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StarkWare Says Bitcoin “Last-Resort” Quantum-Safe Plan Drops 79%

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Crypto Breaking News

StarkWare says the estimated computing cost to construct a “quantum-safe” Bitcoin transaction has dropped sharply after a week of optimization work, falling to around $67—down from roughly $320 for the first such mainnet transaction in August.

The improvement comes from participants in the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, which targeted the GPU-heavy steps needed to build a transaction using the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) design. StarkWare cautions that the newest figures are based on benchmark results rather than fresh on-chain deployments, but the direction suggests the approach could become more practical for emergency use.

Key takeaways

  • StarkWare reports the estimated QSB transaction preparation cost is now about $66–$67, down from about $320 in August.
  • The cost reduction followed optimization contributions from the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, which ran for about a week.
  • StarkWare says the challenge produced 62 accepted improvements across two tasks needed to prepare QSB transactions.
  • Despite the lower estimates, StarkWare notes the latest gains are demonstrated in benchmarks, not confirmed through additional mainnet transactions.
  • QSB is presented as a quantum-resilience “emergency” measure that does not require changes to Bitcoin consensus rules—though StarkWare still favors protocol-level upgrades for long-term protection.

Cost of quantum-safe construction falls again

StarkWare said that after a week of iterative optimizations by challenge participants, the computational estimate for preparing a QSB transaction fell by roughly 79%. In its Sept. 23 update, the company argued that moving from “a few hundred dollars” toward the $60s brings the method closer to what a Bitcoin holder could consider during an urgent scenario.

StarkWare adds that the live dashboard for the QSB challenge now displays the current estimate at $66. The company previously pointed out that earlier demonstrations involved higher GPU requirements and therefore higher costs.

What QSB is—and why the network doesn’t need to change

QSB was first published by StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy in April. The design aims to provide hash-based protection intended to reduce the risk posed by future quantum attacks, while avoiding changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. In Levy’s earlier framing, the approach was considered a “last resort” option because of cost, complexity, and limited applicability—concerns that the new optimization work is directly addressing.

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The underlying idea is to add a layer of defense without requiring the Bitcoin network to adopt new rules. That “no consensus changes” property matters for holders because it can allow quantum-resistance steps to be taken with specialized tooling rather than waiting for a widely deployed protocol upgrade. However, that same constraint can limit how broadly such a system can be used in the near term.

From the first mainnet transaction to benchmark-driven reductions

StarkWare ties the earlier baseline to the first QSB transaction mined and confirmed on Aug. 26. The company previously reported engineering work from Tomer Giladi and submission through MARA’s Slipstream service, with preparation requiring approximately 3,100 GPU-hours across roughly 100 GPUs.

StarkWare estimated the compute cost for that first mainnet transaction at about $320, excluding Bitcoin network fees. The latest update changes the picture on estimated preparation expense: StarkWare says the optimization challenge reduced the estimated computing cost based on benchmarks.

To find efficiency gains, StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs launched the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge on Sept. 16, inviting developers, researchers, and AI agents to improve the transaction-building pipeline. In the latest update, StarkWare said the effort resulted in 62 accepted improvements across two computational tasks needed for QSB transaction preparation.

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While that work is reflected in benchmark cost estimates now shown on Yukon’s QSB dashboard, StarkWare’s update still leaves an important gap: readers should treat the new $66–$67 figure as an estimate for construction workflows, not as proof that the same cost can be reproduced for additional live on-chain transactions yet.

Why holders may care—and what remains uncertain

The renewed focus on cost comes as concern continues to grow in the crypto community that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could eventually undermine Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve digital signature system. If attackers can exploit that weakness, coins exposed by their public keys could become vulnerable—though real-world timelines and feasibility depend on engineering breakthroughs that remain uncertain.

Against that backdrop, StarkWare positions QSB as an “emergency” measure—useful if and when quantum risks become immediate enough to justify expensive operational work. The sharper cost estimates may increase the likelihood that QSB could move from a proof-of-concept into a more realistic option for holders with a larger balance who can justify special preparation in advance.

At the same time, StarkWare reiterates a key strategic tension: the company still prefers a soft fork—meaning changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules—as the better “long-term answer” for broad, durable quantum protection. The optimizations therefore appear to strengthen the near-term toolkit around QSB, while the longer-term debate over protocol-level defenses continues.

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What to watch next is whether the benchmark-driven reductions can translate into additional on-chain QSB transactions at similar cost levels, and whether broader community attention shifts from experimental benchmarking toward practical integration and planning for quantum-era safeguards.

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.



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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Hong Kong-listed Ubtech has also tumbled more than 40% so far this year. The company, which went public in December 2023, still reported an operating loss for the first half of this year of 279 million yuan.

The share price decline contrasts with the flood of capital pouring into humanoid robotics companies over the last 12 months or so. The tech, often called “physical AI” in China, has been seen as a way for early-stage investors to benefit from the surge of interest in artificial intelligence models.

However, Rhodium Group analysis this month found that China’s AI companies only make about 10% the revenue of Anthropic and OpenAI. The ratio of valuation to revenue — especially for Chinese AI startups Moonshot and DeepSeek — was far higher than their U.S. rivals, the report said.

While expectations grow for the U.S. AI giants’ IPOs, chipmaker AMD said Monday it is acquiring World Labs for $8.2 billion in a stock deal. The startup, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is building AI models for creating virtual 3D environments frequently used in humanoid robot development.

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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.

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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