https://livebtcnews.com/ Bitcoin and crypto industry headlines, summarized in our own words with a link to every original source. en-us Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:46:09 +0000 60 https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-why-did-bitcoin-fall-below-76-000-blame.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-why-did-bitcoin-fall-below-76-000-blame.html Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Tech stocks dragged it down. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% and the S&P 500 lost 4.3% on Thursday, November 5, and bitcoin dropped more than 5.3% over 24 hours to below $76,000, erasing Wednesday's post-election rebound, CoinDesk reported at 4:53 a.m. Eastern Friday. Analysts at FalconX and GSR tied the selloff to worries that the Democratic sweep of Congress could slow the buildout of AI data centers, and IG's Axel Rudolph described crypto as "dragged into the AI rout as investors rapidly unwind risk across technology and crypto markets," The Block reported. CoinGlass counted $1.26 billion of liquidations in 24 hours, $1.12 billion of them longs. Simon-Peter Massabni of XS.com said asset managers "liquidate alternative holdings to meet margin calls and deleverage portfolios." Bitcoin bounced from about $75,200 near 23:00 UTC Thursday to about $76,150 by CoinDesk's 6:49 a.m. Eastern update. The positioning beneath that bounce looks cautious: open interest edged up to $22.1 billion from $21.8 billion, funding briefly went negative on Bybit, and one-week put skew steepened to about 15% from 11% a week earlier. A cluster of long liquidations sits between $74,000 and $75,000 on Binance's heatmap, with $76,800 to $77,000 the level overhead. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-bitcoin-etfs-lose-430-million-in-a-day.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-bitcoin-etfs-lose-430-million-in-a-day.html Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional One day of inflows did not start a trend. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs shed a net $430.2 million on Thursday, November 5, after Wednesday's $74.6 million inflow, bringing week-to-date redemptions to $869.8 million, according to SoSoValue data cited by CoinDesk. Fidelity's FBTC, the fund that carried Wednesday's inflow, lost $199.9 million, BlackRock's IBIT $105 million, its fifth straight session of outflows, and Grayscale's GBTC $49.9 million, The Block reported. Across U.S. crypto ETFs the day's net outflow topped $540 million, and the weekly total passed $1.1 billion. The smaller products bled too: Zcash ETFs lost $11 million combined, Hyperliquid ETFs $3 million and Solana ETFs $1.2 million, while XRP funds saw no flows, per SoSoValue. Capital.com's Kyle Rodda said "the regulatory and political risks arise at a time when the proverbial AI trade was already on shakier foundations." Bitwise's André Dragosch takes the other side, expecting bitcoin to outperform U.S. stocks as the AI trade unwinds and arguing that it now responds more to the dollar and rate expectations than to economic growth. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-165-000-jobs-and-a-78-chance-of.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-165-000-jobs-and-a-78-chance-of.html Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Nearly triple the forecast. U.S. employers added 165,000 jobs in October against the 65,000 economists polled by Reuters expected, September was revised up to 60,000 from 29,000, and unemployment slipped to 4.1% from 4.2%, Reuters reported. Wages rose 0.4% on the month and 3.1% on the year. Markets read it as a case for tighter policy: bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike next month rose to 78% from 70%, the two-year Treasury yield climbed 6 basis points to 4.52% and the dollar index gained 0.7% to 102.22. "It strengthens the argument for keeping rates higher for longer," said Susannah Streeter, and Peter Cardillo went further: "that just confirms that the Fed has no choice but to raise rates in December." Bitcoin barely moved. It briefly topped $76,100 around the 8:30 a.m. Eastern release and sat near $75,500 when Bitcoin Magazine published at 9:30 a.m., which the outlet said shows most of the week's damage came from the equity selloff, not the labor data. CryptoTicker notes bitcoin is below its 100-day average near $76,950, with the 200-day near $73,200. From $75,500, $100,000 by December 31 needs 32.5% in 56 days, about 0.5% a day, and $80,000 needs 6%. Run your own numbers in our bitcoin price target calculator. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-zcash-nu7-is-live-blocks-every-25-seconds.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-zcash-nu7-is-live-blocks-every-25-seconds.html Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mining It went live at 02:34 UTC. Zcash's ninth network upgrade activated at block 3,543,405 on Friday, November 6, cutting the target block time from 75 seconds to 25, CoinPaprika and crypto.news reported, citing the ZIP 259 specification and the block record. Early blocks averaged about 39 seconds while difficulty adjusted. "NU7 has successfully activated on mainnet. A new era of Zcash is here," the project's X account posted. Miners now keep 40% of transaction fees, down from all of them, and the other 60% goes into a reserve scheduled to feed block rewards from around February 2031; the halving schedule and the 21 million cap are unchanged. Capacity for simple private payments rose from about 3 to more than 6 per second, per CoinDesk figures cited by CoinPaprika. The cost is Sprout, the original 2016 privacy pool. With its transaction type disabled, about 12,224 ZEC still inside cannot be spent even with valid keys. Co-founder Sean Bowe has outlined a possible recovery path, but nothing is approved. ZEC traded near $1,258 at CoinPaprika's 13:00 UTC publication, down 4.7% in 24 hours, and Zcash ETFs lost $11 million on Thursday, per SoSoValue. See what each level from $500 to $5,000 would take by your date with our Zcash price target calculator. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-altcoin-season-index-hits-44-its-lowest-since.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-06-altcoin-season-index-hits-44-its-lowest-since.html Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets The rout hit altcoins hardest. CoinMarketCap's altcoin season index fell to 44 out of 100, its lowest reading since September, CoinDesk reported Friday morning. Ether lost 7.3% over 24 hours against bitcoin's 5.3%. Hyperliquid's HYPE is about 19% below the $96 peak it reached last week, when a deal between ICE and Trade[XYZ] to bring Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures to U.S. retail traders sent it higher. World Liberty Financial's WLFI, down about 10% since Tuesday's election and more than 66% this year, said it plans more token buybacks funded partly by fees from its USD1 stablecoin reserves, and traded around $0.046. The TRUMP memecoin set a record low this week. A few names moved the other way. Injective's INJ rose 14% on the week after Nasdaq approved the listing of Canary Capital's staked INJ ETF, according to an SEC filing, and Monero's XMR fell only 3.2% over the 24 hours. CoinDesk's memecoin index gained 4% on Friday's bounce. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-bitcoin-etfs-snapped-a-three-day-outflow-streak.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-bitcoin-etfs-snapped-a-three-day-outflow-streak.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional Fidelity did the heavy lifting. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $74.6 million on Wednesday, November 4, ending three straight sessions of redemptions, per Farside Investors data cited by crypto.news. Fidelity's FBTC added $236.7 million, ARK's ARKB $19.9 million and Bitwise's BITB $15.2 million, while BlackRock's IBIT, the largest fund, lost another $201.2 million. One positive day does not undo the run before it: crypto.news counts $643.2 million out on October 30, $398.6 million on November 2 and $115.6 million on November 3, about $1.16 billion in all. The flows turned as the price recovered from a low near $75,600 during the election count to above $81,000, and bitcoin sat around $80,320 when crypto.news published at 07:19 UTC Thursday. About $378 million of bearish bets were liquidated within one hour of the move, and CoinGlass showed roughly $747 million in total liquidations at press time. Opinions on what comes next split. Trader Ted Pillows wrote that "the bottom is in," while also putting the odds of a new all-time high by July 2027 at just 16%. CryptoQuant contributor CryptoZeno reads his cycle indicators as a "Watch / Mild Pressure" zone and argues the correction may not be finished. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-is-the-clarity-act-dead-td-cowen-says.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-is-the-clarity-act-dead-td-cowen-says.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Regulation For the next two years, TD Cowen thinks so. In a note published after the Associated Press called both chambers of Congress for Democrats, Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg said the outcome closes the door on market structure legislation the crypto industry could support, Bitcoin Magazine reported. His reason is investigations: Democratic probes of the Trump family's crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial, "may make it impossible to advance a version of Clarity that the crypto sector could back." The bill passed the House 294-134 in July 2025, failed a Senate cloture vote 49-50 on September 15, and dies when this Congress ends on January 3 unless the lame-duck session revives it. Seiberg also pointed to Sherrod Brown returning to the Senate from Ohio after about $64 million in industry money was spent against him, a result he says "damages the crypto industry's political clout." The regulatory path stays open in his view: the election "will not impact the ability of regulators to push their de-regulatory agendas," so he expects the SEC and CFTC to keep moving on crypto, prediction markets and perpetual futures without Congress. He named the CME lawsuit over the perps approval as the live threat to that route. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-what-replaces-the-clarity-act-house-democrats-sketch.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-what-replaces-the-clarity-act-house-democrats-sketch.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Regulation A rewrite of Maxine Waters' consumer bill of rights, if early reports hold. House Democrats are discussing turning Waters' Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights into their own market structure bill next Congress, with more authority for the SEC and less for the CFTC, Bitcoin Magazine reported, citing an X post by journalist Eleanor Terrett and three industry sources who spoke with Democratic staffers. No bill text exists, and the details have not come from lawmakers. The plan would fold in Democratic CLARITY Act amendments that were not adopted and provisions Senate Democrats had agreed with Republicans before the failed September cloture vote, likely alongside ethics rules restricting crypto activity by the president and other federal officials. Waters is in line to chair the House Financial Services Committee in January, taking over from French Hill, the CLARITY Act's sponsor. The House version of CLARITY handed the CFTC most digital commodity trading, so a tilt toward the SEC would flip that split. Her bill of rights was blocked 4-8 by the House Rules Committee in July 2025, along with a proposal to bar members of Congress, presidents and vice presidents from issuing or endorsing digital assets. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego told Bloomberg Law: "The industry and the Republicans screwed up. That was the best bill they were going to get." https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-polygon-may-hard-fork-to-claw-back-6.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-polygon-may-hard-fork-to-claw-back-6.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security It would take a change to the chain's own rules. A member of Polygon Labs' validator support team posted a proposal on November 4 for a coordinated hard fork of Polygon PoS that would move about 70.49 million POL, roughly $6.5 million at October 29 prices, out of five attacker-controlled addresses and into recovery wallets controlled by the victims, crypto.news reported. Of that, 46.63 million POL sits at one address tied to the Binance theft and 23.86 million POL at four addresses tied to a separate Polymarket incident, where a third-party provider was compromised the same week. Block producers have already restricted transfers from those addresses, but a block list does not return funds, and without the private keys the only route is rewriting the ledger. The proposal itself calls this an "extreme action that should not be reproduced commonly" and rejects building a standing recovery mechanism, citing worries about permanent authority over user funds. It also alleges the attacker offered validators cash to help move the coins. Discussion was set for Polygon's governance call on November 5 at 14:30 UTC; if approved, testing on the Amoy testnet could take about two weeks, and nodes that fail to upgrade could end up on a split chain. No activation block has been chosen. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-zcash-s-nu7-upgrade-triples-block-speed-and.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-zcash-s-nu7-upgrade-triples-block-speed-and.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mining About 12,226 ZEC will likely never move again. Zcash's NU7 network upgrade activates at block 3,543,405, which reports put around November 5 to 6, and drops the target block time from 75 seconds to 25, with the reward per block cut in proportion, according to TechFlow and CryptoTicker. It also ends support for the version 4 transaction format, the only route out of Sprout, the original shielded pool launched in October 2016. Once nodes reject v4 transfers, coins left in Sprout cannot be spent even by owners holding valid keys. TechFlow, citing CoinDesk, puts the stranded amount near 12,226 ZEC, about $16 million at roughly $1,300 a coin. Holders have been leaving: about 10,037 ZEC exited Sprout over the past week, including a net 9,094 ZEC on Sunday, before daily outflows fell to about 40 ZEC by Wednesday. ZIP 2003 reserves space for a possible future withdrawal path, though the specification warns the funds "will most likely never be extractable again." Balances on exchanges and on transparent addresses are unaffected. Miners and node operators need Zebra 7.0.0, since zcashd is no longer supported, and CryptoTicker reports transaction fees will split 60% to the reserve and 40% to miners. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-zcash-grants-committee-drops-its-98-000-zec.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-05-zcash-grants-committee-drops-its-98-000-zec.html Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets The proposal lasted five days. The Zcash Community Grants committee, which floated on October 29 a plan to move 36,200 of its roughly 91,500 ZEC into the Network Sustainability Mechanism and waive a large share of its future Dev Fund income, withdrew it on the Zcash forum on November 3: "We've decided not to take this proposal forward," CryptoTicker reported. Together the transfer and waiver came to about 98,000 ZEC, around $126 million at current prices. The committee still receives 8% of new ZEC, about 144 coins a day, and three rival proposals remain open: co-founder Sean Bowe would end the allocation outright, a draft from Tachyon Group and Shielded Labs backed by Bowe and Zooko Wilcox would send 50,000 ZEC to the sustainability fund, and Daira-Emma Hopwood would keep the 8% but tie it closer to real ZEC usage. None is adopted, and any change to issuance needs a future network upgrade, since NU7 includes none of them. ZEC traded at $1,283.61 at 7:50 p.m. CET on November 4, per CoinGecko data cited by CryptoTicker, up 5.7% in 24 hours and about 13% off Tuesday morning's $1,134.67 low, with a market value near $21.9 billion. See what any level from $500 to $5,000 would take by your chosen date with our Zcash price target calculator. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-how-did-binance-get-hacked-a-fake-job.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-how-did-binance-get-hacked-a-fake-job.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security It started with a recruiter who did not exist. Binance's initial incident report, published November 3 and summarized by TheStreet, traces the $6.34 billion theft back about five months. In June, a wallet DevOps engineer installed a tampered copy of Homebrew while looking for an AI coding tool; Binance caught it and replaced his laptop, but the attackers had already learned who he was and who sat near him. In September, a second engineer was approached on a job site by someone posing as a project director, sat through a video interview with a fake HR representative and a chat with the CEO of a company that does not exist, and then downloaded a coding "assignment" to his work computer. It swapped his pyenv Python tool for a malicious copy, a zero-day that Binance's endpoint protection missed. On October 20 the attackers used that machine and an internal Binance AI tool to take over two more engineers' computers and lift a deployment token. On October 29 they logged in at 17:15 UTC, finished setup at 19:56 and began moving funds at 20:05. Freezing withdrawals did not stop them, because an EIP-7702 delegation gave their contract on-chain control of the Binance14 hot wallet until Binance revoked it at 00:10 UTC on October 30. "This should not have happened," the report says. Changpeng Zhao told Yahoo Finance: "There's no 100% security." https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-is-binance-solvent-after-the-hack-its-proof.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-is-binance-solvent-after-the-hack-its-proof.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security For ten tokens, Binance says yes. The exchange finished a zero-knowledge proof of reserves for its October 31, 00:00 UTC snapshot covering BNB, BTC, ETH, RLUSD, SOL, USD1, USDC, USDT, XRP and ZEC, which lets each user check that their balance is counted and backed at least one to one, Unchained reported. A Merkle tree shows every account was included and a zk-SNARK shows reserves exceed liabilities without exposing anyone's balance; the verifier is open source on GitHub, and Binance says it was independently audited. The gaps are timing and coverage. The snapshot predates the November 1 withdrawal rush, and the roughly 5% of losses Binance has not yet replaced sits in less liquid tokens outside the ten. A second snapshot was set for November 4 with more tokens, and co-CEO Yi He says each proof "will take about 40 to 50 hours after the snapshot is completed." The story behind the theft has also grown: Binance first pointed to one compromised laptop, then found "additional points of breach," and co-CEO Richard Teng says the attacker "did not simply use one engineer's permissions." Ram Ahluwalia's verdict on the sector was blunt: "It's all about trust, it's all about confidence." https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-16-5-billion-left-binance-s-books-in.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-16-5-billion-left-binance-s-books-in.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Mostly to private wallets, by one tracker's estimate. Binance's tracked exchange assets fell from about $144.9 billion on October 29 to roughly $128.31 billion early on November 2, a drop of about 11.4%, according to DefiLlama data cited by Bitcoin.com News. Part of that is the roughly $6.3 billion the attackers took and part is lower crypto prices, but most of the decline came after withdrawals reopened on November 1. Binance's own figures for that day, 06:00 to 15:30 UTC, showed $4.649 billion withdrawn against $1.01 billion deposited. Whale Factor data put Binance's 24-hour loss near $4.5 billion while the next ten exchanges together took in only about $368 million, with OKX getting the largest share and Kraken gaining 1,422 BTC, so roughly nine of every ten dollars appear to have left exchanges altogether. Not everything is open yet: one critic counted 21 of 252 listed assets available for withdrawal, and a user reported HYPE withdrawals still off. Changpeng Zhao read the numbers the other way: "98% choose to stay! Trust isn't earned by what you say in good times. It's earned by what you do in hard times." https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-bitcoin-dipped-under-76-000-on-election-night.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-bitcoin-dipped-under-76-000-on-election-night.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets The dip did not last. Bitcoin slid just below $76,000 early Wednesday as the U.S. midterm results came in, then climbed back to $78,300 by CoinDesk's 09:37 UTC update, a V-shaped move the outlet tied to election uncertainty clearing. Reports pointed to Democrats winning both chambers of Congress, an outcome Paradigm noted Polymarket had priced above 75% for a while. Options desks leaned bullish through it: election-day bitcoin block trades reached about $660 million notional, more than double the day before, with roughly $420 million of calls bought against about $105 million sold. The funds have not followed yet. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost $515 million in October and about the same again in the first two trading days of November, per SoSoValue. "Bitcoin is now oversold and should rally back towards the 82,000 level as its next target," said Markus Thielen of 10x Research. TDX Strategies' Dick Lo noted a Democratic Congress is generally less friendly to crypto legislation, while divided government makes sweeping hostile policy less likely. Giottus' Vikram Subburaj framed the test: holding above $78,000 while ETF redemptions continue would mean other buyers are absorbing the supply. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-bitcoin-back-above-80-000-after-the-midterms.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-04-bitcoin-back-above-80-000-after-the-midterms.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets A 24.2% gain. Bitcoin rose 3.5% to $80,500 on Wednesday afternoon, The Block reported at 3:09 p.m. Eastern, after briefly pushing toward $81,000, while ether gained nearly 6% to $2,433. Strategy and Coinbase shares rose about 6%, Block jumped 15% after earnings, and Strategy's STRC preferred touched $100 for the first time since May. Futures dropped as much as 2.5% on early vote counts before recovering fully, and about $469 million of leveraged positions were liquidated, per Nexo, whose analysts wrote that "markets took the Democratic win in stride." Bitwise's Matt Hougan reviewed the ten largest crypto hacks and found bitcoin higher 30 days later in five and lower in five, arguing: "Hacks would impact the market if they suggested there is no safer way to hold bitcoin, but there is." 21Shares' Matt Mena is watching whether $76,000 to $78,000 holds and whether $80,000 to $82,000 can be sustained. From $80,500 with 58 days left in the year, $100,000 takes 0.375% a day or 2.65% a week compounded, $90,000 takes 11.8%, and a return to $126,000 takes 56.5%. That is math, not a call. Try your own level and date in our bitcoin price target calculator. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-can-you-withdraw-from-binance-yet-bitcoin-ether.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-can-you-withdraw-from-binance-yet-bitcoin-ether.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Yes, for the biggest coins. Binance restarted withdrawals in phases on Sunday, November 1, with the first window running 06:00 to 09:00 UTC, and opened BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, BNB and XRP plus assets on 15 other blockchains, starting with the networks customers asked for most, CoinDesk reported. More assets opened at 10:54 UTC, and each further phase depends on that chain passing security and stability checks. The exchange says it has now replaced about 95% of what was taken with company funds, up from 90% a day earlier; the last 5% is less liquid tokens outside the top ten that it is still buying. "All BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD, and ZEC balances are fully backed 100%," Binance said, adding: "Our commitment remains unchanged: Binance will bear the financial impact of the stolen funds." TechCrunch noted that on Sunday morning bitcoin deposits and withdrawals were still partially suspended and warned of "temporary delays or longer processing times due to traffic volume." Binance called the restart "a major milestone, but our work continues," and says a full proof-of-reserves report and a detailed incident report are coming. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-fbi-names-tradertraitor-in-the-binance-hack-the.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-fbi-names-tradertraitor-in-the-binance-hack-the.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security It is now official. On Saturday, October 31, the FBI accused TraderTraitor, North Korea's hacking unit, of the $6.3 billion Binance theft, the first government attribution after two days of private analysts pointing the same way, CBS News and the Associated Press reported. The bureau tied the group to the February 2025 Bybit theft of $1.5 billion and said the hackers are converting the stolen funds into ether while preparing them for "further laundering stages." That matches what blockchain firms have tracked since Thursday. TRM Labs' tally of what left Binance includes 18,270 BTC, about 200,630 ETH, 1.875 billion USDT and 823 million USDC on Ethereum, 233.46 million XRP and 970,500 SOL, according to CoinDesk. Roughly $3 billion of it, mostly stablecoins, was frozen by issuers; the bitcoin and ether cannot be blocked the same way. Naming the unit does not return any coins, but it gives exchanges, over-the-counter desks and swap services a formal reason to refuse the attacker's deposits as the laundering moves to its next stage. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-bitcoin-etfs-pulled-643-million-on-friday-their.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-bitcoin-etfs-pulled-643-million-on-friday-their.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional Friday, October 30, was the heaviest day of redemptions for U.S. spot bitcoin funds since June 25: $643.2 million out and nothing in, per Farside Investors data cited by 24/7 Wall St. BlackRock's IBIT lost $233.7 million, Fidelity's FBTC $201 million and ARK 21Shares' ARKB $129.5 million, and the funds' combined assets closed at $98.14 billion, their first close under $100 billion this month. That one session wiped out the week. After four straight days of inflows, the week ending October 30 finished about $202.4 million negative, and October as a whole about $515 million negative, despite IBIT taking in money over the month. Ether funds fared worse, with an 11th straight day of outflows and $1.61 billion gone in October. Laevitas analyst Rick Maeda called Friday "simply a de-risking day, and not capitulation," in comments reported by 99Bitcoins, and the price did not follow the funds down: bitcoin traded at $78,210 early Monday, November 2 (99Bitcoins, 1:24 a.m. Pacific), after printing three higher lows above its $76,326 low of October 30. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-is-blackrock-s-bitcoin-etf-a-hacker-target.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-is-blackrock-s-bitcoin-etf-a-hacker-target.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional That is one founder's opinion, not a known threat. Yishi Wang, founder of hardware wallet maker OneKey, posted on Friday: "I suspect IBIT is already on North Korea's shortlist," 99Bitcoins reported. His reasoning is concentration. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust holds about 815,000 BTC, roughly $63.7 billion at Monday's price, with a single custodian, and Wang estimated a theft the size of Binance's would equal about 9.5% of the fund, or around $4 a share. He also noted that BlackRock does not separately insure the coins. No authority has named IBIT or its custodian as a target, and Wang sells self-custody devices, so the warning comes from someone with a product in the debate. The question lands in the same week the FBI blamed North Korea's TraderTraitor unit for the $6.3 billion Binance theft, and with spot bitcoin funds coming off a $643 million day of redemptions. For holders weighing the choice, it is the old trade between owning shares that a custodian protects and holding coins yourself with your own keys. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-midterms-jobs-and-binance-s-reserves-report-what.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-11-02-midterms-jobs-and-binance-s-reserves-report-what.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Four dates stand out, according to crypto.news. Monday, November 2 brings the October ISM manufacturing survey at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Tuesday is the U.S. midterm election, where Democrats are favored to take the House and the Senate looks closer, and Binance is expected to publish proof-of-reserves verification built on an October 31 asset snapshot. Wednesday has ADP private payrolls at 8:15 a.m. and ISM services at 10:00 a.m. Friday closes with October nonfarm payrolls at 8:30 a.m., where economists expect about 62,000 jobs against September's 29,000 and an unemployment rate near 4.2%. The backdrop is a Federal Reserve that held its rate at 3.75% to 4% on October 28 with two officials favoring an immediate quarter-point hike. Bitcoin fell more than 7% in October and traded at $78,210 early Monday (99Bitcoins, 1:24 a.m. Pacific). From there, $100,000 by the end of December 31 needs a 27.9% gain over 60 days, about 0.41% a day or 2.91% a week compounded; $90,000 needs 15.1% and $80,000 needs 2.3%. That is arithmetic, not a forecast. Check any level against your own date with our bitcoin price target calculator. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-how-much-did-binance-lose-estimates-run-from.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-how-much-did-binance-lose-estimates-run-from.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Binance's own number is about $6.3 billion. In first findings posted late Thursday, October 29, the exchange put the "estimated total impact" at around $6.3 billion, and outside tallies bracket it: Glassnode near $5.3 billion, Chainalysis about $5.912 billion and TRM Labs about $6.36 billion, according to Bitcoin.com News. Even the low end is several times the roughly $1.5 billion Bybit theft of February 2025, the previous record. The drain started around 4:20 p.m. Eastern, when a transaction on the hot wallet known as Binance 14 carried 50 authorizations and one matched, and assets began moving to a new address minutes later, by Blockaid's analysis. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals, says its preliminary investigation points to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop that let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals, and says it "found no evidence of any wallet private key leak." It has not given a date for withdrawals to restart beyond "as soon as the security scan is complete," in co-CEO Yi He's words. The pledge to customers is unconditional: "Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company's funds. User funds are safe." Founder Changpeng Zhao's summary was shorter: "It hurts, but we will survive." Binance has promised a proof-of-reserves update after remediation and a technical post-mortem once the facts are verified. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-who-hacked-binance-trm-labs-points-to-north.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-who-hacked-binance-trm-labs-points-to-north.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security TRM Labs says North Korea, with "high confidence." The blockchain analytics firm attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a unit it places inside the Lazarus Group, citing staging and signature patterns that match the 2025 Bybit theft, which the FBI pinned on the same group, and the April 2026 KelpDAO hack, Bitcoin.com News reported. Independent investigator ZachXBT got there hours earlier: "It's likely the Lazarus Group (DPRK)." No government has formally named a culprit yet. The preparation shows up on chain. Researcher 0xQuit found the attacker's relayer funded by three 0.1 ETH withdrawals from Tornado Cash over the two prior days and a delegate contract deployed at 15:59 UTC, and another analyst says the drain was rehearsed about six hours earlier with three fresh wallets and small test sweeps. At 20:24 UTC, 167,464 ETH left the Binance 14 hot wallet. The laundering has leaned on big trades: about 325 million USDT sold to market makers for roughly 122,300 ETH at a discount of more than 10%, and about 19,760 ETH borrowed on Aave against 60 million USDT. TRM estimates the attacker still holds more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, about $2.4 billion beyond any issuer's reach, and expects bridges, swap services and over-the-counter brokers next. "When North Korea steals at this scale, the money funds weapons proliferation and other destabilising activity," said Ari Redbord, TRM's global head of policy. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-18-270-stolen-bitcoin-sit-in-19-wallets.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-18-270-stolen-bitcoin-sit-in-19-wallets.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security About $1.4 billion of the Binance haul is bitcoin, and there is no button anyone can press to stop it. CoinDesk traced roughly 18,270 BTC leaving Binance's hot wallet in 11 transactions at 20:20 UTC on Thursday, all confirmed in block 973,732, then split across 19 addresses: 17 holding exactly 1,000 BTC each, one with 832.5 and one with 437.7. As of 04:23 UTC Friday none had moved, and the only new activity was spam deposits of a dollar or two. The difference from the stablecoins is structural. Tether and Circle control their token contracts and can blacklist an address, which is how billions of the stolen dollars got frozen within hours. Bitcoin has no issuer, so these coins can only be stopped when they touch an exchange, an over-the-counter desk or a swap service that cooperates. The playbook from February 2025 is the one to watch: in the Bybit theft, which the FBI attributed to the same North Korean group TRM Labs blames here, stolen ether was converted into bitcoin over about 10 days. For scale, Binance lost 7,000 BTC in its May 2019 hack. This time the bitcoin portion alone is more than 2.5 times the coin count. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-about-3-billion-of-the-binance-loot-is.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-about-3-billion-of-the-binance-loot-is.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Mostly Tether and Circle. Tether froze more than 1.567 billion USDT, per chief executive Paolo Ardoino, and Circle about $823 million in USDC, according to Changpeng Zhao, Bitcoin.com News reported. Ripple froze roughly $200 million, which Binance co-CEO Yi He thanked it for "promptly freezing," though the attacker managed to swap 36 million RLUSD for 15,439 ETH before the freeze fully took hold. World Liberty Financial and BitGo froze $27 million in USD1 and 48 million WLFI valued near $2 million, First Digital froze about 3.4 million FDUSD, and Arbitrum's Security Council froze 74.56 million ARB. Aave paused its Ethereum V3 markets as a precaution, saying its contracts were unaffected. The totals depend on who is counting: Binance says roughly $3 billion is frozen, while TRM Labs counts about $2.7 billion across Tether, Circle, Ripple, World Liberty and Arbitrum. Frozen is not the same as recovered. These tokens are locked where they sit, and getting them back to Binance runs through issuers and law enforcement. Everything an issuer could not touch, mainly native ETH and BTC, is the roughly $2.4 billion TRM says is still in the attacker's hands. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-the-binance-hacker-sold-158-million-of-altcoins.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-the-binance-hacker-sold-158-million-of-altcoins.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Uniswap's UNI took the biggest hit. The attacker sold 7.02 million UNI for $39.63 million at about $5.65, alongside 217.5 million ENA for $33.93 million, 7.77 trillion PEPE for $31.66 million, 2.57 million LINK for $26.05 million, 127,953 AAVE for $14.27 million and smaller ONDO and WLD positions, about 70,480 ETH, or roughly $158.25 million, in all, according to Lookonchain figures reported by Bitcoin.com News. The UNI exit took 51 minutes, and the last swap filled about 21% worse than the first, per one analyst. Ether fell 5.2% to $2,190 early Friday. The bigger argument is about how it happened. Binance says a compromised engineer's laptop let an attacker submit unauthorized withdrawals and that it found no evidence of a private key leak. Several researchers are not convinced. TRM Labs says wallets on nine other chains moved funds through ordinary signed transfers and judges that the attacker could likely get the hot wallet system to sign whatever it wanted, and WuBlockchain counts $1.449 billion of outflows on bitcoin and $628 million on Tron, where the EIP-7702 delegation trick seen on Ethereum does not exist. Researcher 0xQuit pushes the other way, noting the attacker used a relayer, which would be unnecessary with the keys in hand. Binance's promised post-mortem will have to settle it. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-1-54-billion-liquidated-after-the-binance-hack.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-30-1-54-billion-liquidated-after-the-binance-hack.html Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Longs paid for most of it. More than $1.54 billion of crypto positions were liquidated by Friday morning, about $1.29 billion of them longs, Bitcoin.com News reported, as bitcoin dropped to a multiweek low of $76,320 before bouncing to $78,400 at 2:03 a.m. Eastern. Bitcoin liquidations alone neared $500 million, up from under $99 million about 12 hours earlier, $405 million of it longs, and ether longs lost more than $300 million. Hyperliquid's HYPE was the lone outlier, rising about 20% toward a new high and squeezing $19.65 million of shorts. From $78,400, the year-end math has moved. Reaching $100,000 by the end of December 31 now takes a 27.6% gain over 63 days, about 0.387% a day or 2.74% a week, compounded. Getting back to the $83,500 monthly open takes 6.5%, and $90,000 takes 14.8%. This is arithmetic, not a forecast. Run any level from $40,000 to $150,000 against your own date with our bitcoin price target calculator, which uses live exchange prices. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-bitcoin-or-gold-which-did-worse-in-2026.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-bitcoin-or-gold-which-did-worse-in-2026.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Gold, by a hair. As of Friday, October 23, gold was down 7.5% for the year and bitcoin 7.3%, which puts them last among major assets in 2026, behind stocks, bonds and cash, according to figures from Charlie Bilello of Creative Planning reported by Bitcoin.com News. For two assets usually pitched as opposites, one a centuries-old store of value and the other a high-volatility newcomer, a 0.2-point gap is about as close as a race gets. The long-run picture is far from even. Bilello puts bitcoin's annualized return since 2011 at 120.6%, against about 6.3% for gold over the same stretch, and gold is coming off a 63.7% gain in 2025, so this year's slide follows a huge run. Gold miners look washed out: The Kobeissi Letter counted about 92% of the GDX gold miners fund's holdings below their 50-day moving average and about 90% below their 200-day, the highest share in three months. After similar readings in March and December 2024, GDX rallied 21.5% and 15.4% over the following month. Our bitcoin priced in gold page tracks the BTC/XAU ratio live, which shows the same contest without the dollar in the way. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-strategy-skipped-its-bitcoin-buy-here-s-where.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-strategy-skipped-its-bitcoin-buy-here-s-where.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional Strategy spent the money buying back its own preferred stock. Between October 19 and 25 it repurchased 2,068,459 shares of its variable-rate Stretch preferred, ticker STRC, for about $204.9 million, according to a filing disclosed on October 26 and reported by Bitcoin.com News. That brings its STRC buybacks to about $398 million over two weeks, compared with $22.1 million spent on bitcoin in the same stretch. The cash came from its dollar reserve, which fell to $242.4 million from $447.3 million a week earlier, and about $956.8 million remains under the preferred repurchase authorization. Its bitcoin holdings stayed at 848,517 BTC, bought for about $64.02 billion at an average of $75,446 per coin. With bitcoin near $79,600 at the time, the company is still above water on the stack, though not by much. The filing gives no reason for the pause. STRC closed at $99.36 the prior Friday, just under its $100 par. Strive went the other way the same week, adding 6,182 BTC for about $511.4 million at an average of $82,732, per chief executive Matt Cole, which brings it to 43,000 BTC. Strive's buys this month have been funded partly by its SATS preferred, which pays a fixed 15% dividend. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-18-835-keystone-wallets-are-being-destroyed-what.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-18-835-keystone-wallets-are-being-destroyed-what.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security If your Keystone hardware wallet arrived before October 20 and passes the device authentication check, the company says it is safe to keep using. The 18,835 units being destroyed are unsold inventory. Keystone disclosed on October 26 that attackers who breached its website also obtained the device authentication key, the key that proves a Keystone wallet is genuine, according to Bitcoin.com News. That key is set at manufacture and cannot be changed or erased, so anyone holding it could build counterfeit wallets that pass the authenticity check. Every stocked device carrying the key will be destroyed, and new units will ship with a replacement. Devices received after October 20 that use the compromised key need extra verification through customer support, even if they pass the check. Keystone says recovery phrases, private keys, wallet credentials and payment details were not exposed, and it is not telling customers to move funds because of the incident. Buyer data was exposed: of 51,083 Shopify records reviewed, 25,964 still held names, shipping addresses, contact details and purchase history from 2024 to 2026, because an automated deletion system failed to clear them after 180 days. "We failed to fulfill our commitment to erase customer data on time, and we accept responsibility for this failure," the company said. The breach came through a flaw in a third-party monitoring tool, first spotted on October 20. Shipments of website orders are paused in favor of preorders. Expect fake recall messages asking you to return your device, and ignore them. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-bitcoin-needs-a-25-4-gain-in-65.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-28-bitcoin-needs-a-25-4-gain-in-65.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets From $79,773.66, CoinDesk's quote on Wednesday morning, bitcoin would have to rise 25.4% to reach $100,000 by the end of December 31. Spread over the 65 days left, that works out to about 0.348% a day, or 2.46% a week, compounded. A return to $90,000 would take 12.8%, about 0.186% a day, and topping the $126,199 peak bitcoin set on Binance in October 2025, per BeInCrypto, would take 58.2%, about 0.708% a day. This is arithmetic, not a forecast. The chart going into today's Fed decision, due at 2 p.m. Eastern, leans against the bulls in the near term. In a Bitcoin.com News report from Monday morning, 9 of 15 moving averages read negative, with price under the 10-period exponential average at $81,342 and the 50-period at $80,746 but still above the 100-period at $77,636 and the 200-period at $76,304. The swing low at $79,146 is the line to hold, with $78,500 and $78,000 below it, while sellers sit at $80,500 to $80,900 and then $81,500 and $82,000. Our bitcoin price target calculator runs the same math for every level from $40,000 to $150,000 against any date you choose, next to how much bitcoin has actually been moving on an average day. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-bitcoin-breaks-its-50-day-average-and-tags.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-bitcoin-breaks-its-50-day-average-and-tags.html Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Bitcoin's 50-day moving average, about $81,784 on CoinGecko daily closes, had acted as a floor since August. Friday's daily candle closed below it for the first time in roughly two months, and the follow-through came on Saturday, when thin weekend liquidity helped push the price to about $79,146, according to Bitcoin.com News. By early afternoon it was trading between $79,400 and $79,700 before climbing back over $80,000. Forced selling did much of the work. A Coinglass reading cited in a Saturday afternoon report showed more than $810 million of crypto positions liquidated over 24 hours, about $689 million of them longs, across more than 200,000 traders, up from $495.74 million in a morning snapshot. The backdrop gave bulls little to hold onto. President Trump said Friday that "we may do another operation against Iran," Brent crude rose above $117, the Dow fell 652 points, and spot bitcoin funds added $137.94 million of Friday outflows to Thursday's $635 million. Support now sits at $78,400 and $77,876, then a wider band from $76,700 to $72,500, while the old 50-day line near $81,700 to $81,800 becomes resistance. Peter Schiff wrote that "the next stop is likely $75K." CoinDesk showed bitcoin at $80,544.56 on Sunday, up 0.14%, with the Fed decision due October 28 and PCE inflation data on October 29. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-a-flash-loan-buys-two-of-x-100.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-a-flash-loan-buys-two-of-x-100.html Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security X 100 Global runs its treasury, which it calls the Freezer, through a three-seat Senate, and on Saturday, October 24, attackers bought a majority of it with borrowed money, Bitcoin.com News reported. They took a flash loan of about 1.94 million USDT from Aave, used it to buy X tokens and registered helper contracts for two of the three seats. Security firm Exvul said the governance design had no voting snapshots, no minimum holding period and no execution delay, so proposals could pass and execute almost at once. The flaw was in the rules, and no line of code was technically broken. One transaction moved 400,000 X tokens out of the Freezer into a pool the attackers controlled, sending about 36 USDT back to the treasury in return, and the tokens were then sold through a Uniswap V3 pool. Blockaid and other researchers traced about $4.85 million of USDT proceeds and roughly 550,000 X tokens across three transactions. The token fell from the $50 to $60 range to about $1.75, a drop of more than 96%, and decentralized exchange liquidity dried up. About 12.2 million X tokens were still in the Freezer in Blockaid's latest update, and as of 3 p.m. Eastern the project had not acknowledged the breach. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-a-uae-led-operation-across-30-countries-flags.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-a-uae-led-operation-across-30-countries-flags.html Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security The UAE Ministry of Interior has released results from Operation Confrontation Ghost, a three-month effort run with law enforcement from 30 countries, Interpol and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Bitcoin.com News reported on October 24. The operation identified more than $39 billion in fraud-linked digital assets now being seized and recovered, according to the report, which also says tokenized assets were used to secure $12 billion in transactions. Participating countries include the UK, Canada, Japan, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia, alongside 13 private partners such as Crypto.com, Mastercard, Meta, TikTok, Group-IB and Trend Micro. Targets were AI-enabled fraud, financial fraud through digital platforms and online sextortion. The arrest count needs care: the article's body, citing the Emirates News Agency, says more than 960 people were arrested, while its own subheading says nearly 100, and the report does not reconcile the two. Other reported results include 3,500 suspects and 15,000 victims identified, more than 4,000 bank accounts blocked, 570 social media accounts closed and 29 fraud centers raided. UN Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Monica Kathina Juma said the "growing use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in fraud" calls for tighter coordination between countries. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-crypto-bets-on-kalshi-and-polymarket-hit-a.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-crypto-bets-on-kalshi-and-polymarket-hit-a.html Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Crypto contracts on Kalshi and Polymarket combined for a record $2.7 billion of notional volume in a single week, driven mostly by short-term bets on where bitcoin goes next, according to a WuBlockchain figure reported by Bitcoin.com News on October 24. The engine is the 15-minute market. On Kalshi, crypto volume reached about $8.17 billion between September 1 and 28, and roughly $7 billion of that, 86%, came from 15-minute contracts, lifting crypto from about 2.6% of the platform's total volume before the format launched to 14.5% in September. Polymarket's US platform did $91.76 million in its 15-minute bitcoin markets in their first full week, September 23 to 29, with daily volume rising from $2.40 million to $27.71 million and transactions from 63,650 to 739,034 over those days. Crypto now ranks second only to sports on both platforms. A 15-minute contract on bitcoin's direction works much like a very short-dated binary option, and the growth comes as Missouri has served Kalshi and Polymarket with cease-and-desist orders, as Bitcoin.com News reported last week. The figures on each platform come from secondary sources the article links to without fully attributing, so treat the breakdown as approximate. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-brazil-votes-today-and-the-country-s-crypto.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-25-brazil-votes-today-and-the-country-s-crypto.html Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Brazilians choose between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro today, with polls closing at 5 p.m. Brasília time, 4 p.m. Eastern. The final Datafolha survey, taken October 23 and 24 from 4,050 interviews with a 2-point margin of error, put Flávio at 51% of valid votes to Lula's 49%, and prediction markets lean further, with Kalshi showing 83% to 18% as of 8 p.m. Eastern on October 24, per The Rio Times. Analyst Diogo Velho Barreto of Pequod Investimentos lays out the market reading: a Flávio win points to a firmer real, lower rate futures and stronger stocks, while a Lula win points to pressure on the real and higher rates, and Goldman Sachs and Macquarie both say the fiscal plan stays unclear either way, down to who would run the Finance Ministry. The real has swung hard on the race. It hit a 17-month high near 4.98 per dollar after the October 5 first round, and the latest confirmed quote we have, from last Monday morning, was about R$5.05. All of this happens against a firm dollar, which Trading Economics had up 1.59% over a month and 3.46% over a year as of October 16, after an 18-month high on October 15. That mix lands on Brazil's crypto buyers in a way it does not on Americans. Registered providers handled $14.68 billion of crypto purchases in the first half of 2026, up 135% from $6.24 billion a year earlier, and more than 90% of it was stablecoins, according to Central Bank of Brazil data reported by Bitcoin.com News. A dollar stablecoin bought in reais is a bet against the real, and bitcoin's price in reais is its dollar price multiplied by the exchange rate, so tonight's result can move what a Brazilian pays for bitcoin even if bitcoin itself does not move. Binance users in Brazil also lose access to Binance Pool and seven other products from October 27. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-bitcoin-etfs-lose-635-million-in-a-day.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-bitcoin-etfs-lose-635-million-in-a-day.html Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Spot bitcoin funds gave back most of their week in one session. Net outflows on Thursday, October 22, reached $635.49 million, the largest single day since June 25, erasing about 60% of the $1.08 billion that had come in over the previous three sessions, according to Bitcoin.com News citing SoSoValue. BlackRock's IBIT lost $254.05 million, Fidelity's FBTC $217.46 million, Ark and 21Shares' ARKB $109.43 million, Grayscale's GBTC $29.53 million and Bitwise's BITB $27.35 million, and Morgan Stanley's MSBT was the only fund to add money, at $2.33 million. The reversal was sharp at the top: IBIT and FBTC took in a combined $447.70 million on Wednesday and handed back $471.51 million a day later. Net assets fell by almost $5 billion to $104.71 billion, the week still stands at a net $442.67 million of inflows, and October is now negative at $174.50 million. Ether funds lost $110.50 million, $75.45 million of it from BlackRock's ETHA, while Grayscale's Zcash fund, ZCSH, added $14.23 million, about $29.4 million across two days. Bitcoin sat at $80,493.06 on CoinDesk's front page Saturday, down 1.35%, with ether at $2,360.53, down 1.50%. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-gold-falls-below-4-000-leaving-bitcoin-and.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-gold-falls-below-4-000-leaving-bitcoin-and.html Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Gold traded as low as about $3,986 an ounce after a 2.8% drop on Thursday, roughly 22% under its January 26 record of $5,110.50, and was at $3,998.72 early Friday in Asia, according to Bitcoin.com News. Silver fell 5.8% to an 11-month low, platinum lost 4%, palladium 3.7% and copper 2.8%, and analysts put the two-day hit to gold and silver at more than $1.3 trillion. The drivers lined up against a metal that pays no yield. Brent jumped about 3.8% to $112.92 on fears of war with Iran, reviving inflation worries, and CME FedWatch showed close to 90% odds of a December rate hike. Even as investors bought Treasuries and the 10-year yield fell about 17 basis points to 4.96%, gold kept sliding. Veteran trader Peter Brandt posted a gold futures chart, said he was "not predicting it," and warned that a continued slide could see the "entire 2025 advance" erased, adding, aimed at Peter Schiff, "That would not be according to your script." Schiff had called gold at $4,145 "a gift" less than a week earlier. On a bitcoin vs gold basis the year is now close to a draw: gold is down about 8% from its 2025 close near $4,354, and bitcoin about 7.4% from its close near $87,498. At $81,000 and $4,000 an ounce, one bitcoin buys a little over 20 ounces, which is the BTC/XAU ratio our bitcoin priced in gold page tracks live. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-initia-halts-its-chain-after-an-attacker-mints.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-initia-halts-its-chain-after-an-attacker-mints.html Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Initia stopped its layer one chain and its rollups at 3:41:30 p.m. UTC on Friday, October 23, after an attacker minted tokens that should not have existed and moved roughly $2.7 million of AUSD, ETH and USDC off the network, according to Bitcoin.com News. Co-founder Ezaan Mangalji said that "to the best of our knowledge so far" the cause was a "Day 0 bug" in Initia's MoveVM running on the Cosmos SDK, which allowed extra tokens to be created on the base chain without touching native INIT. The team says it is working with security firms, validators and exchanges to measure the full damage. Agora, which issues AUSD, said its own contracts were not compromised and it has none on Initia, and that it will freeze AUSD held by attacker addresses on chains where its contracts run. South Korea's Upbit suspended INIT deposits and withdrawals. The token dropped on the news and then recovered to sit 12.5% higher over 24 hours, up 65.8% since September 23. At 7:45 p.m. the chain was still stopped at block height 23,365,925, with no restart date and no confirmed total. Initia is built to help separate networks work together, and in this case a flaw at the base layer reached other networks through the same bridges that design depends on. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-jpmorgan-adds-solana-to-its-tokenized-money-market.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-jpmorgan-adds-solana-to-its-tokenized-money-market.html Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional J.P. Morgan Asset Management has made its tokenized money market funds, MONY and JLTXX, available on Solana, adding a second public chain after Ethereum, Bitcoin.com News reported on October 23. Qualified US investors reach them through Morgan Money, the bank's platform for handling subscriptions, redemptions and token balances in one place. The funds hold ordinary dollar money market strategies and use the blockchain only for ownership records and settlement. They also give stablecoin issuers a place to park reserves, since they can serve as reserve and cash-management tools for eligible issuers under the GENIUS Act framework. The announcement leaves out a lot: no fund sizes, no minimums, no exact launch date for the Solana version and no explanation of why Solana was chosen. The context helps fill some of that in. BlackRock is running its own tests of tokenized funds on public chains, and Solana Sensei data cited in the report shows a record 19,789 holders of tokenized credit on Solana and about 1.5 million holders of tokenized stocks, up 6.7%. Coming days after JPMorgan put bitcoin at a 10% expected annual return, the move shows the bank building on public blockchains even while its model portfolios hold no bitcoin. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-sec-puts-tokenization-ai-and-quantum-computing-on.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-24-sec-puts-tokenization-ai-and-quantum-computing-on.html Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Regulation Tokenized securities appear twice in the fiscal 2027 examination priorities from the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Examinations, Bitcoin.com News reported on October 23. Clearing agency reviews will cover "default management, securities lending, operational controls, and tokenization," and under Regulation SCI, the rules for core market systems, tokenization is listed as an emerging trend alongside artificial intelligence, extended trading hours and quantum computing. What is missing stands out as much. The SEC set no separate exam priorities for cryptocurrencies, stablecoins or decentralized finance, and it added no new requirements for tokenized assets. AI gets far more space. Examiners will look at AI-driven trading and automated advice, including whether firms describe their technology accurately, at fraud, phishing and deepfake risks and the safeguards against them, and at AI used for fraud detection, anti-money laundering work and back-office tasks. The agency says it uses advanced AI in its own exams under human oversight. Quantum computing gets a single mention as an emerging trend, with no link drawn to the public-key cryptography that bitcoin and other blockchains rely on and no call for quantum-resistant safeguards. The report also covers cybersecurity, oversight of outside vendors, investor protection and coordination with the CFTC. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-bitcoin-drops-to-80-836-as-longs-take.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-bitcoin-drops-to-80-836-as-longs-take.html Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets A late Wednesday selloff took bitcoin to an intraday low of $80,836, a drop of nearly 4% on the day from a two-week high above $84,000, according to Bitcoin.com News. Coinglass data showed $135 million of bitcoin longs liquidated over 24 hours, up from about $5 million the day before, against just over $5 million of shorts, and across crypto more than $412 million of longs were wiped out. It came straight after spot bitcoin funds drew more than $1 billion over three days. Bitfinex analysts put the average cost basis of the ETF cohort at $84,333, so the rally ran out close to where recent fund buyers break even. Their breakout checklist is a daily close above $84,400, another ETF day above $300 million, funding near 3% and flat open interest, with targets of $84,100 to $86,100, where about 1.08 million BTC sits at a loss, and then $87,197. On-chain readings are lukewarm: supply in profit at 70% against a 75% long-term baseline, short-term holder spent output profit ratio near 1.003, and a 20-day correlation of 0.78 with the Nasdaq-100. CryptoQuant's Bull Score Index, built from 10 demand, profitability, network and liquidity indicators, has slipped from 80 to 60 since late September. "As long as it stays above 60, the overall momentum remains positive," contributor Darkfost wrote on October 21. CoinDesk had bitcoin at $81,468.65 on Friday, down 0.37%, with ether at $2,397.77, ahead of the Fed's October 28 decision. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-andreessen-horowitz-renames-a16z-crypto-to-a16z-frontier.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-andreessen-horowitz-renames-a16z-crypto-to-a16z-frontier.html Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional Andreessen Horowitz is retiring the name it has used for its crypto investing since 2018. Chris Dixon announced on October 22 that a16z Crypto becomes a16z Frontier, expanding "beyond crypto startups to the broader category of frontier startups," including artificial intelligence, autonomous machines, robotics, biotechnology and new computing devices, Bitcoin.com News reported. His reasoning is that "as blockchains have become more widely used, the lines have blurred," making crypto harder to separate from the rest of technology. The firm says it "will continue to invest in crypto and related ventures," and Dixon pointed to machine-to-machine payments for AI agents as one place blockchains fit the new mandate. The money behind the name is substantial: about $9.8 billion raised across five dedicated funds, $350 million in 2018, $515 million in 2020, $2.2 billion in 2021, $4.5 billion in 2022 and $2.2 billion announced in May 2026, though that is capital raised, not necessarily invested. Dixon will run a16z Frontier alongside Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet. One of the largest pools of crypto venture money now has an official reason to spend outside crypto, and founders raising in the sector will be competing with robotics and AI pitches for the same partners' attention. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-sofi-launches-a-tokenized-deposit-paying-4-40.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-sofi-launches-a-tokenized-deposit-paying-4-40.html Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Institutional SoFi announced SoFi Earn, or SOFIE, on October 22, calling it the first tokenized consumer deposit issued by a nationally chartered US bank, according to Bitcoin.com News. Each SOFIE token stands for $1 held at SoFi Bank, pays a 4.40% annual percentage yield and carries Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation coverage up to applicable limits. At that rate a $5,000 balance would earn about $220 over a year if the balance and rate held steady. The structure is the notable part. SOFIE is a bank deposit in token form, and it converts one for one into SoFiUSD, the bank's separate stablecoin, which handles blockchain transfers and purchases of more than 40 cryptocurrencies. That split lets SoFi pay interest on the deposit side while keeping a separate token for moving money. Chief executive Anthony Noto has described the opening as digital dollars that earn nothing while they sit. Rollout is gradual through November, and the announcement gives no specific eligibility rules or detail on how the insurance applies to tokens held outside SoFi's own platform. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-italian-police-allege-a-mafia-banking-network-moved.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-23-italian-police-allege-a-mafia-banking-network-moved.html Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security Italy's financial police, the Guardia di Finanza, announced on October 21 an operation against a network that allegedly processed more than €110 million, about $128 million, in fake invoices over roughly three years, Bitcoin.com News reported. About €68 million, roughly $79 million, was allegedly sent abroad, some of it by routing money through European banks to crypto exchanges and wallets the network controlled, with part of it moving as the USDT stablecoin. Couriers then returned cash to customers after taking commissions of 2% to 5%. Investigators say they also traced proceeds from drug trafficking and crypto investment scams. More than 350 officers took part, 30 suspects were placed under court-ordered restrictions, 16 in detention and 14 under house arrest, the action reached into Spain and Switzerland, and about €21 million, roughly $24 million, in assets was seized. Prosecutors link the network to the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra and the Foggia mafia, working with Chinese and Albanian associates, and allege that its headquarters was a car rental business in Pero, near Milan. A financial police inspector also faces corruption allegations over a €3,000 payment. None of the accusations have been tested at trial, and the investigation is ongoing. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-bitcoin-etfs-pull-in-1-08-billion-in.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-bitcoin-etfs-pull-in-1-08-billion-in.html Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Three sessions of buying have taken US spot bitcoin funds to about $1.08 billion of net inflows this week, according to Bitcoin.com News citing SoSoValue: $526.60 million on Monday, $23.16 million on Tuesday and $528.40 million on Wednesday, October 21, spread across eight funds. Wednesday looked different from Monday. BlackRock's IBIT took $234.99 million, but Fidelity's FBTC added $212.71 million after losing money two days earlier, and the pair made up about 84% of the day, with GBTC at $32.59 million, Bitwise's BITB at $19.23 million and ARKB at $9.79 million. Trading value hit $3.15 billion and net assets reached $109.31 billion. Zcash's ZCSH drew $15.18 million, ether funds took a modest $14.96 million despite a $29.32 million outflow from BlackRock's ETHA, and Morgan Stanley's Solana fund broke a 12-session outflow streak. None of it held the rally. CoinDesk showed bitcoin at $82,188.65 on Thursday, down 1.03%, with ether at $2,427.60, down 1.04%, after a run toward $85,000 stalled when Tesla and Meta earnings failed to calm worries about artificial intelligence spending. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-ripple-backs-the-sec-s-crypto-framework-and.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-ripple-backs-the-sec-s-crypto-framework-and.html Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Regulation "It is the investment contract, not the crypto asset itself, that is the security," Ripple wrote in an October 20 comment letter on the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets framework, signed by Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty and other company attorneys, per Bitcoin.com News. The proposal would exempt certain crypto fundraising from registration, up to $5 million over four years or $75 million a year, while keeping issuer disclosure and antifraud rules in place. Ripple supports it and argues that binding rules beat enforcement cases and guidance, and that existing law already gives the SEC authority to act even with the CLARITY Act stalled. Its asks are specific. It wants a safe harbor once promised managerial work is finished, abandoned or ended, provided issuers make no new promises, and good-faith protection for Form TR filers, with later SEC determinations applied only going forward. It warns that leaving dealers out of relief from state registration could limit access, widen spreads and push trading offshore, and wants ordinary broker-dealer activity covered. Ripple also asks the SEC to confirm that holding, lending, pledging, collateralizing or staking a token does not on its own trigger registration, and it opposes income or wealth tests for buyers in resale markets. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-a-php-flaw-puts-web-servers-at-risk.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-22-a-php-flaw-puts-web-servers-at-risk.html Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Security A remote code execution flaw in PHP, which Amazon has named PHP2Shell, could let attackers run their own code on a server without logging in, according to CERT-EU advisory 2026-018 as reported by Bitcoin.com News. PHP's maintainers shipped fixes on October 21, but every site has to install them, and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert the same day advising organizations to take PHP-based systems offline until patched. The National Security Agency issued its own warning. Attacks started before the disclosure. Amazon traced an exploitation attempt to October 17, and Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince said his network saw thousands of attempts in the 10 hours before the announcement, a number that has since climbed into the millions. Crypto firms moved quickly to report their exposure. Coinbase and BitGo said they were unaffected, Binance said it put safeguards in place before the patch and has finished remediation, and PancakeSwap and Bitget Wallet said they do not run PHP. No crypto firm had reported an exploit or lost user funds at publication. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao still urged users to "be extra careful visiting ANY web site in the next few days," warning that compromised sites could become "vectors for credential theft or device exploits." https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-21-short-sellers-lose-188-million-as-bitcoin-pushes.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-21-short-sellers-lose-188-million-as-bitcoin-pushes.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Markets Bitcoin briefly reached about $84,739 on Wednesday, October 21, and traded near $84,376 on Bitstamp's hourly chart, after sliding toward $82,200 to $82,600 earlier, according to Bitcoin.com News. The bounce caught traders leaning the wrong way. Coinglass data captured at 11:20 a.m. showed $243.04 million of liquidations over 24 hours, and $188.14 million of that, 77.4%, came from short positions. Bitcoin accounted for $78.42 million, about 94% of it shorts, ether for $47.99 million and Zcash for about $14.80 million. The single largest wipeout was an $8.74 million ether short on Binance, which handled roughly 44% of the total, and 71,223 traders were liquidated in all. Ether climbed to $2,510.18, up 3.22%. The CME FedWatch tool put the odds of no change at the Fed's next meeting at 81%. On the chart, $84,000 to $85,000 is the band to clear, with $86,500 to $86,700 above it, while $82,000 and $80,000 mark the downside. A squeeze driven by forced buying tends to fade unless spot demand follows it. https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-21-zcash-locks-in-block-3-543-405-for.html https://livebtcnews.com/articles/2026-10-21-zcash-locks-in-block-3-543-405-for.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mining Zcash's Network Upgrade 7 now has an activation point: block 3,543,405, expected around November 5, according to CoinDesk. Developer Sean Bowe filed the proposal on October 20 as GitHub pull request #1405, ZIP editors, the group that signs off on consensus rule changes, agreed the height at a meeting, and the request carries two approvals. Two steps remained as of 08:00 UTC Wednesday: merging the height into the deployment spec, ZIP-0259, which still listed it as undecided, and shipping node software that includes it. The changes are now fixed in outline. Blocks shorten from 75 seconds to 25, so an exchange waiting for three confirmations goes from nearly four minutes to about 75 seconds, and 60% of the fees in each block are pulled from circulation and paid out to miners starting around February 2031, with the existing halving schedule kept. Holders have one deadline to note. Sprout, Zcash's original privacy pool, shuts down completely at activation, and any coins still sitting in it become unspendable, so they need to be moved before the upgrade. Follow the rollout in our Zcash news coverage. https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-10-05-the-gold-hedge-that-depends-on-the-system.html https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-10-05-the-gold-hedge-that-depends-on-the-system.html Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Analysis Every major gold product fails at a bank, an issuer, an exchange, or a redemption gate before it fails at a government. https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-28-the-floor-is-rented-not-owned.html https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-28-the-floor-is-rented-not-owned.html Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Analysis Yields at 22-year highs, gold already cracking, and a corporate bid that looks sturdier than it is. https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-24-eleven-months-under-the-line.html https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-24-eleven-months-under-the-line.html Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Analysis The BTC/gold ratio nears 20:1 with the 365-day average just overhead, and the current stretch below it is matching the longest on record. https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-18-chop-at-the-top.html https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-18-chop-at-the-top.html Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Analysis ZEC tagged $1,500 and came straight back. Where the levels sit now, and why the downside targets look more attractive from here. https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-05-zec-price-action-reflecting-early-bitcoin.html https://livebtcnews.com/analysis/2026-09-05-zec-price-action-reflecting-early-bitcoin.html Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Analysis Fresh price discovery above $1,000, and what the chart says about where profit taking makes sense.