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Who is Ronald Spektor? New York Coinbase Scam Mastermind That Stole $15.9M

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Everyone is asking the same question today. ‘Who is Ronald Spektor?’ Spektor, 23, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was sentenced on September 23, 2026, by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun to four to 12 years in prison for orchestrating a Coinbase phishing and social engineering scheme that prosecutors said stole roughly $15.944M from about 100 users.

Spektor pleaded guilty on September 2, 2026, to the entire 31-count indictment, closing out a case the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office had spent about a year building around one of the more elaborate cryptocurrency theft operations to hit Coinbase’s retail customer base.

The plea covered first-degree grand larceny, first-degree money laundering, first-degree criminal possession of stolen property and related counts. Prosecutors had pushed for seven to 21 years and objected to the shorter negotiated term, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

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The gap between the sought sentence for Ronald Spektor, and the one handed down underscores how plea negotiations can blunt defendants’ theoretical exposure, even in large-scale cryptocurrency theft cases.

Who is Ronald Spektor, and How Did He Pull Off the $16M Coinbase Scam?

According to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, someone claiming to be a Coinbase representative contacted victims and warned that a hacker had compromised their accounts.

Believing they were securing their holdings, users moved cryptocurrency into wallets they thought remained under their sole control but that were allegedly accessible to Spektor, the core mechanic of crypto phishing built on urgency rather than any technical exploit of Coinbase’s systems.

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More than 70 of the roughly 100 identified victims were interviewed during the investigation. Reported losses varied widely: a California resident lost more than $1M, a Virginia resident lost more than $900,000, a Pennsylvania victim lost about $53,150, and a Maryland victim lost about $38,750.

Investigators said the stolen assets were subsequently run through swapping and mixing services, gambling platforms and online storefronts before conversion – a laundering pattern similar to what investigators have traced in other high-profile crypto-linked money laundering cases.

Prosecutors tied Spektor to the scheme through transaction records, blockchain analysis, digital forensics and search-warrant evidence, including an alleged link between his home IP address and wallets from which cryptocurrency was stolen.

Investigators seized approximately $105,000 in cash and $400,000 in cryptocurrency from Spektor during the probe, though that figure reflects assets recovered at the time rather than a confirmed final forfeiture order.

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District Attorney Speaks, and Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Details the Exchange’s Role in Catching Spektor

A Coinbase scam stole roughly $15.94M from about 100 users before Ronald Spektor was sentenced in New York to 4 to 12 years in prison.
SOURCE: TradingView

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez framed the sentencing as vindication for the office’s Virtual Currency Unit. “Today’s sentencing holds the defendant accountable for a brazen, long-running social engineering scam that amounted to a digital robbery of nearly 100 victims,” Gonzalez said.

“Our Virtual Currency Unit painstakingly pieced together the digital proof that identified the defendant behind this sophisticated scheme, followed the money that he stole, and compiled iron-clad evidence against him. This case should put crypto scammers on notice: we will follow the digital trail wherever it leads and aggressively pursue those responsible.”

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the company helped identify Spektor and the customers he defrauded, provided evidence to support the charges, and assisted law enforcement in tracing and recovering stolen funds, cooperation that speaks to how exchange customer-facing security tooling increasingly factors into prosecutions like this one.

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The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office reiterated the same warning it issued at the time of the original indictment: Coinbase and most legitimate companies will never call customers or ask them to move crypto to a “safe wallet.”

Caller ID, sender names, and lookalike domains can be spoofed, so verify requests only through official in-app support channels, and treat any request pressuring an immediate transfer with extra scrutiny rather than speed.

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DoubleZero launches Hyperliquid order book feeds on Edge

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can HYPE hit $100 in 2026?

DoubleZero has launched five Hyperliquid data feeds on Edge, giving subscribers a live view of the exchange’s order book and trade[XYZ] markets over dedicated fiber.

Summary

  • Four feeds cover Hyperliquid’s native perpetuals and trade[XYZ] markets, including contracts linked to commodities.
  • A fifth feed carries order intents drawn from Hyperliquid’s mempool transactions.
  • DoubleZero says subscribers receive sequenced data without having to rebuild the order book from public API updates.
  • Hyperliquid joins Solana and Kalshi as the third venue available through Edge.

According to a Sep. 24 announcement from the DoubleZero Foundation shared with crypto.news, the new service delivers Hyperliquid market data in a machine-readable format for trading firms, market makers and quantitative desks. The launch was built with Hyperliquid validator operators and ecosystem partners Hyperion DeFi, MAVAN and Kinetiq.

Subscribers can receive four market data feeds covering Hyperliquid’s native perpetual futures and trade[XYZ] markets under HIP-3, the system that lets outside teams create perpetual futures markets on Hyperliquid. A separate feed carries order intents from mempool transactions. Together, the products give firms information they can use in their own pricing, hedging and trading systems, according to DoubleZero.

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The foundation said the feeds are available now through a paid subscription. Its website lists prices, and each subscription includes two IP addresses per region.

Hyperliquid feeds replace work firms did through public APIs

For firms tracking many contracts at once, DoubleZero said, maintaining a current order book has meant collecting public API responses, managing WebSocket connections, and rebuilding the book on their own systems. Changes to Hyperliquid’s public APIs have reduced the update frequency and depth available through those endpoints, according to the announcement.

Edge instead sends subscribers a sequenced feed across DoubleZero’s fiber network. The company says its infrastructure draws on validator operators and partners in Tokyo to provide a view of Hyperliquid’s order book. It describes the service as its fastest commercially available Hyperliquid feed, though the announcement does not include comparative latency measurements.

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The distinction matters for automated systems that act on changes in bids, offers and completed trades. DoubleZero says a delayed or missed update can affect whether a trading strategy fills an order. Its product supplies the data path; firms still use their own systems to decide whether and how to trade.

In a September interview about Kalshi, DoubleZero co-founder Austin Federa described Edge as a read-only data service without order-entry or execution functions. That account explains the role the company has assigned to its distribution platform, although the Hyperliquid announcement does not set out separate execution terms for the new feed.

Trade[XYZ] brings commodity markets into the feed

The Hyperliquid package includes trade[XYZ]’s HIP-3 contracts tied to assets such as oil, gold and silver. Unlike a conventional futures contract with an expiration date, a perpetual contract can remain open while funding payments help keep its price close to the reference asset.

The size of those markets gives the data launch a use beyond crypto pairs. A September report covered by crypto.news put trade[XYZ] Q2 volume at $202.36 billion, up 79.2% from the previous quarter, based on research by GLC Research, Four Pillars, Arrakis and GRZ Research. The report also estimated that trade[XYZ] accounted for 95.1% of HIP-3 trading volume during the quarter. Those figures came from external research, rather than audited company results.

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DoubleZero said Hyperliquid as a whole processed more than $662 billion in trading volume in Q2. Its launch statement presents the growth of crypto and asset-linked perpetuals as a reason firms need a consistent stream of market data, particularly when the contracts continue trading outside the hours of established exchanges.

“When traditional markets are closed, oil and other assets still trade, they just trade somewhere else,” Federa said in the announcement. He compared Edge’s publish-once distribution model with the market data systems used by NYSE, Nasdaq and CME.

DoubleZero adds Hyperliquid after Kalshi and Solana

Hyperliquid is the third venue on Edge. In August, Kalshi opened its order book to Edge subscribers, starting with Level 1 and Level 2 data for sports contracts and crypto perpetual futures. Level 1 covers the best bid and ask and completed trades; Level 2 shows orders at multiple prices. DoubleZero had earlier introduced Edge with Solana validator data.

The Kalshi rollout also showed how DoubleZero distributes venue data: a publisher sends information once, and the network delivers it to connected subscribers. Hyperliquid adds another source to that service, with feeds spanning its native contracts and markets operated by an outside HIP-3 deployer.

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Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, said his firm is participating in the launch alongside Kinetiq and MAVAN. DoubleZero named the three as ecosystem partners but did not assign each one a separate technical role in the announcement.

U.S. energy proposal remains before the CFTC

The Hyperliquid feeds include markets relevant to a U.S. regulatory debate, though a market data subscription does not, by itself, authorize trading a contract in the United States. In August, Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade[XYZ] asked the CFTC to permit regulated perpetuals tied to West Texas Intermediate crude, Brent crude and Henry Hub natural gas. Their filing argued that continuous contracts could let U.S. firms manage energy exposure during weekends.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was reviewing questions about continuous energy trading and perpetual contract design, including reference prices, surveillance, margin and customer safeguards. The agency had not approved the proposed energy products when the groups submitted their filing in August.

DoubleZero’s announcement also referred to an August signal from the U.S. president about a possible compliant path for Hyperliquid. It did not identify an approval, a launch date for U.S. trading, or a change to the platform’s existing access rules.

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For the present launch, DoubleZero says the five Hyperliquid feeds are available by subscription through its website, with two subscriber IP addresses included per region.



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Crypto investment firm RockawayX puts $150M behind push for trade finance, private credit onchain

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Crypto investment firm RockawayX puts $150M behind push for trade finance, private credit onchain

The next big opportunity is in assets that offer higher returns and behave differently from crypto markets, CEO Viktor Fischer said in an interview with CoinDesk.

“Our thesis going forward that after trading, yield will be the largest use case onchain” Fischer said. For that, “we need new sources of yield, 12% plus, uncorrelated to crypto,” he added.

Catapult will focus on areas including trade and supply-chain finance, specialty asset-backed securities, CLOs and real-estate-related credit.

Fischer said the appeal of putting less-liquid assets onchain is that market makers can create an exit even when the underlying investment has lengthy redemption periods.

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RockawayX is looking for traditional finance professionals who know how to originate and underwrite those assets, then pair them with crypto-native operators who can help structure and distribute them onchain.

“The hard part of RWAs was never tokenization. It’s everything after: who buys the asset, where it trades and what happens when someone needs to get out,” Fischer said.



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NEAR Crypto Tokenized Stock Launch Puts Distribution Ahead of Scale

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NEAR crypto and Ondo Finance offer 20 tokenized stocks and ETFs to eligible non-US users, with cross-chain access planned

NEAR crypto and Ondo Finance have launched access to tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on near.com, opening with 20 assets including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, SPY and QQQ.

Eligible users fund their accounts with stablecoins or other supported crypto from more than 30 networks, with NEAR Intents acting as the cross-chain distribution layer that can eventually route these tokenized securities to connected wallets, applications, and DeFi protocols.

The launch is a distribution story before it is an asset-count story. Ondo’s broader tokenized stocks platform already lists more than 100 stocks and ETFs, according to Ondo’s own documentation, but NEAR’s initial rollout exposes only a fifth of that catalog through Near.com.

NEAR Crypto and the Multichain Route to Ondo Stocks

Near.com functions as the initial user-facing surface for this integration, while NEAR Intents is positioned separately as the cross-chain routing layer, according to the launch material from Ondo Finance.

That distinction matters: near.com is where users open accounts and trade, while NEAR Intents is the plumbing intended to eventually let other wallets and DeFi protocols surface the same real-world assets to their own users.

Ondo’s own documentation describes the broader Ondo Stocks platform as offering more than 100 tokenized stocks and ETFs, spanning individual equities, indexes such as QQQ and SPY, and fixed-income ETFs like TLT, TIP and AGG.

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The 20-asset NEAR selection is a subset of that catalog, not a replacement, and Ondo has said the full app at app.ondo.finance remains the reference point for the complete list.

Purchases run through USDon, a stablecoin Ondo says is backed 1:1 by a U.S. dollar held in an Ondo Stocks brokerage account. When a user buys with a different stablecoin, the platform atomically swaps it into USDon before executing the tokenized stock purchase.

It then reverses the process on redemption, a mechanic Ondo’s documentation frames as designed to keep the buy-and-sell flow instant rather than dependent on settlement windows.

How Users Access the Initial Offering

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The reported flow is straightforward: an eligible near.com user deposits stablecoins or other supported crypto from any of the more than 30 connected networks, then swaps directly into an available tokenized stock or ETF in a single transaction.

That collapses what would normally be a multi-step bridging-and-onboarding process into one action inside the near.com interface. The current selection is capped at 20 assets, not the full Ondo catalog, and the source material doesn’t publish a complete list beyond the named examples.

Traders looking for a specific ticker outside that initial set should check current availability directly rather than assume parity with Ondo’s broader 100-plus offering.

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Why Distribution, Not Asset Count, Is the Main Change

NEAR crypto and Ondo Finance offer 20 tokenized stocks and ETFs to eligible non-US users, with cross-chain access planned
SOURCE: TradingView

The more consequential piece of this launch is the routing layer, not the ticker list. NEAR Intents is a cross-chain distribution mechanism that can push Ondo’s tokenized equities to wallets, applications, and DeFi protocols beyond near.com itself, meaning the 20-asset figure is a starting point for a pipe built to widen, not a ceiling.

Ondo currently restricts its tokenized securities to names trading on the NYSE and NASDAQ, though its documentation leaves room to expand to other countries’ exchanges over time.

Other issuers are pursuing distribution through different rails; Robinhood’s tokenized-stock push on its own chain is a useful comparison point for how competing platforms are structuring access, though the mechanics differ enough that a direct read-across isn’t warranted here.

What are the Eligibility and Jurisdiction Limits for the Near Crypto Ondo Stocks?

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None of this is available to US persons. Ondo’s documentation states plainly that Ondo Stocks products are offered only to organizations and individuals outside the United States and other prohibited jurisdictions, subject to its own eligibility criteria, and that the products are not accessible in certain regions at all.

These are tokenized exposures to NYSE and NASDAQ-listed securities, not shares held in a conventional brokerage account, and regulators are still working out how to treat that distinction across jurisdictions.

The broader US regulatory posture toward tokenized equities remains unsettled, and nothing in this launch changes that for US-based traders.

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IBM Links Digital Asset Haven to Swift Ledger for Tokenized Deposits

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IBM opens beta Swift ledger link for 24/7 tokenized deposits

IBM opens beta Swift ledger link for 24/7 tokenized deposits

IBM’s beta link lets banks instruct tokenized deposit transfers on Swift’s ledger using existing payment messages and compliance processes.



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Fed Rate Cut Delayed as Strong Jobs Data Tests Bitcoin

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Citi sees the Fed first rate cut in June 2027 after 162,000 August jobs, while Bitcoin ETF inflows show demand despite higher yields.

Citigroup pushed its forecast for the Fed first interest rate cut to June 2027 after US employers added 162,000 jobs in August, more than triple the 53,000 economists had penciled in. The revision extends the timeline for lower borrowing costs by nine months.

Now, it opens a question Bitcoin traders have been circling all year: how much longer can a resilient labor market keep real yields, the dollar, and interest rates elevated before it actually breaks risk-asset demand?

The August payrolls report did more than beat expectations on the headline number. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, labor-force participation rose 0.2 percentage point, and prior months were revised sharply higher: July payrolls flipped from a reported loss of 23,000 to a gain of 21,000, while June was revised up by 11,000.

Citi sees the Fed first rate cut in June 2027 after 162,000 August jobs, while Bitcoin ETF inflows show demand despite higher yields.

Citi economists Andrew Hollenhorst and Veronica Clark concluded that employment conditions looked stable enough for the Federal Reserve to shift its attention squarely to inflation.

Citi had previously been one of the more dovish desks on Wall Street, calling for cuts in October and December 2026 and January 2027. That call is gone. The bank now projects reductions in June, September, and December 2027, and the market reaction was immediate: rate futures pushed the probability of a September Fed hike from 52% to 61% the day the jobs data landed, a repricing that rattled Bitcoin within hours.

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What Does the Higher-for-Longer Policy Mean for Bitcoin?

The Fed followed through. On September 16, the Fed raised the benchmark rate by 25 basis points to a 3.75%-4% target range, the first hike since July 2023, despite traders wanting a cut. Sixteen of 18 officials projected at least one more increase before year-end, and inflation has now sat above the Fed’s 2% target for more than five years, according to the Fed’s own framing of the data.

The mechanical case against Bitcoin here is straightforward: Treasury yields and a stronger dollar compete with risk assets for capital, and Bitcoin generates no yield simply by being held, so every basis point of delay in cuts raises the opportunity cost of parking capital in it instead of government debt.

This is the textbook crypto liquidity headwind, and it showed up in price. But the textbook case stopped predicting price action the moment the hike actually landed.

Bitcoin (BTC)
24h7d30d1yAll time

Bitcoin briefly dropped toward $75,000 immediately after the September 16 decision, then reversed and climbed past $86,000 as ETF demand returned, yields eased and short sellers were squeezed out of bearish positions, a pattern consistent with BTC’s prior recoveries when yields soften. That rebound can’t be pinned on a single cause, and it doesn’t prove Bitcoin has decoupled from monetary policy. It does prove that a rate hike alone isn’t a mechanical sell signal once other flows are running in the opposite direction.

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Bitcoin Levels, Flows, and Citi Fed Rate Cut Expectation

The price path around these events is the clearest evidence of how sensitive BTC remains to macro surprises. Bitcoin fell below $80,000 right after the August jobs release, reversing from an intraday high near $81,370, and was later quoted near $79,600, down about 1.5% on the day.

Ahead of the September Fed meeting, as hike odds moved above 92%, BTC fell below $76,000 before the post-decision dip toward $75,000 and the subsequent climb to a brief touch of $87,000, per the latest price action review.

Flow data backs up the recovery narrative. US spot Bitcoin ETFs logged $433 million in net inflows on September 18 after a stretch of heavy withdrawals earlier that week, suggesting institutional demand re-engaged once the hike was priced in rather than feared.

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For us, the actionable variables are the same ones that moved Bitcoin twice in the past month: real yields, Treasury yields, dollar strength, spot ETF flows, and the next round of inflation and payroll prints.

If labor data stays firm and inflation proves sticky, a higher-for-longer stance keeps yields elevated and tightens the liquidity backdrop for crypto. If yields ease and ETF demand persists, Bitcoin can keep absorbing hawkish surprises well before Citi’s June 2027 cut ever arrives.

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Solana Foundation Names Conlan Strategy Chief, Raees Payments GM

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Solana Foundation has appointed former Binance chief marketing officer Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and former Polygon Labs executive Jamal Raees as general manager of payments.

Conlan will lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring businesses onto Solana, the foundation said Thursday. She spent three years at Binance and previously held senior roles at OKX, CAA Sports and Havas.

Raees said he would deepen the foundation’s engagement with major payments companies and focus on infrastructure used by teams building payment services on Solana.

“My focus will be on driving greater adoption and usage of stablecoins and tokenized deposits, with an emphasis on global markets,” he said in a statement provided by Solana Foundation.

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The appointments follow the March launch of the Solana Developer Platform, which includes Modern Treasury as a payments infrastructure partner. Mastercard and Western Union were named as early users of the platform.

Separately, Amazon Web Services included Solana among the networks supported by its x402 feature, which lets website owners charge AI agents in USDC for access to content.

Solana is preparing to deploy Alpenglow, a planned network upgrade intended to reduce transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. The faster finality remains a target for the upgrade.

The network has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far in 2026. It also reported more than $4.5 billion in real-world assets on the network and more than $620 million in tokenized equity supply.

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Related: Era of pure crypto exchanges is ending, Bybit CEO says

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.



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Solana news: Solana Foundation hires Binance, Polygon veterans for tokenized finance push

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Solana news: Solana Foundation hires Binance, Polygon veterans for tokenized finance push

The Solana Foundation has appointed former Binance executive Rachel Conlan as its new chief strategy officer, adding a high-profile crypto industry veteran as the Solana (SOL) blockchain makes a bigger push into institutional finance and tokenized assets.

Conlan will lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring more companies onto Solana, the foundation said Thursday. She spent previously three years at Binance, most recently as global chief marketing officer, before leaving the crypto exchange in June.

The foundation also hired Jamal Raees as general manager for payments. Raees joins from Polygon Labs, the development organization behind the Polygon network (POL), and previously worked at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge (now part of Stripe) and crypto payments firm Wyre. He will focus on getting payments companies and other businesses to use Solana for moving money.

The appointments come as Solana increasingly courts traditional financial firms and positions its network as infrastructure for more than crypto trading. Stablecoin payments, tokenized funds and equities have become a bigger part of that pitch as financial institutions experiment with moving assets and settlement onto public blockchains.

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Bitcoin (BTC) Slips Below $85,000 As Rally Loses Momentum

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Bitcoin Btc Slips Below 85 000 As Rally Loses Momentum


Bitcoin Btc Slips Below 85 000 As Rally Loses Momentum

Bitcoin’s latest rally has lost momentum after reaching a high of $87,397 on Monday (September 21). The price pulled back sharply after stronger-than-expected PMI data pushed Treasury yields higher and flushed $125.9 million in long positions.

The flagship cryptocurrency is currently trading around $83,698, down 2.58% over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) Pulls Back After $87,000 Rejection

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This article was originally published as Bitcoin (BTC) Slips Below $85,000 As Rally Loses Momentum on Crypto Breaking News – your trusted source for crypto news, Bitcoin news, and blockchain updates.

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ARK Invest, Securitize (SECZ) tokenize venture fund with OpenAI, Anthropic stakes on Ethereum

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ARK Invest, Securitize (SECZ) tokenize venture fund with OpenAI, Anthropic stakes on Ethereum

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest is putting its venture fund on blockchain rails, bringing a portfolio that includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks onto blockchain rails.

The ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) will issue tokenized interests using infrastructure from Securitize (SECZ), with the tokenization firm handling onchain issuance and the investor experience.

ARKVX will be first available on Ethereum with other networks potentially following, the firms said.

“Making the ARK Venture Fund available onchain is a natural extension of our mission to democratize access to technologically enabled disruptive innovation,” Wood, ARK’s founder, CEO and chief investment officer, said in a statement.

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For Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo, one draw is giving investors diversified exposure to sought-after private technology companies.

“If you don’t know whether OpenAI or Anthropic are gonna win the AI race, here you get both of them in a diversified pool,” Domingo told CoinDesk TV.



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Pressure from the bond market hits a new level, and US stocks slide on worries about inflation

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Pressure from the bond market hits a new level, and US stocks slide on worries about inflation

NEW YORK (AP) — Pressure from the U.S. bond market hit a new level on Wall Street Wednesday after a surprisingly strong report on the economy raised worries about inflation, while oil prices halted their slide. The squeeze caused U.S. stocks to sink.

The S&P 500 fell 0.8% after finishing the prior day just 0.4% below its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 352 points, or 0.7%, while the Nasdaq composite sank 1.1% from its own all-time high.

Stocks wilted after the yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped to 5.10% from 4.96% late Tuesday, which is a considerable move for the bond market. High yields undercut prices for stocks and other investments, while also slowing the economy by making it more expensive for everyone to borrow money.

Wednesday’s jump briefly sent the 10-year yield near 5.14%, back to where it was in 2007 before the global financial crisis caused yields to crater. Yields have been climbing since bottoming out in the COVID pandemic, and they’ve accelerated recently because of worries about high inflation, the U.S. government’s heavy debt and other concerns.

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Worries about inflation got a jolt Wednesday morning after a preliminary report suggested growth in U.S. business activity surged to its strongest level in more than five years. That’s an encouraging signal, to be sure, but it indicates the economy may have plenty of fuel for more inflation.

The report also suggested costs for businesses are leaping at the fastest rate in four years, in part because of more expensive oil, according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. That could mean businesses will pass those higher costs onto their customers in coming months.

Oil prices are high because of worries that the war with Iran will keep oil bottled up in the Middle East for a long time.

The price for a barrel of Brent oil to be delivered in November rose 3.9% to $103.08 on Wednesday. That reversed a decline for Brent, which had been falling since it neared $110 last week. Talks are continuing with mediators between U.S. and Iranian officials, but nothing concrete has come from it yet.

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Brent oil to be delivered in December, where most of the trading in the market has moved, rose 2.8% to $98.12 per barrel.

Even with its recent decline, the price for a barrel of Brent remains much higher than the roughly $72 it cost before the war with Iran began.

Inflation has remained so stubbornly high that the Federal Reserve raised its short-term interest rate last week for the first time in three years in hopes of slowing down increases in the cost of living.

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Fed Gov. Michael Barr said in a speech on Wednesday that further hikes “are likely to be needed” to get inflation to the Fed’s 2% target. Traders now see better than a 50% probability that the Fed will hike its federal funds rate at each of its next two meetings, in October and December, according to data from CME Group.

So far, strong growth in profits for U.S. companies has helped support the U.S. stock market despite higher interest rates and more expensive oil.

KB Home became the latest to deliver a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. But its stock nevertheless swung between losses and gains after the homebuilder’s executive chairman said conditions got even tougher for the industry over the last three months. It finished with a loss of 3%.

Potential customers are becoming more cautious because of higher mortgage rates caused by the rise in the 10-year Treasury yield. They also are feeling pressure from “geopolitical uncertainty and broader economic headwinds,” Jeffrey Mezger said.

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General Mills likewise reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. But the company behind the Cheerios and Progresso brands said it also expects growth this fiscal year to fall below its historical track record “driven by a continued challenging consumer backdrop,” and it did not raise its forecast for profit over the full fiscal year.

Its stock flipped between gains and losses before rising 1%.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 58.61 points to 7,706.03. The Dow dropped 352.10 to 51,511.59, and the Nasdaq composite sank 308.24 to 26,936.04.

In stock markets abroad, indexes slipped across much of Europe and Asia.

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Stock indexes fell 1% in Hong Kong and 0.4% in Shanghai ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, which is kicking off Wednesday.

The leaders are expected to attempt to steady fragile ties in their third meeting since Trump returned to the White House. That is despite the world’s two largest economies seeking the upper hand on artificial-intelligence developments and trade, while pushing for leverage in persistent hot spots like Iran and Taiwan.

___

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.

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