim, or does it open the door to a deeper slide toward $1.40-$1.42?

The 200-day EMA is near $1.37, the level that would flip the medium-term structure from bullish to neutral. The token has been printing lower highs since a local peak near $1.63 on September 23, and a second attempt to clear $1.60 on September 25 failed as well. Since then, the decline has been slow and orderly: $1.55, then $1.52, then $1.50, and now $1.47.

Xrp (XRP)
24h7d30d1yAll time

There was no single dramatic session driving the move. Instead, the pattern reads as buyers simply not showing up, with every small bounce getting sold rather than extended. After the sharp rally in early September, that kind of cooling was overdue, but the open question is whether $1.50 was ever real support or just a round number the market is now testing.

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ETF Accumulation Narrative or Technical Pullback?

The chart itself frames this as a cooling-off period following the rally that carried the XRP price up nearly 50% from its August low near $1.00. RSI sits at a neutral 54, with no overbought or oversold readings to lean on. Price levels, not oscillators, are setting the tone for this week.

XRP price slips 2.9% to $1.47 as bulls face a key test: reclaim $1.50 or risk a deeper pullback toward $1.37 and $1.30 if support fails.

Separately, market data has pointed to sustained spot XRP ETF inflows running into the hundreds of millions of dollars over recent weeks, a trend some trackers frame as ongoing institutional accumulation beneath the price action. That flow data is useful context, but it is not confirmed as the driver of Monday’s drop, as the pullback below $1.50 traces cleanly to failed resistance tests and fading bid support.

The medium-term structure remains intact for now. XRP sits above its 200-day EMA at $1.37, which is curling upward for the first time since spring. This is a sign the longer trend has not broken, even as the shorter-term chart bleeds lower. A descending trendline from the late-August spike to $1.70 was cleared in mid-September, and that breakout is what fueled the run to $1.67 in the first place.

A second descending trendline, drawn from the September 23 high, is now the line bulls need to clear in October; left alone, it points toward $1.20 by mid-November. The levels on both sides of the current price are well defined.

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Reclaim $1.50 or Risk $1.37: XRP Price Next Move

The first job for bulls is straightforward: close a daily candle back above $1.50. Do that, and Monday’s drop reads as a fakeout rather than a breakdown, with $1.55 as the next confirmation level and $1.60-$1.63 as the target that would put the September 23 high back in play.

Fail to reclaim $1.50 in the next day or two, and $1.40-$1.42 becomes the level to watch, with the 200-day EMA at $1.37 as the line that actually matters for the medium-term outlook. A close below it would shift Ripple’s native asset from a bullish structure to a neutral one, opening room toward $1.30 and, in a broader crypto market sell-off scenario, $1.20.

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For this week, the range is $1.37 to $1.60, with $1.50 sitting as the pivot in between. On technical analysis grounds, the base case is a dip toward $1.40-$1.42 that gets bought, followed by another attempt at reclaiming $1.50. A pattern consistent with pullbacks inside an uptrend rather than the start of a new downtrend.

The $1.80-$2.00 zone remains the valid medium-term target as long as $1.37 holds; lose it, and that target moves out of reach for the immediate term.

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The post XRP Price Slides 2.9% as $1.50 Reclaim Becomes Critical appeared first on Cryptonews.

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