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SoFi Deal Highlights Stablecoins as a Reliable Settlement Rail

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Crypto Breaking News

Stablecoins are finding a practical use case in payments: not necessarily to change how consumers pay with their cards, but to alter the settlement rail banks use behind the scenes. The latest example comes from SoFi, which says it has begun settling debit and credit card transactions with Mastercard using its SoFiUSD stablecoin.

According to a SoFi spokesperson, the bank is migrating its entire card program—expected to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume—to this blockchain-based settlement approach. Importantly, the bank does not expect the change to remove intermediaries from card payments. Instead, it replaces part of the transaction settlement process with an alternative rail designed to complete obligations faster.

Key takeaways

  • SoFi is moving settlement of its debit and credit card transactions to Mastercard using its SoFiUSD stablecoin, while card usage for customers remains unchanged.
  • SoFi expects its card program to reach more than $25 billion in annualized processing volume as it migrates the system.
  • Payments experts argue this is not “disintermediation” in the card networks’ core operations—Visa/Mastercard and banks still calculate obligations and manage interactions.
  • Faster blockchain settlement may reduce timing and some capital friction, but does not automatically guarantee cheaper payments end-to-end due to conversion, compliance, and integration costs.
  • Dollar stablecoins can move quickly, but completing payments in local currencies may still require access to domestic liquidity and banking rails.

SoFi’s onchain card settlement shift

SoFi’s update is part of a broader trend in which stablecoins are tested and deployed as settlement mechanisms rather than as consumer-facing payment tools. The bank says it has begun settling debit and credit card transactions with Mastercard using its SoFiUSD stablecoin and is migrating its full card program to the same system.

From the perspective of cardholders, the change is largely invisible. The spokesperson told Cointelegraph that SoFi customers will continue using debit and credit cards normally, while the settlement process is moved onchain to enable faster completion between participants.

That distinction matters for how investors and builders interpret “adoption.” The stablecoin is operating in the plumbing of payments—where obligations between financial institutions are settled—rather than replacing consumer interfaces.

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Not a clean break from Visa, Mastercard, or banks

Stablecoin settlement can sound like a direct challenge to traditional intermediaries, but the current card deployments appear to follow a more incremental path. A Federal Reserve note published in March suggested stablecoins could change the economics of payments without necessarily eliminating banks, and the latest industry commentary aligns with that view.

Cointelegraph spoke with Martins Benkitis, co-founder and CEO of emerging-markets liquidity provider Gravity Team. He argued that this stage should not be described as disintermediation: “I wouldn’t call it disintermediation at this stage,” he said. “Visa and Mastercard are still there. The banks are still there. The network is still calculating the obligations, managing the transaction and deciding how participants interact with it.”

In other words, stablecoins are being used to complement existing payment infrastructure, particularly at the settlement layer. That may still meaningfully increase stablecoin usage even if merchants and consumers never interact with the technology directly.

Benkitis added that if stablecoins become a major part of payments, businesses may not care where the stablecoin exists in the process as long as settlement availability matches operational needs. “They’ll care that settlement is available when they need it and that the money arrives,” he said.

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The promise: smoother settlement and less capital friction

While cards remain intermediated, faster settlement is a key selling point. Varun Datta, a venture capitalist and founder of Truth Ventures, agreed that moving to continuous settlement can reduce delays and potentially cut the amount of capital financial firms must maintain across locations—an issue that can be especially acute when payments cross borders.

However, Datta cautioned that “speed” alone does not automatically translate into lower costs for end users. Payments still involve conversion steps, compliance requirements, systems integration, and stablecoin-management overhead. In his view, it is not enough to demonstrate operational improvement onchain; the industry needs evidence that these changes reduce total costs and improve liquidity management at scale.

Datta said he would want to see proof of lower end-to-end payment costs before concluding that the economic case is fully established. That framing is significant because many real-world payment projects live or die on unit economics—particularly if costs merely shift from settlement timing to operational complexity elsewhere.

Liquidity doesn’t disappear—especially across currencies

Another practical limitation emerges when stablecoin settlement eventually has to translate into local currency payments. Benkitis emphasized that while dollar-denominated stablecoins can move between balance sheets quickly, completing payments in emerging markets can remain more complex.

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His concern is tied to local liquidity and the banking ecosystem that ultimately delivers the payment in the relevant currency. In markets where local currency liquidity is thinner, fewer banks may handle flows, and access to domestic banking rails remains necessary. “The stablecoin gets the value there quickly,” Benkitis said. “You still need the local liquidity to finish the payment.”

This is where the “rail change” narrative can diverge from adoption expectations. Onchain speed may improve settlement between participants, but it does not automatically solve downstream currency conversion, liquidity sourcing, or integration constraints in every geography.

Broader momentum: Visa’s parallel stablecoin efforts

SoFi’s move follows similar experimentation from card-network infrastructure. In April, Visa said its stablecoin settlement pilot had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate after expanding support to nine blockchains, describing blockchain settlement as a “viable complement to traditional settlement rails.” Visa also characterized its approach as an addition to existing settlement methods rather than a replacement of the broader ecosystem.

Taken together, these developments suggest a shared industry view: stablecoins are being tested where they can improve the settlement mechanics of large payment networks without requiring immediate removal of core participants.

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Readers should watch whether these pilots expand beyond the largest corridors and what happens when stablecoin settlement meets local-currency liquidity constraints—if the industry can demonstrate not just faster settlement, but reliably lower total operating costs across geographies, stablecoin settlement could move from “complement” to a more durable part of the payments stack.

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



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

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

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

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



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

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30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.

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

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

Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds

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

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

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

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

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

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

AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade

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

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

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

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

Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital

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

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

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

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“For me, that’s a red herring.”

Anshul Sehgal, Goldman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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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.

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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.

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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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Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full SVM integration. It boasts smart contract execution built for speed that outpaces Solana itself, while settling back to Bitcoin’s base-layer security.

As of today, the presale has raised more than $33.1M at a current token price of just $0.0136864, with staking rewards live at launch at a huge 35% APY.

The pitch: solve Bitcoin’s slow transactions, high fees, and lack of programmability without abandoning what makes BTC trusted in the first place. A Decentralized Canonical Bridge handles BTC transfers natively.

Gain Access to New Bitcoin Layer 2 Early Here

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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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