TLDR:

• Binance altcoin trading volumes have fallen to $7.7B, down sharply from the $40–$50B recorded in late 2024.
• Combined altcoin volumes on other major exchanges now sit at $18.8B, well below prior peaks of $91B.
• Binance currently accounts for roughly 40% of total altcoin trading volume across all major exchanges.
• Historical data shows the best crypto opportunities often emerge when trading volumes and market interest are at their lowest.
  

Altcoin trading volumes across major cryptocurrency exchanges have declined sharply in recent months. Data from Binance and other top platforms points to a clear reduction in investor participation.

The ongoing bear market, combined with persistent geopolitical tensions, continues to suppress risk appetite. Altcoins are now trailing Bitcoin in performance by a wide margin.

Current volume levels are well below those recorded during more active trading phases of late 2024 and early 2025.

Altcoin Trading Volumes on Major Exchanges Hit Multi-Month Lows

Altcoin trading volumes on Binance currently stand at approximately $7.7 billion. This marks a steep drop from the $40 to $50 billion the platform saw in October 2024. Other major exchanges combined now account for about $18.8 billion in total volume.

During those earlier peak periods, other exchanges collectively recorded volumes of $63 billion and $91 billion. The gap between those highs and current figures reflects the scale of the decline. Trading activity has fallen across the board, not just on a single platform.

Crypto analyst Darkfost_Coc flagged this trend in a recent post on X. The data shows altcoins are underperforming Bitcoin considerably in the current market. Investor interest in smaller digital assets appears to be fading steadily. On Binance specifically, the platform now represents about 40% of total altcoin trading volume.

Ongoing geopolitical tensions continue to create an unfavorable environment for risk assets. This has further reduced the appeal of altcoins among traders seeking stability.

As a result, capital has been moving away from smaller tokens toward safer market positions.

Historical Volume Patterns Point to FOMO-Driven Tops and Future Opportunity

The volume spikes recorded in October 2024 and February 2025 coincided with local price tops in the market. These surges were largely fueled by FOMO, or fear of missing out, among retail traders. Well-positioned investors used that demand surge as an opportunity to exit their positions.

Darkfost_Coc noted that volume spikes at market tops often reflect retail participation rather than institutional accumulation. By the time most traders enter during a surge, smarter money is already reducing exposure.

This pattern has repeated itself across multiple previous crypto cycles. Binance’s roughly 40% share of total altcoin volume further reflects this concentration of activity.

Currently, altcoin trading volumes remain at depressed levels with no clear recovery signal yet. However, historical data from past cycles show that low-interest periods often precede strong market reversals. Volume trends tend to shift before price movements become widely visible.

According to the analysis, the most attractive opportunities have historically appeared when market interest is at its lowest. Most investors tend to remain on the sidelines during these phases. Those who track volume data closely are often better positioned when conditions eventually improve.

Bitcoin investors face a real, long-term risk from quantum computing, but the danger is not equally distributed across all wallets. Will Owens, a research analyst at Galaxy Digital, outlined in a recent briefing that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from a public key, enabling an attacker to impersonate the wallet owner, forge a signature, and steal coins. Yet he stressed that the current landscape is not uniformly vulnerable: most wallets remain safe today, with risk primarily arising when public keys are visible on-chain.

Owens described two primary exposure paths. The first concerns wallets whose public keys are already exposed on the blockchain, making them potential targets if a quantum attack becomes feasible. The second occurs when a wallet’s public key is revealed at the moment of spending. This distinction has practical implications for how wallets are designed, upgraded, and secured as the crypto ecosystem moves toward post-quantum resilience.

Key takeaways

• Public-key exposure matters: funds are at greater risk if a wallet’s public key is visible on-chain or revealed during a transaction.
• Today’s wallets are largely shielded from quantum risk, but the threat is recognized and being studied by developers and researchers.
• The Bitcoin community has accelerated quantum-related proposals since late 2025, though governance remains non-centralized by design.
• Near-term guardrails have been discussed, including practical approaches from prominent voices advocating safer storage methods until post-quantum solutions are ready.
• Investors should monitor post-quantum developments and the timing of proposed mitigations, as the threat is real even if not imminent for most users.

Quantum risk landscape for Bitcoin wallets

The core concern is the possibility that a quantum computer could reverse-engineer a private key from a corresponding public key, enabling an attacker to impersonate the wallet owner and authorize transactions. This would undermine the cryptographic foundations that underwrite Bitcoin’s security. However, Owens cautioned that the vulnerability is not uniform across all wallets today. “Most wallets are not vulnerable today. Funds are at risk only when public keys are exposed on-chain,” he explained.

The two exposure routes identified by Owens—on-chain public keys already visible, and keys revealed at spending—are important for both users and developers. If a wallet’s public key remains hidden until it is used, the risk profile differs from wallets whose keys have already been disclosed on-chain. This nuance shapes how wallets are designed to mitigate potential quantum threats, including the timing of key disclosure and migration to post-quantum-secure mechanisms.

Quantum computing’s potential to disrupt conventional cryptography has circulated in crypto discourse for years, with some observers arguing the threat is distant. Yet the consensus forming in academic and industry circles is that the question is not if, but when—and how quickly the ecosystem can adapt. Owens noted that the debate extends beyond the technical layer and into governance, as coordinated action will be required to implement robust, long-term protections.

The right people are on top of the issue

Despite some critics who argue the quantum threat is overstated or decades away, Owens contends that development activity in this area has intensified. He said there is substantial developer work addressing quantum vulnerabilities and mitigations, and that the ecosystem now has a concrete, maturing set of proposals spanning the full problem surface. “The proposals are not theoretical. They are being actively developed, reviewed, and debated by some of the most experienced contributors in the Bitcoin ecosystem,” he affirmed.

In parallel, other voices in the space have proposed practical approaches to reduce exposure in the near term. Crypto veteran Willy Woo suggested last November that holding Bitcoin in SegWit wallets could reduce risk while a more permanent solution is devised. The idea reflects a broader appetite for interim safeguards as the community weighs longer-term protocol changes such as post-quantum cryptographic schemes.

The broader push toward post-quantum readiness has historically been framed as a balance between innovation and conservative risk management. While some markets may still debate the immediacy of the risk, the Bitcoin ecosystem appears to be aligning incentives around security and resilience. Owens emphasized that a non-centralized governance model—where Bitcoin has no CEO, no board, and no single authority to mandate updates—does not preclude effective action. Instead, the universal and external nature of the risk—affecting participants across the network—can catalyze broad, voluntary alignment around practical mitigations and gradual upgrades.

“For investors, the key takeaway is straightforward: the risk is real but recognized, and the people best positioned to address it are working on it.”

As the conversation evolves, the community continues to explore concrete, actionable paths forward. In addition to BIP-based discussions and potential soft-fork mitigations, researchers and developers are evaluating post-quantum-ready signatures, key-management innovations, and more robust on-chain privacy and security architectures. The goal is not merely to react to a theoretical threat but to engineer a resilient system that preserves user sovereignty without compromising the Bitcoin network’s open, trust-minimized ethos.

Looking ahead, observers will want to watch how quickly post-quantum techniques mature and how they can be integrated without creating new vectors for risk or fragmenting the ecosystem. The next few years are likely to bring a combination of protocol-level experiments, community-led governance decisions, and gradual deployment of protective measures that could gradually harden Bitcoin against quantum threats while maintaining its decentralized ethos.

As quantum resilience work progresses, readers should stay attuned to updates from core developers, security researchers, and stakeholder communities. The exact timeline for wide-scale post-quantum adoption remains uncertain, but the direction is clear: the industry is treating quantum risk as a real, evolving concern and mobilizing to address it with practical, collaborative solutions.

Bitcoin price marched back above $70,000 on Friday morning, erasing part of the losses seen over the past two days. However, its momentum quickly gave up as Asian tech stocks dropped lower.

After dropping over 8% to a weekly low of $69,298 on Thursday, Bitcoin (BTC) price rebounded back above the $70,000 psychological mark that many analysts say acts as a crucial anchor for investor confidence. The bellwether was trading at $70,749 at press time with a market capitalization of $1.41 trillion.

Bitcoin price rallied as bulls bought the dip under $70,000, which occurred after news of an Israeli attack on Iranian energy sources broke out, sparking fears of rampant global inflation as oil prices rose to record highs. 

At the same time, risk sentiment deteriorated amid a string of weak economic data. This coincided with stronger-than-expected PPI data and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggesting the central bank intends to hold interest rates steady as long as inflation remains elevated.

While Bitcoin has managed to reclaim the $70,000 psychological support level, several hurdles could potentially stand in its path for more gains.

First, Asian tech stocks have so far traded down on Friday morning. Notably, Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell by 1,866 points or 3.38%, while China’s Shanghai Composite was down 0.50%. Yesterday, U.S. tech stock markets also showed the same weakness, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing lower by 0.44%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 were down over 0.25% each. The only exception was the Russell 2000 Index, which rose by 0.65%. 

Cryptocurrencies often mirror the trend followed by these tech stocks, as they both share a high sensitivity to liquidity and interest rate expectations.

Second, investors seem to be rotating to Gold, which jumped over 2% today as it moved back above $4,700, reinforcing its status as a safe-haven asset amid the broader macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. Silver also saw significant interest, rising over 3% to $74.

Third, institutional demand in Bitcoin appears to have taken a breather. Data from SoSoValue show that U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have recorded net outflows for the past two days, with over $250 million flowing out.

While the outflows are relatively small considering the $1.16 billion in inflows they recorded over seven straight days just ahead of this shift, investors could take this as a sign of temporary exhaustion in the current rally.

Gemini shareholders have targeted the crypto exchange through a new class action lawsuit alleging that it misled investors during and after its initial public offering.

Filed in New York, the class action lawsuit has been brought against Gemini, its co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and other company executives over misleading claims made in its IPO documents.

Plaintiffs in the filing said the documents portrayed Gemini as a growing crypto exchange focused on expanding its user base and international footprint, but later made an “abrupt corporate pivot to a prediction market-centric business model.”

In the complaint, the plaintiff said the Offering Documents were “materially false and misleading” and failed to disclose that Gemini was “poised for an expensive and disruptive restructuring.”

Further, the lawsuit stated that the company had committed to extending into “key global markets.”

Gemini held its IPO in September and priced shares at $28 on the Nasdaq; however, while the filings described the exchange as its “core product,” they subsequently pivoted to prediction markets called “Gemini 2.0.”

Subsequently, the firm also cut 25% of its workforce and exited several international markets like the UK, the EU, and Australia.

Per the complaint, such changes have caused the class group to suffer “significant losses and damages” as the stock price declined.

As such, the suit is seeking a jury trial and compensation for investors who bought shares at “artificially inflated prices” after the IPO.

Last month, several Gemini executives announced departures amid the company’s cost-cutting push; meanwhile, the exchange also shut down its NFT arm, Nifty Gateway, in February.

However, on Thursday, the company’s Q4 results showcased that the company’s revenue had risen 39%, which was beyond analyst expectations.

At the time of writing, Gemini shares had closed Thursday’s session up 0.81%, while it surged another 5.8% in after-market trading.

TLDR:

• DOJ charges allege $2.5B in Nvidia-powered AI servers were diverted to China through covert routes.
• Prosecutors claim fake documents and dummy servers were used to bypass U.S. export compliance checks.
• Over $510M in restricted AI systems allegedly shipped within weeks through a Southeast Asia network.
• SMCI stock fell after hours as legal risks emerged around export controls and the distribution of AI hardware.

Authorities in the United States have arrested Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw for allegedly conspiring to unlawfully export AI servers. Prosecutors claim the operation diverted billions of dollars’ worth of advanced systems to China.

The charges follow an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice, detailing a coordinated effort to bypass export restrictions.

Allegations of Export Control Violations

The indictment alleges that Liaw, a co-founder of Super Micro Computer, conspired with associates to ship restricted AI servers abroad.

These systems reportedly integrated high-performance GPUs developed by NVIDIA. U.S. authorities classify such hardware as sensitive due to its advanced computing capabilities.

According to court filings, Liaw worked alongside Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun to facilitate the operation.

Prosecutors allege the group used an intermediary company in Southeast Asia to mask the final destination of shipments.

In an official statement, Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg described the alleged conduct in detail. He said the indictment outlines efforts to evade export laws through “false documents, staged dummy servers to mislead inspectors, and convoluted transshipment schemes.”

Eisenberg added that the technology involved carries national importance. He noted that these chips represent American innovation and said authorities will continue enforcing export controls to protect that advantage.

Use of Shell Companies and Concealment Methods

Investigators allege that the defendants relied on a layered logistics structure to move the servers. Systems were assembled in the United States, routed through Taiwan, and then delivered to Southeast Asia before reaching China.

Authorities state that the intermediary company purchased approximately $2.5 billion worth of servers between 2024 and 2025.

A surge in shipments occurred within a short period, including roughly $510 million worth of equipment moved in just three weeks.

Officials say the defendants used deception to bypass compliance checks. Thousands of non-functional servers were staged at warehouses to simulate legitimate inventory during inspections. These replicas were presented to auditors reviewing export compliance.

Describing the scheme, FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky said the defendants allegedly conspired to sell “billions of dollars’ worth of servers integrating sensitive, controlled graphic processing units” in violation of U.S. laws.

Legal Charges and Enforcement Response

Liaw and Sun were arrested and are expected to appear in federal court in California. Chang remains a fugitive. The charges include conspiracy to violate export control laws, smuggling, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton addressed the case, stating that the defendants allegedly operated through “a tangled web of lies, obfuscation, and concealment” to generate revenue. He added that such diversion schemes pose a direct threat to national security.

Federal investigators emphasized the broader enforcement effort tied to the case. According to FBI officials, safeguarding advanced AI technology remains a priority due to its strategic importance.

Following the announcement, shares of Super Micro Computer (SMCI) declined in after-hours trading. Authorities reiterated that the charges remain allegations, and all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

The quantum risk to Bitcoin investors is real, but not all wallets are vulnerable, and the people best positioned to address it are working on it, says Galaxy Digital research analyst Will Owens.

Owens said in a report on Thursday that, in theory, a quantum computer could derive private keys from public keys, allowing an attacker to impersonate the owner, forge a signature and steal coins. 

However, he argued that not all wallets are equally vulnerable to this risk.

“In fact, most wallets are not vulnerable today. Funds are at risk only when public keys are exposed on-chain,” he said.

Owens said that created two main ways wallets are exposed: those whose public keys are already visible, and wallets whose public keys are revealed at the time of spending.

The threat of quantum computing to crypto has long been debated among the community as an upcoming inflection point. Advanced computers capable of breaking encryption have been theorized as able to reveal user keys, expose sensitive data and steal user funds.

The right people are on top of the issue

Critics argue the threat posed by quantum computers is overblown because the technology is still decades away from being viable, and banking giants and other traditional targets will be cracked long before Bitcoin.

Owens said there is also online discourse that Bitcoin Core developers are “ignoring and gatekeeping” quantum-related proposals, such as the soft fork BIP 360, but he claims to have found otherwise, noting that the “pace of proposals has accelerated meaningfully since late 2025.”

“Contrary to some public criticism, our review found substantial developer work addressing the question of quantum vulnerabilities and mitigations,” he said.

“The ecosystem now has a concrete and maturing set of proposals spanning the full problem surface. These proposals are not theoretical. They are being actively developed, reviewed, and debated by some of the most experienced contributors in the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

Other people in the space have also been presenting their solutions. Crypto OG Willy Woo suggested last November that a way to keep your Bitcoin (BTC) safe until there’s a solution to the quantum threat is to hold the coins in a SegWit wallet for around seven years. 

Related: Bitcoin could go sub-$50K if quantum isn’t solved by 2028: Capriole

Governance will still likely present a challenge

When the developer community does come up with a post-quantum solution, Owens said it will likely present a challenge because “Bitcoin has no CEO, no board, and no central authority that can mandate a software update.”

“But the nature of this particular threat — external, technical, and universal in its impact — aligns incentives in a way that past disputes over Bitcoin’s economic direction did not,” he said. “Every honest participant in the network, from miners to holders to exchanges, has a direct financial interest in the network’s continued security.”

“For investors, the key takeaway is straightforward: the risk is real but recognized, and the people best positioned to address it are working on it.”

Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?