Crypto World
3 Reasons Bitcoin’s Bullish Trend Remains Intact Despite the Drop Below $84K
The primary cryptocurrency rallied strongly earlier this week, briefly exceeding $87,000 for the first time since January. However, bulls couldn’t sustain the momentum, and BTC retraced to the current $83,800 (per CoinGecko).
While some might fear the bears are about to regain full control, three key factors suggest the asset remains positioned for further upside.
Whales and More
BTC lost over $3,000 in value over the past 24 hours, yet institutional interest remains quite solid. Data shows that spot Bitcoin ETFs have posted five green days in a row, attracting more than $2.5 billion during that period. September 21 was the strongest day, when the financial vehicles accumulated almost $1 billion.
This development suggests pension funds, hedge funds, and other conservative investors have increased their exposure to the asset, setting the stage for further gains.
Next on the list is the declining amount of BTC sitting on cryptocurrency exchanges. According to CryptoQuant, the figure has dropped to a four-month low of around 2.7 million, indicating that many investors have shifted from centralized platforms to self-custody solutions. This is considered a bullish sign since it reduces immediate selling pressure.
Last but not least, we shall mention the whale activity. The analytics platform Santiment revealed that large investors (holding between 100 and 1,000 BTC) have purchased almost 114,000 units since mid-July. Their collective holdings have grown by 2.22% to roughly 5.24 million BTC, representing 26% of the asset’s circulating supply.
This aggressive accumulation matters because it leaves fewer coins available on the open market, which, combined with steady or rising demand, should trigger a price pump. It also signals strong confidence among these market participants and may encourage smaller players to follow suit, bringing fresh capital into the ecosystem.
The Bull Market Has Begun?
Earlier this week, renowned analyst Ali Martinez outlined several factors, such as rising activity on the BTC network and growing appetite for spot Bitcoin ETFs, suggesting the asset’s price may continue its uptrend all the way to $100,000.
Shortly after, he spotted a double-bottom formation on the price chart, which signals that the $82,500 neckline is likely to hold as support, meaning that the $100K target remains in the cards.
CryptoQuant’s analysts have also weighed in. They noted that BTC recently closed above its 365-day moving average (around $80,500) for the first time since March 2023. According to them, the development confirms the start of a new bull run, reminding that similar breaks in 2019 and 2023 have been precursors to major rallies.
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An OpenAI agent hacked into an Australian government health database in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed Wednesday, amid concerns from world leaders and artificial intelligence firms about the industry’s rapid, unregulated expansion.
Albanese said the AI agent had accessed public and non-public files in the statistics reporting service portal for Australia’s universal health insurance scheme, Medicare, in June. OpenAI, however, only notified the government of the breach 84 days later—through an email sent to the public mailbox.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing,” Albanese said in a press conference in New York, where he attended the U.N. General Assembly. “Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable.”
An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement that during a recent review, they identified activity involving “several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation.” Its AI models then “took actions we did not intend.”
The breach follows a string of incidents where AI models have gone rogue, prompting debate about whether the world is ready to deal with such security risks stemming from its swift development.
Read More: The AI Tipping Point
Albanese said he had a “very frank” phone call with Altman about the breach, and the Prime Minister claimed the OpenAI CEO “has acknowledged their issues with protocols.”
The Prime Minister then said Australian intelligence authorities will help conduct a “forensic investigation” to look into whether other government systems were affected. A task force will also review the incident, and the Australian government will seek advice on whether any offenses were committed and if the incident should be referred to the federal police.
The AI agent-led hack comes just as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself warned leaders present at the U.N. Security Council about the risks AI systems pose with their increasing capabilities and autonomy: “They could move faster than our institutions, concentrate power in too few hands, or make decisions that people no longer understand or control.”
What happened?
On June 18, OpenAI’s research team used an internal model that accessed the Medicare statistics website, as it looks into public medical spending, according to Albanese. Katy Gallagher, the Minister for Government Services, said the website is “most often used by researchers and academics who get that aggregated data about benefit statistics, prescribing statistics, to use in their own research,” and clarified that it is “not in any way related to Medicare in terms of claims, payments, processing, individual information.”
But OpenAI hadn’t been aware of the potential breach until August, when it was reviewing “misaligned model activity”—or activity that deviates from the user’s intent.
Albanese said that after encountering security blocks, the agent “found a way around those blocks—didn’t accept no for an answer” to get the information it wanted.
OpenAI notified Services Australia, which delivers the federal government’s social services, on Sept. 10. It wasn’t until Sept. 17 that Gallagher had been advised of the breach, and it reached Albanese over the weekend. Albanese criticized how Australia received a mere email from OpenAI, and how delayed the notification was despite the security risk.
The Prime Minister added three other Australian government websites may have been affected: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health, though Minister for Defense Richard Marles later said in a Thursday press briefing that the interactions with agents in these three sites were “entirely normal” and only included public information.
The NSW bureau said it was aware of a vulnerability that could allow access to a crime mapping tool, but asserted that the concerned dataset has no personal information such as names, dates of birth, personal addresses, or other identifiable information about people. There’s also no evidence that a breach has already occurred.
Marles added that while the impact of the Medicare statistics portal breach is “relatively minor,” a non-human agent’s ability to access a government website unauthorized represents “a very serious incident.”
Shocking, yet predictable, says Albanese
Several high-profile incidents of AI agents going rogue preceded the Australian government breach.
In July, OpenAI announced that, during a cybersecurity test, its agents infiltrated the AI company Hugging Face. Nonprofit research laboratory Transluce also reported other incidents of OpenAI systems’ unsuccessful hacking attempts, including a digital library at the University of New Mexico and a platform visualizing U.S. government data in May. Independent researchers also discovered that rogue OpenAI agents took over a German website, transforming it into a message board for other AI agents.
But it’s not only OpenAI: during testing by the U.K.’s AI Security Institute, Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence model, Mythos 5, created fake personas to deceive real people and try to plant malicious code.
“It was a shock that it occurred, because it was real and serious,” Albanese said of the Australian government website hack. “But it also, I think, was something that had been predicted, including by the AI companies themselves.”
TIME has a licensing and technology agreement with OpenAI. Salesforce, where TIME owner Marc Benioff is CEO, is an investor in Anthropic.
Binance will open spot trading for Hyperliquid (HYPE) at 11 a.m. UTC on September 24, listing the token against Tether (USDT), USDC (USDC), and the Turkish lira (TRY).
HYPE edged higher after the exchange published the notice, although Binance attached its Seed Tag to the altcoin.
How Binance Is Rolling Out Hyperliquid
Binance published the listing announcement early on September 24, a few hours before trading was set to begin. The exchange said that users can deposit HYPE ahead of the launch.
Withdrawals are scheduled to open at 11 a.m. UTC on September 25. Binance said it charged no listing fee for the token.
Spot algorithmic orders go live alongside trading, while trading bots and spot copy trading follow within 24 hours.
The TRY pair is open only to users with verified Binance TR accounts. Meanwhile, residents of the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and several other regions cannot trade any of the new pairs.
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What the Seed Tag Means for HYPE Traders
Binance applies its Seed Tag to projects it considers more volatile and riskier than other listed tokens.
“HYPE is a relatively new token that poses a higher than normal risk, and will likely be subject to high price volatility. Users must exercise sufficient risk management and DYOR (do your own research) to fully understand the project before opting to trade the token,” the exchange said.
Under the tag,users must pass a risk quiz every 90 days to trade HYPE on Binance Spot or Margin. HYPE posted modest gains once the announcement went live.
TradingView data for the HYPE/USD pair on Coinbase showed the token up about 1.5% within 10 minutes. The token briefly climbed close to 1.9% before giving back part of that move. Over the past day, the altcoin has been down nearly 3% amid a broader market decline.
The next checkpoint arrives at 11 a.m. UTC, when trading begins. Traders will then see whether HYPE holds its early gains once spot volume begins flowing through the exchange.
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The post Binance Lists Hyperliquid (HYPE) With 3 Spot Pairs Going Live Today appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Uniswap (UNI) holdings on centralized exchanges have climbed to a record high of 113.9 million tokens, CryptoQuant data shows. Yet, several large wallets are pulling UNI off exchanges and adding to their positions.
The token has swung sharply this week. UNI rose 11.9% on Wednesday on plans for CME Group futures, then fell with the wider market on Thursday. Overall, it remains up over 113% in the past month.
Exchanges Fill Up as Big Wallets Pull Tokens Out
The 113.9 million figure is the highest in CryptoQuant data, which starts in late 2020. Balances have risen in stages since early 2024, with a jump from about 100 million in August.
Binance accounts for much of the build-up. It held over 73 million UNI as of September 23. Analyst CryptoOnchain said the exchange took in 2.6 million UNI on September 18 and 1.89 million on September 22.
“Rising exchange reserves alongside surging active addresses into multi-month price highs create conditions that historically preceded elevated sell-side liquidity and consolidation more often than an immediate supply deficit,” the post read.
Meanwhile, wallets tracked by Lookonchain are moving the opposite way. Earlier this week, 3 newly created addresses gathered 782,130 UNI, worth $6.97 million.
Two of them, 0x9681 and 0xf415, withdrew a combined 652,129 UNI from Binance, Gate, Bybit, and OKX. The third, 0xbD9C, received 130,000 UNI from Galaxy Digital. Another address 0xEFC4 bought 269,477 UNI worth $2.84 million.
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However, some are cashing out. Wallet 0xA799 sold 788,000 UNI at $8.85, less than a week after buying at $6.26. That sale netted about $2.04 million and nearly matches the 3 new wallets’ combined haul.
Stock Tokens Keep Uniswap’s Pools Busy
Whale flows remain mixed, while protocol data shows growth in tokenized stock trading. Uniswap said it handles 80% of Robinhood Stock Token volume, which has topped $10 billion.
Token Terminal data shows Uniswap holds over 99% of decentralized finance (DeFi) deposits for Robinhood stock tokens on Robinhood Chain.
On Base, tokenized equities have passed $300 million in Uniswap volume. On Circle’s Arc blockchain, Uniswap has handled over $300 million in swaps, about 84% of the chain’s decentralized exchange volume.
The data places Uniswap at the center of trading on these blockchains. Some of that volume can reach UNI through the protocol’s fee switch, which funds token buybacks and burns.
However, the burns remain small compared with recent exchange inflows. Uniswap burned 184,000 UNI on September 4, its second-highest daily total, with 150,000 of that coming from the Robinhood Chain.
Binance took in about 14 times that amount on September 18 alone. For now, the record reserve puts more UNI within sellers’ reach than the burns remove.
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The post Record High UNI Sits on Exchanges: Sell Pressure Ahead, or Are Whales Right? appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Ethereum Price Prediction: BlackRock Says AI Stablecoin Payments Could Drive ETH Demand
Ethereum trades at $2,695, down 2.6% over the past 24 hours, with the latest price prediction still shaped by its 10.3% seven-day gain. The move leaves ETH in a choppy short-term range after its recent rally.
There’s a bigger story now that involves machines paying each other without a human anywhere in the loop. BlackRock’s latest research frames stablecoins as the likely settlement rail for “agentic commerce,” AI systems transacting autonomously, and names Ethereum and Circle’s Arc as candidate venues.
That’s a notable shift in tone: a firm managing trillions in assets is now treating AI-to-AI payments as an investable thesis, not a novelty. The price data shows ETH’s recent strength has not disappeared despite Thursday’s pullback, with the token still up 8.3% over 14 days and 7.1% over 30 days.
Ethereum’s market cap sits near $329 billion, while 24-hour trading volume stands at $16.71 billion. That leaves the AI-payment thesis unfolding against a market where ETH has gained momentum over recent weeks, even as short-term volatility remains elevated.
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Ethereum Price Prediction: Can ETH Hold Support and Push Toward $3,000?
Ethereum’s structure currently looks more like post-rally digestion than a clear trend reversal. The $2,542–$2,550 zone, near the 50-week moving average, remains an important support area, with a hold keeping the broader setup intact.
On the upside, $2,672 is the first level to watch after ETH pushed through it during the latest move. A sustained break could shift attention toward $2,805, which recent analysis identifies as the next major breakout level.
If buyers maintain control above $2,805, the next targets sit around $2,950–$3,000, followed by the $3,150–$3,250 region. That would put the focus back on whether momentum and institutional flows can support another leg higher. On the downside, losing $2,542–$2,550 would weaken the current structure and bring $2,533 into focus, followed by support around $2,450.
Trade Ethereum on Bybit and Get a Chance to Win Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop
LiquidChain Targets Early Mover Upside as Ethereum Tests Key Levels
ETH holders riding this bounce have reason to feel validated, but let’s be honest about the math. A move from $2,695 to $3,000 is just around 11%. Solid, not life-changing, and that’s the reality of buying an asset with a market cap already in the hundreds of billions.
Whether AI-agent payment volume actually shows up in Ethereum’s fee revenue is a separate question worth tracking via coverage of stablecoin payment infrastructure before assuming it’s priced in. That gap between narrative and near-term upside is exactly why early-stage infrastructure plays are drawing attention.
The King. — LiquidChain (@getliquidchain) September 19, 2026
⟁https://t.co/vqvBcdSQYC pic.twitter.com/TDTxXzjhRu
LiquidChain ($LIQUID), a Layer 3 project, is building a unified execution environment that fuses Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana liquidity. It is letting developers deploy once and reach all three ecosystems rather than fragmenting across chains.
The presale is priced at just $0.014958 with $970K raised so far. Core features include Single-Step Execution and Verifiable Settlement, aimed at collapsing cross-chain friction into one deploy-once architecture.
Research LiquidChain directly before more capital enters and bumps its price.
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Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC) has reached a multistate resolution that clarifies its obligations in longstanding disputes. Investors now need to assess the cash payments and the effect of consumer protections on future lending returns.
On September 17, Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC) announced consent judgments entered into or planned with New York and 40 other attorneys general. The resolution covers the New York litigation filed in 2023 and a multistate investigation begun in 2020, without an admission of wrongdoing.
Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC) will pay $60 million into a consumer relief fund and $15.5 million for the participating attorneys general’s investigation, alongside waivers of eligible customer balances. Management said the monetary components require no additional charges beyond previously accrued and disclosed amounts.
Bull Case
Resolving the identified litigation and investigation reduces uncertainty around the financial obligations and operating requirements. For Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC), clearer rules can help management plan lending activity, support dealer relationships, and devote more attention to execution.
Management believes the required disclosures, affordability protections and dealer oversight preserve and supplement existing controls without fundamentally changing the business model. If implementation largely builds on existing processes, the operational disruption could be manageable.
Stronger disclosures and oversight could improve loan quality over time by discouraging unwanted add-on products and reducing avoidable borrower stress. For Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC), better repayment outcomes could help offset some implementation costs, although that benefit will need to appear in collections.
Bear Case
The $75.5 million of stated payments remains a cash obligation. Recognizing an expense earlier does not fund the eventual payment, which competes with lending and other uses of capital.
State announcements also identify $634 million in debt relief, comprising $388 million for consumers whose vehicles were repossessed and $246 million for those whose vehicles were not repossessed. Those figures describe balances forgiven. The economic loss depends on the cash that Credit Acceptance Corporation (NASDAQ:CACC) would otherwise have expected to collect, rather than the balances’ face value alone.
For qualifying loans originated after December 1, 2025, the consent order requires forgiveness of 95% of the balance remaining after involuntary repossession and vehicle sale. Repossession and sale must occur within 12 or 18 months of origination, depending on credit score and payment-to-income eligibility criteria. Collection lawsuits and transfers of qualifying contracts are prohibited.
An OpenAI research agent bypassed blocks on an Australian government health data portal, accessed non-public files and wrote files to an internal server in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday.
The government has opened a forensic investigation and announced a review of how it handles AI-related cyber incidents.
OpenAI did not notify the Australian government until Sept. 10, nearly three months after the incident, according to Albanese, who criticized the delay.
The incident adds to concerns over autonomous AI agents as tech leaders and governments debate slowing the development of cutting-edge models and researchers uncover agent activity extending into crypto.
OpenAI agent “didn’t accept no”
Australia’s incident began on June 18, when an OpenAI research team used an internal AI model to gather publicly available data on medicine spending, according to Albanese.
After being repeatedly blocked, the agent “didn’t accept no for an answer” and gained unauthorized access to other areas of the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal. The public-facing portal contains non-sensitive Medicare data, including statistics on government spending, the prime minister said.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing,” Albanese said.
Authorities are also examining activity at three other government websites, though Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles later said the interactions there appeared normal and involved public information.
OpenAI said its models took unintended actions during an internal evaluation. Its review found no evidence that patient records were accessed, according to a statement provided to ABC News.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
Speaking to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for “accurate and speedy incident reporting.” He also warned that increasingly capable and autonomous systems could “make decisions that people no longer understand or control.”
AI agents attempt crypto trades on Quidax exchange
Separately, on Wednesday, nonprofit research lab Transluce reported that it found signs of AI agent activity targeting crypto exchange Quidax on Sept. 19 and 20.
Across 15 public reports from web-scanning service urlquery.net, the researchers identified repeated attempts to place trades, an HTML injection attempt and probes of Quidax’s application programming interface.
The trade orders were not submitted, while authentication requirements and Cloudflare blocked the API probes, Transluce said.
Transluce said the Quidax activity used services and techniques seen in earlier agent activity, some of which researchers tied to an OpenAI swarm. It did not attribute the Quidax attempts to OpenAI.
Magazine: Who is legally liable when an AI agent goes rogue?
After the explosive start to the business week, in which BTC gained $7,000 in 12 hours or so, the asset was primed for a correction, which began yesterday evening and culminated today with a price drop to under $84,000.
The altcoins have followed suit as they usually do, with ETH slumping below $2,700 and Ripple’s XRP plunging by more than 7% to under $1.50. LTC is among the few exceptions today.
BTC Dips Below $84K
After the seemingly negative week in terms of macro developments, in which the CLARITY Act was voted down and the Fed hiked rates in the US, BTC had dropped to $75,000 last Wednesday, and the overall sentiment had flipped. However, the asset ended the week on a strong note, surging past $80,000 on Friday to the surprise of many.
It climbed to $82,000 on Saturday, where it was stopped, and slipped to $80,300 after the new escalations on the two major war fronts. Bitcoin couldn’t be contained on Monday, though. In the span of just 12 hours or so, the asset blasted through a few major resistance levels and skyrocketed to an eight-month peak of over $87,000.
It pulled back to $85,000 on Tuesday but went on the offensive again on Wednesday morning and topped $87,000 for the second time in 48 hours. However, another rejection followed that drove it south to under $84,000, where it currently struggles while analysts debate whether this is just a healthy correction or there’s more to the story.
For now, its market cap has dropped to $1.680 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts stands flat at 59%.
Alts See Red
Ripple’s native token is among the poorest performers in the past 24 hours. The asset flew to over $1.60 just yesterday, but the subsequent rejection has pushed it south hard, and it now struggles below $1.50. Other major losers include DOGE, ADA, XLM, BCH, UNI, CRO, ZEC, NEAR, and RAIN.
ETH, BNB, SOL, TRX, HYPE, and XMR are also in the red, albeit in a less painful manner. In contrast, LTC has rocketed by almost 8% to $68. BTC and MORPHO are also slightly in the green among the larger-cap alts.
The total crypto market cap has shed nearly 3% daily and it’s down to $2.850 trillion on CMC.
The post XRP Slumps Hard After Another $1.60 Rejection, BTC Slips Below $84K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Zcash and NEAR Protocol have emerged as two of crypto’s strongest alternative trades in 2026, a move Bankless co-founder David Hoffman believes is being driven by investors moving some capital away from Bitcoin and Ethereum toward assets with stronger return narratives.
Summary
- David Hoffman says ZEC has captured the Bitcoin bid as some BTC holders allocate capital to the smaller privacy asset.
- NEAR has emerged as a smart contract alternative as traders look beyond established assets such as ETH and SOL.
- Hoffman says the trend could leave Bitcoin and Ethereum competing for capital as investors seek higher returns from smaller crypto assets.
Hoffman said in a Sept. 23 post that ZEC has become what he calls the latest winner of the “Bitcoin Bid,” while NEAR has captured a similar position among smart contract platforms.
His argument centers on the size of Bitcoin’s existing pool of wealth. Bitcoin carries a market capitalization of roughly $1.7 trillion, while Zcash remains a fraction of that size even after its rally. Hoffman said only a small portion of Bitcoin holders would need to allocate some of their capital to ZEC for the smaller asset to experience substantial buying pressure.
Zcash’s market capitalization has climbed to roughly $26 billion after starting from a much smaller base, according to figures cited by Hoffman. The move has coincided with growing interest in privacy, quantum computing risks and regulated access to the asset.
The privacy coin market has grown nearly fivefold over the past year, according to a Sept. 22 report from 21Shares cited by crypto.news. The sector expanded from $6.2 billion to roughly $30 billion, while CoinGecko valued the category near $36.9 billion at the time.
Hoffman sees ZEC drawing from Bitcoin’s pool of capital
Hoffman compared the current ZEC trade with Ethereum’s run in 2021, when ETH moved from a market capitalization near $12 billion at its cycle bottom to roughly $554 billion at its peak.
His thesis does not suggest that Bitcoin holders are abandoning BTC altogether. Instead, Hoffman believes enough holders may be allocating a small part of their portfolios to ZEC as a hedge or complementary position.
Zcash gives that group several narratives to work with. The network shares Bitcoin’s fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins while offering optional transaction privacy through shielded addresses. Concerns over the long term effect of quantum computing on existing cryptographic systems have provided another part of the investment case cited by ZEC supporters.
Institutional access has changed as well. Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into the ZCSH spot ETF on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25, launching with roughly $304 million in assets under management. ZEC crossed $1,000 in early September as assets in the fund moved above $400 million.
Hoffman argued that ZEC’s dollar gains alone do not explain the trade. He instead pointed to the difference between the size of Bitcoin and Zcash, saying the pool of BTC wealth potentially available for rotation remains far larger than ZEC’s market value.
“There’s $1.7T of BTC out there, and it only takes a very small amount of Bitcoiners to agree that ZEC is valid,” Hoffman wrote.
He said investors could reach that conclusion because of privacy, concerns around quantum computing or simply a desire to hedge their Bitcoin exposure.
The argument remains Hoffman’s interpretation of the source of demand rather than direct evidence tracing ZEC purchases to Bitcoin holders. He acknowledged that point himself, saying he believed few capital allocators would skip BTC, ETH and the rest of the crypto market to buy ZEC solely on its own merits.
NEAR has become the smart contract alternative, Hoffman says
A similar capital rotation may be playing out around NEAR Protocol, according to Hoffman, although he sees the source of that demand as more dispersed.
“I think NEAR has won the ‘smart contract bid’ trophy of 2026,” he wrote.
NEAR was trading around $4.28 on Sept. 24 after gaining more than 60% over the previous seven days, according to CoinGecko. Its rally has come alongside several developments across the network and its trading markets.
On Sept. 23, NEAR spot trading went live on Hyperliquid through a NEAR/USDC market. NEAR perpetual open interest on Hyperliquid stood near $344 million at the time, while positive funding rates showed long positions were paying shorts.
Network development has provided another part of NEAR’s 2026 narrative. The protocol has spent much of the year building around artificial intelligence, chain abstraction and autonomous agents.
In July, NEAR introduced staking based AI payments, allowing users to lock NEAR and receive monthly compute credits for AI services. The system covered 43 AI models at launch and allowed users to access confidential inference and autonomous agents without paying through a credit card.
Hoffman said the capital supporting NEAR is probably coming from a more varied group than the investors he believes are moving from BTC into ZEC.
Ethereum has historically faced more competition among smart contract networks than Bitcoin has faced within the store of value category, he argued. Solana has already challenged Ethereum for users, activity and investor attention, leaving the smart contract market less concentrated around a single asset.
For Hoffman, the difference means NEAR does not need to pull capital from one clearly defined group. Traders looking beyond ETH, SOL and other established smart contract assets could contribute to the same effect.
Bitcoin and Ethereum face what Hoffman calls a blue chip problem
Hoffman framed the moves in ZEC and NEAR as part of a larger issue for the crypto market’s biggest assets.
Investors seeking large multiples may be less willing to allocate new capital to assets that already carry hundreds of billions or more than $1 trillion in market value, he argued. Smaller networks can offer more room for price appreciation if they attract a meaningful portion of existing crypto wealth.
Hoffman called the situation the “Blue Chip Curse.”
Bitcoin still needs to establish itself more firmly as an alternative to gold, in his view, while Ethereum faces the question of what could produce another major revaluation after years of growth.
The comparison comes as the total cryptocurrency market remains much smaller than the traditional financial system. CoinGecko data placed the global crypto market capitalization near $2.96 trillion on Sept. 24, with Bitcoin accounting for roughly 57% of the total.
Hoffman said crypto could continue producing new winners even if BTC and ETH do not deliver the multiples investors saw during earlier cycles. He pointed to Hyperliquid, Venice, Lighter, Ethena and Morpho as examples of projects bringing new products and infrastructure into the industry.
His concern is where the economic value from that activity ultimately ends up.
Hoffman argued that Robinhood, Coinbase, Apollo and traditional brokerage businesses could be positioned to capture part of the value created by the latest generation of crypto products, while the extent to which BTC and ETH benefit remains uncertain.
For the industry’s overall value to move materially higher, Hoffman said total crypto market capitalization would eventually need to grow far beyond its current level. He raised $10 trillion as a level he hopes the market can reach during the current cycle, while contrasting it with a possible $30 trillion market needed for a much larger expansion of the sector.
The latest XRP news is putting the XRP Ledger back in the spotlight after the SEC opened a new path for tokenized stocks to trade through automated market makers. The SEC’s September 17 decision created a temporary exemption for certain blockchain-based venues to facilitate tokenized U.S. stocks through permissioned AMM liquidity pools.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) September 17, 2026
TODAY: The SEC issued an order granting temporary, conditional exemptive relief to Tokenized Securities Venues from the definition of “exchange” in the Exchange Act to trade tokenized NMS stock using innovative permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. pic.twitter.com/VDi7Oty2d9
The decision does not specifically mention XRP, Ripple, or the XRP Ledger. Instead, it establishes a framework for Tokenized Securities Venues, allowing eligible platforms to operate AMM-based markets under certain conditions.
Why could it be bullish for XRP? XRP Ledger already has a native AMM. Its AMM amendment went live on Mainnet in March 2024, giving the network built-in liquidity pools alongside its existing decentralized exchange. That makes the latest SEC decision particularly interesting for the XRP ecosystem.
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SEC Opens AMM Door for Tokenized Stocks
The SEC’s Innovation Exemption provides temporary relief from certain securities rules for Tokenized Securities Venues. These venues can use automated market makers and liquidity pools to bring buyers and sellers of tokenized National Market System stocks together.
The exemption is conditional rather than a blanket approval for tokenized equities across crypto markets. The SEC said participating venues must operate permissioned systems and comply with specific investor protection requirements.
Among those requirements, tokenized stocks must provide holders with the same rights and privileges as the equivalent traditional shares. That includes rights such as dividends and voting.
The framework also gives the original stock issuer an opportunity to object when a third party tokenizes its shares. Trading must also stop when trading in the underlying stock is halted on its primary listing exchange.
For crypto markets, however, the most notable part may be the SEC’s explicit recognition of AMM liquidity pools as part of an onchain securities trading structure.
The SEC said its order also provides conditional relief for certain liquidity providers supplying tokenized stocks to these pools. The exemptions are scheduled to last five years, giving regulators time to observe how the market develops.
That has created a new conversation around blockchain networks that already have native AMM infrastructure.
Discover: The Best Token Presales This Bullrun
XRP News Turns to the XRP Ledger’s Existing AMM
This is where the XRP Ledger enters the discussion. XRPL’s AMM functionality was introduced through the XLS-30 amendment, which became active on Mainnet on March 22, 2024.
Unlike a separate application running above the network, the AMM is integrated into the XRP Ledger’s decentralized exchange. Users can create liquidity pools for asset pairs, provide liquidity, and receive LP tokens representing their positions.
The XRPL’s documentation says its DEX can combine order-book liquidity and AMM liquidity when executing trades, allowing transactions to use whichever route provides the better exchange rate. That native design is now more relevant as regulators begin addressing onchain securities markets.
Still, it would be premature to say the SEC has approved tokenized stocks on XRPL. The Innovation Exemption is technology-neutral and establishes requirements for eligible Tokenized Securities Venues rather than approving individual blockchains.
For XRP holders, the significance is therefore more about infrastructure than an immediate new use case for XRP.
If regulated tokenized equity markets eventually expand onto public blockchains, networks with existing AMM and DEX infrastructure could have an established foundation to build upon. XRPL already has that foundation, while the SEC has now provided a regulatory framework that explicitly contemplates AMM-based trading.
The next question is whether financial firms actually choose public networks such as XRPL for these markets. The SEC has opened the door, but the industry still has to walk through it.
For now, the XRP news story is less about an SEC endorsement of XRP and more about a regulatory development that could make XRPL’s existing AMM architecture increasingly relevant to tokenized assets.
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The post XRP News: SEC Opens AMM Door for Tokenized Stocks as XRPL Already Has the Tech appeared first on Cryptonews.
Bitcoin price trades near $84,000, down by a huge 3.5% on the day, but the more interesting number this week has nothing to do with its prediction. It’s $67. That’s the new estimated cost to build a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction, down from $320 when StarkWare mined the first one on mainnet back in August, a 79% reduction achieved in a single week of open optimization work.
The move came out of the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, a joint effort between StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs. According to the report, they invited developers, researchers, and even AI agents to shrink the GPU-hours needed to construct the transaction.
A post-quantum-secure Bitcoin tx now costs an estimated $67 in GPU compute. — StarkWare
In just ONE WEEK, devs and AI agents cut that cost by 79%, down from $320.
The challenge is still running, with $20,000 in prizes up for grabs for those who can push the cost even lower:… pic.twitter.com/4PvBLrmc4R
(@StarkWareLtd) September 23, 2026
StarkWare’s own dashboard now shows the figure sitting at $66, with the team noting bluntly: “A construction that costs a few hundred dollars per transaction is a demo. One that costs $67 is closer to something a holder with a large unexposed balance might reach for in an emergency.”
This is good news. Quantum risk to Bitcoin has long been theoretical enough to ignore, until the cost of defending against it starts looking like a rounding error next to a whale’s transaction fee. Against that backdrop, Bitcoin’s price action this week tells its own story of consolidation after a sharp round trip.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
Bitcoin Price Prediction: Can BTC Hold $84,000 This Week?
Bitcoin’s pullback to the $84,000–$84,500 zone followed hotter-than-expected PMI data that pushed Treasury yields higher and dented risk appetite across crypto, with total market cap falling 3% in the session. That’s a sharp reversal from the rally that took BTC to roughly $87,500 after U.S. spot ETFs pulled in an estimated $998.95 million in net inflows on September 21.
The $84,000–$84,400 band is now the line in the sand. It overlaps a key Fibonacci retracement zone and the recent breakout shelf. Lose it, and $82,193 followed by $78,571 comes into play. Hold it, and a retest of $86,381, then the $87,400 ceiling, is realistic. Recent technical work flags $90,000–$92,000 as the next real resistance if momentum returns, with $104,433 floated as a stretch target should the recovery extend.
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Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early Mover Upside as Bitcoin Tests Key Levels
A rejection near $87,000 followed by a slide back under $85,000 is the kind of chop that tests conviction, not confidence. Bitcoin holding six figures away from $100,000 while yields tighten is a reminder that beta exposure at this size doesn’t move fast.
Bitcoin’s market cap is simply too large for outsized short-term returns, even on good news like a 79% cost cut to quantum defenses. That’s pushed a chunk of trader attention toward earlier-stage infrastructure plays building directly on top of Bitcoin’s base layer.
The city sleeps. $HYPER stays charged.
pic.twitter.com/LKBUzZLH39
— Bitcoin Hyper (@BTC_Hyper2) September 22, 2026
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with SVM integration, aiming to bring Solana-grade execution speed to Bitcoin’s ecosystem without touching its consensus security. The presale has raised more than $33 million to date, with tokens priced at $0.0136867 and staking rewards on offer at a high 30% APY.
Its Decentralized Canonical Bridge targets the slow-transaction, high-fee, zero-programmability problems that have kept Bitcoin’s base chain largely inert for smart contract activity.
Research Bitcoin Hyper directly before the presale window ends.
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The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: StarkWare Discounts Quantum-Safe Solution by 79% appeared first on Cryptonews.
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