A crypto investor is helping a publicly traded mortgage issuer dive into DeFi. Better.com announced on Monday that Framework Ventures has struck a deal to buy 10% of its stock, worth about $45 million at current prices. The move comes as Better.com plans to dive into tokenization, or the act of putting non-crypto assets like stocks in blockchain wrappers, and as the company plans to issue a token backed by $500 million worth of mortgages and other loans.
The planned mortgage tokens, which propose to grant yield to their holders, will at first be available just for accredited investors. but Better.com plans to expand access to a broader set of participants. “We’re going to be issuing these, and then we’re figuring out how do we get this in the hands of consumers,” said Vishal Garg, founder and CEO of Better.com, in an interview.
Garg declined to say when the tokens will go live or what the tokens will be called. One possible name for the retail-focused cryptocurrency is “Home Token,” said a person familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to disclose non-public information.
Removing intermediaries
The move from Better.com, which planned to go public at a $7.7 billion valuation in 2021, comes as the company combats a flagging stock price. The mortgage issuer brands itself as a digital-first housing finance provider and uses AI to evaluate potential homeowners. In 2023, when the company finally went public, it saw its shares dip more than 90% in its first day of trading. Better.com has a market capitalization of about $450 million as of Monday.
The public mortgage issuer is also the latest financial firm to turn to crypto and tokenization. Financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity have started to experiment with tokenization and have issued their own money-market funds on public blockchains. Proponents of putting real-world assets “on chain” say the process cuts out middlemen and reduces fees.
That’s the same pitch Garg made when explaining the rationale behind Better.com’s push into DeFi, or decentralized finance. “There are so many different layers of intermediation that we’re going to be able to take out,” he said. “And if we’re able to finance at a much lower cost than anyone else in the mortgage market, we’re going to be able to offer consumers a much cheaper mortgage than anybody else in the market.”
As part of its plan to tokenize mortgages, Better.com is working with Sky, a DeFi ecosystem that uses real-world assets like mortgages and other financial products to back stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies designed to stay stable as opposed to more volatile tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Framework Ventures is one of the biggest backers of Sky, which has about $18 billion in capital in its ecosystem as of Monday afternoon.
“We’re bridging the crypto coin-denominated universe to the public equities universe, with a substrate of stablecoins,” said Vance Spencer, cofounder of Framework Ventures.
Vitalik Buterin said he no longer agrees with his 2017 view that full chain validation by users is unrealistic.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has said that he no longer agrees with his 2017 claim that average users validating the full blockchain history is a “weird mountain man fantasy.”
His shift, explained in a detailed social media post on January 26, 2026, is driven by advances in cryptographic technology and a renewed focus on user sovereignty.
Buterin Says Full Validation is Now Realistic
In June 2017, during a debate with Ian Grigg, Buterin argued that forcing users to re-execute every historical transaction to verify the state was impractical for most people, leaving them dependent on third-party providers.
He now says that progress in zero-knowledge proofs, especially ZK-SNARKs, changes that trade-off. These cryptographic tools allow users to verify that a chain is correct without replaying its entire transaction history, reducing the computing burden while preserving independent verification. In Buterin’s words, the technology offers the benefits of full validation without forcing users to shoulder its traditional costs.
The developer also framed his shift as a response to practical risks rather than abstract theory. He cited real-world failure modes such as peer-to-peer network outages, high latency, service shutdowns, validator or miner concentration, and censorship by intermediaries. According to him, relying entirely on external RPC providers or developers can become a single point of failure that undermines the promise of self-custody.
To explain his updated stance, Buterin revived the “Mountain Man’s cabin” metaphor. Rather than expecting everyone to live in full self-validation mode daily, he described it as a fallback option that users can rely on when systems break or intermediaries fail. The mere existence of that option, he added, can also pressure third parties to offer fairer and more reliable services.
How This Fits Buterin’s Wider Push For Simplicity and Self-Sovereignty
Buterin’s latest comments match up with a series of recent positions on Ethereum’s long-term direction. On January 19, he warned that the network’s growing protocol complexity could threaten its ability to remain trustless over the next century, calling for a stronger focus on simplicity and pruning unnecessary features. He argued that overly complex systems force users to rely on a small group of experts, weakening true ownership of the network.
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Days later, on January 23, the 31-year-old urged broader adoption of decentralized privacy tools, saying 2026 should be a year to reclaim “computing self-sovereignty.” In that post, he described moving away from mainstream platforms in favor of privacy-focused alternatives such as Proton Mail, Signal, and decentralized social media clients, linking personal software choices to wider digital autonomy.
His earlier writing on scaling Ethereum also points in the same direction. Buterin said in an analysis on January 8 that increasing network bandwidth, not chasing lower latency, is a more realistic way to achieve large-scale growth without giving up decentralization.
Taken together, Buterin’s retreat from his 2017 stance suggests a broader philosophical shift. Instead of assuming users must trade independence for convenience, he increasingly argues that new cryptography and simpler system design can make personal verification practical again, even if only as a safety net when everything else fails.
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Crypto traders often assume that meaningful gains need long timelines to take place, and they often give up during the wait and silence. However, crypto has a habit of shattering that belief without warning. History shows that when conditions line up, altcoins do not grind higher over years. They release and erase multiple years of drawdowns in a matter of weeks.
That memory was highlighted by a crypto commentator known as Waterman on the social media platform X, who noted a familiar seasonal window between February and late April to early May for an altcoin explosion.
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Speed Matters More Than Time
The most notable example of an altcoin rally season was in 2021, when the entire altcoin market went on a rally to new all-time highs, many of which are still unbroken for some cryptocurrencies.
The 2021 cycle delivered some of the clearest reminders of just how fast capital can rotate once momentum takes hold. Solana moved from roughly $20 to $200 in about 50 days, a clean tenfold run. Although Solana has since broken above this peak to register a new all-time high of $293 in January 2025, this was still Solana’s most explosive rally to date.
Dogecoin followed an even sharper trajectory, climbing from $0.07 to a peak of $0.73 in under a month due to speculative interest that flowed into other memecoins like Shiba Inu. Unlike Solana, Dogecoin is yet to reclaim or surpass this peak price.
Avalanche went further, rallying from around $3 to $60 in less than 40 days, a twentyfold expansion that unfolded faster than most long-term projections ever anticipate. None of these moves required years of development or prolonged accumulation.
Total crypto market cap currently at $2.96 trillion. Chart: TradingView
A Timeframe To Watch Closely
Notably, February through late April or early May has more often than not been the period where altcoin performance increases the most. If that pattern repeats, the coming weeks may matter far more than the years that came before them.
At the time of writing, the notion of an altcoin season is still impeded by strong Bitcoin dominance. Much of that comes down to how the entire crypto industry ecosystem has changed massively since 2021, especially after the launch of crypto-based ETFs. That steady demand has kept capital inflows concentrated around Bitcoin and slowed the usual rotation into altcoins.
At the same time, investors have become more selective, favoring cryptocurrencies tied to clearer utility. As a result, many crypto communities have been working to create utility for their meme coins.
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Nonetheless, as noted by Waterman, you only need about four to six weeks for an altcoin to wipe out three to four years of suffering. You don’t need one to two years for altcoins to make massive gains.
Featured image from YouHodler, chart from TradingView
As the Senate Banking Committee prepares to debate long-anticipated legislation that would establish regulation for the crypto industry, the fate of the bill is in limbo after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong declared his opposition in a Wednesday night post on X.
“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Armstrong wrote, outlining several blockchain sector critiques, including a key battle with the banking industry over offering rewards for stablecoin holdings. “Hopefully we can all get to a better draft.”
The legislation, which focuses on market structure issues such as supervisory divisions between different federal agencies, has long been a priority for the crypto industry. The bill would address thorny questions that led to bruising lawsuits under previous administrations, including how to classify and regulate different types of cryptocurrencies.
After helping elect a wave of pro-blockchain candidates fueled by millions in campaign donations, the crypto industry notched a major win over the summer with the passage of the Genius Act, which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins, or a type of dollar-backed cryptocurrency. But market structure has proven trickier, especially after the banking lobby pushed back against provisions in the Genius Act that allows companies to offer customers yield on their stablecoin holdings, similar to savings accounts.
After the House of Representatives advanced their version of the market structure legislation, called the Clarity Act, in July, the Senate delayed in taking up the bill. But with the Senate Banking Committee finally set to debate amendments on Thursday morning in the markup process, arguments over the issue of yield, as well as conflict of interest ethics provisions targeted at the Trump administration, could stymie the bill’s progress.
“There’s a real chance this could blow up in committee,” one crypto lobbyist told Fortune, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive industry dynamics. “People are pretty fired up here.”
Lack of clarity
For many in the crypto industry, the success of the stablecoin-focused Genius Act over the summer was just an appetizer to the main course: wide-ranging market structure legislation that would finally grant legitimacy to the renegade sector. But after years of fierce debate, the product coming out of the Senate might be worse than no bill at all.
The most significant wedge issue going into Thursday remains the battle over stablecoin yields. The bank lobby has argued that the Genius Act effectively created a loophole, preventing stablecoin issuers themselves from offering yield to users, but allowing partners and third parties to provide rewards. Those programs have been key to many crypto companies, such as Coinbase, which reported $355 million in stablecoin-related revenue in the third quarter of 2025 and offers yields to holders of its stablecoin, USDC. Bank lobbyists have argued that this could threaten the U.S. financial system by suctioning money out of bank deposits.
A bipartisan group of senators has offered a compromise in the Clarity Act, which would allow crypto companies to offer yield for stablecoin-related transactions, similar to credit cards, as well as other activity. But it remained unclear whether Coinbase, one of the most outspoken and deepest-pocketed crypto figures in Washington, would support the agreement, with Armstrong’s Wednesday post seeming to indicate it would take a hard-line approach.
“It’s still very much in negotiations right now,” said Ron Hammond, who serves as head of policy at the crypto trading firm Wintermute. “But it’s crypto and there’s always last-second drama, and so it seems to be one of the wedges here.”
Another debate pushed by Democrats is language that would prevent politicians, including the President, from profiting off of crypto holdings or interest. The issue has become a lightning rod due to the Trump family’s deep entanglement with the crypto industry, including its digital asset platform World Liberty Financial, which recently applied for a federal bank license. But Republicans have strongly pushed back against the possibility, with Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) telling CoinDesk on Wednesday that ethics provisions don’t belong in the Clarity Act.
But a letter sent to Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from a number of nonprofit watchdog groups, obtained by Fortune, describes the lack of provisions in the proposed bill addressing governmental conflicts of interest as “deeply concerning.”
If Democrats such as Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who has referred to an ethics provision as a “red line,” pull their support, the bill could be stuck in committee, which needs a simple majority vote, though Republicans hold the edge.
The lobbyist who spoke on the condition of anonymity lamented that the bill has lurched to the left in an effort to gain bipartisan support, including through additional provisions that would regulate DeFi, or decentralized finance, as well as the listing process for crypto tokens and oversight responsibilities handed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. “They’ve lost their north star,” the lobbyist told Fortune.
A crypto analyst has predicted that the Ethereum price could balloon to $3,500 soon, potentially breaking free of the bearish pressure that has suppressed its momentum for much of 2025. Although ETH is currently trading more than 37.5% below its all-time highs, the analyst has outlined technical indicators and market structure signals suggesting $3,500 is a realistic short-term target for the cryptocurrency.
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Ethereum Price Setup Points To $3,500 Rebound
Crypto market analyst Tryrex has delivered a fresh outlook on the Ethereum price, pointing to conditions that could support a strong upside move to $3,500 in the coming months. In his post on X, the expert suggested that ETH may be approaching the end of its prolonged corrective phase and may be preparing for a decisive bounce.
Tryrex highlighted the possibility of a strong rebound developing in the first quarter of 2026, driven by Ethereum’s current hold of a critical liquidity zone between $2,800 and $3,000. He explained that while Bitcoin (BTC) bottomed out in 2025 and entered a range-bound period right after, Ethereum showed relative strength by firmly defending the liquidity region.
Based on the analyst’s weekly TradingView chart, this price area also represents a weekly demand zone that has absorbed repeated selling pressure. The fact that the price continues to hold this area indicates that market participants are buying ETH rather than distributing it. Volume behavior at the bottom of the chart also suggests that selling pressure has been weakening compared to earlier phases of Ethereum’s downtrend.
Tryrex expects an impulsive move to emerge as Ethereum continues to react to the $2,800 to $3,000 liquidity range. If momentum builds as anticipated, ETH could break out of its current structure and push toward higher resistance levels, with a move above $3,500 seen as an increasingly likely near-term target. With its price currently sitting above $3,000, this would represent a more than 13% increase.
ETHUSD currently trading at $3,103. Chart: TradingView
The analyst has also revealed that his bullish forecast for ETH reflects broader conditions across the altcoin market. He highlighted that many major altcoins appear to be bottoming out after extended downtrends, increasing the possibility of coordinated upside moves if market sentiment and volatility improve.
Ethereum Shows Early Moves In 2026
The market is just three days into 2026, and although major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin closed 2025 in the red, Ethereum appears to be showing early signs of recovery. Initially, the ETH started the year in a similar downtrend, but over the past 24 hours, its price has increased by approximately 2.5%.
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CoinMarketCap data shows that from January 1 to date, Ethereum has declined by more than 9.5%. However, its trading volume in the last 24 hours has increased by over 100%, signaling strong trader interest despite the recent price dips. In addition,whales have been steadily accumulating ETH, taking advantage of lower prices to increase their positions.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView
XRP’s recent pullback to $2 has not changed the broader technical picture, according to a new analysis shared on X by crypto analyst Egrag Crypto. Despite the lack of bullish price action in recent weeks, the technical analysis proposes that the market structure continues to favor an upside continuation rather than the trend ending.
This outlook places the next three to six months in a constructive zone for XRP’s price action, where the probability of further upside is higher than the risk of a downward move.
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XRP Currently In Consolidation, Not Distribution
The assessment of Egrag’s technical analysis is based on XRP’s price action currently ticking a list of boxes that points to the next move being up. The first of these boxes is what the analyst referred to as a regime shift, which occurred after the XRP price made a decisive breakout from a multi-year base around $0.5 last year.
This decisive breakout shifted the market from accumulation to expansion. Pullbacks in this phase are usually corrective, not trend-ending. In that context, the current price action can be viewed as part of a natural pause rather than a signal that the larger bullish move has failed.
Another central argument in the analysis is that the current price behavior represents consolidation rather than distribution. Egrag Crypto describes the market as being in a compression phase following an impulse, and this is a pause, not a top. Although XRP has spent about 13 months ranging within this structure, the analyst interpreted this as extended consolidation instead of a distribution process.
Another reason as to why the trend is more likely bullish is because XRP is still trading in alignment with its long-term exponential moving average, which remains above the 21 EMA. That relationship preserves the bullish bias, even though price currently sits below the faster 9 EMA, but this only reflects short-term weakness rather than a structural breakdown.
XRPUSD currently trading at $2.013. Chart: TradingView
Beyond pure chart structure, fundamental developments have added weight to the case for longer-term appreciation. XRP is currently holding $2 as an important support zone, and recent developments have emerged that could increase bullish sentiment.
An example is Ripple’s conditional approval alongside other crypto firms for a national trust bank charter from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
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Although the outlook is much more bullish, there is always the possibility of turning bearish within the next six months. According to Egrag, this outlook can only turn bearish if XRP records a sustained monthly close below the $1.80 to $1.60 region.
Taken together, the analysis concludes that XRP is more likely to resolve higher than lower over the next three to six months, even if there is price volatility along the way.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Hybrid trading ecosystems allow users to access traditional and crypto-native assets seamlessly, with deeper liquidity and fewer risks. Unsplash+
Despite its rocky start, the crypto industry has firmly transitioned from niche communities to the core of global finance. In early December, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded nearly a full week of net inflows, totaling around $288 million, as BTC continues its recovery. At the same time, traditional asset managers are increasingly embracing digital assets: Vanguard, for example, recently began offering clients exposure to BTC, ETH, XRP and other crypto ETFs. What once was a fringe corner of finance is knowing seeing significant capital flows, and, naturally, traders’ expectations have evolved alongside it.
Today’s users want simplicity above all else. They want a market structure that feels seamless and doesn’t force them to jump between five different platforms to engage with all the services they need. They don’t want to sacrifice liquidity for self-custody, transparency for better execution or choose between crypto-native assets and traditional financial instruments.
This is where hybrid CeFi-DeFi (centralized-decentralized finance) models enter the scene, designed to bridge these gaps. By merging centralized and decentralized rails, hybrid platforms aim to eliminate compromise and deliver better results for traders.
Establishing a new market backbone
Historically, traders had to choose between two camps. CeFi offered deep liquidity, institutional-grade execution and predictable user experience. DeFi, meanwhile, provided open access, transparency and blockchain-native liquidity. Each side had its strengths and weaknesses, which users inevitably had to navigate.
Now, these gaps are gradually closing. Tokenized real-world assets (RWA) have surged to $24 billion as of the late third quarter of this year, driven largely by tokenized U.S. treasuries, among the most liquid RWAs today. By 2028, the market could exceed $2 trillion, achieving an almost 82-fold increase.
On the DeFi side, decentralized perpetual-futures trading surpassed $1 trillion in monthly volume in October 2025, putting DeFi platforms on par with many centralized exchanges. In short, more traditional financial instruments are moving on-chain, while crypto-native assets demand deep liquidity. No single model—pure CeFi or pure DeFi—can meet all of these conditions simultaneously. Hybrid models, however, can.
The world increasingly needs an environment that allows users to move between asset types without forcing them to move platforms as well. Or split their margins, for that matter. Hybrid architecture enables users to move freely between tokenized U.S. stock futures, high-leverage crypto derivatives and on-chain liquidity pools, all from a single account and interface. What used to take multiple logins is now made into a single workflow.
Why does this matter? CeFi rarely touches newly emerging DeFi assets; DeFi often lacks the institutional-level liquidity needed for serious capital; and traditional products remain on altogether different rails from crypto as a whole. By connecting historically siloed markets, hybrid systems unlock efficiency, scale and accessibility at unprecedented levels.
There is also the fact that hybrid models lower counterparty risk by reducing the number of hand-offs: fewer transfers between platforms, fewer intermediaries, fewer points of failure. And with shared liquidity pools, traders get better pricing and faster execution across multiple instrument types. This is the prime example of infrastructure finally catching up with user expectations.
Why all-in-one ecosystems are winning
The push toward unified trading platforms did not happen by accident. It is being driven by four key forces, all existing in tandem.
User expectations. Users want simplicity when managing their finances. One account, seamless experience—this desire sets the standard for the industry to reach.
Technological progress. Advances in asset tokenization, real-time settlements and blockchain rails all contribute to a market state where unified platforms can actually be built successfully. Just a couple of years ago, this wouldn’t have been very feasible.
Institutional participation. As this class of investors grows more proactive about entering the crypto space, seamlessness becomes that much more necessary. Institutions need access to multiple asset classes without fragmented custody, inconsistent execution or operational gaps in order to feel confident.
Regulatory maturity. Clearer frameworks support multi-asset ecosystems, which means that platforms in this sector can build with greater confidence and without fearing unexpected backlash. Europe’s MiCA and the GENIUNS Act in the U.S. are prime examples of this shift. The first created a legal base for cross-asset and cross-service platforms, while the latter introduced a comprehensive framework for stablecoins and the classification of digital asset payments. These steps lay the groundwork for platforms offering a wide range of hybrid services, and for unified CeFi-DeFi ecosystems; this legal clarity is an absolute must.
With all of these factors aligning, consolidation stops looking like a simple “trend” and appears instead as what it truly is—the natural next stage in the development of this market.
There are many tangible benefits that this transition brings to traders, but arguably the greatest one is the growth in user trust. Now market participants can see and understand the full lifecycle of their assets in one coherent system. This makes participation smoother, safer and aligned with how people actually want to trade.
The hybrid future is already here
The next market cycle will not be defined by any single asset class. Instead, it will be defined by interoperability: CeFi and DeFi instruments will mix seamlessly, traditional markets will connect with on-chain liquidity and A.I. will increasingly augment human decision-making.
For traders, this means smoother workflows, deeper liquidity and fewer risks. For the industry, it means the next step in maturity and infrastructure that finally matches user expectations. The future of crypto trading is hybrid, and more importantly, it’s not a distant vision. That future is already here, developing around us in real time.
Crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon received a 15-year prison sentence on December 11 after he pleaded guilty to fraud relating to the $40 billion crash of his TerraUSD and Luna coins in 2022.
South Korean-born Do Kwon founded blockchain company Terraform Labs in 2018. The company was worth $50 billion at its height, but Kwon’s misrepresentation of its instability cost billions in market value for investors around the world.
In August Kwon pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and another on conspiracy to commit wire, securities, and commodities fraud. Prosecutors said the founder was “driven by greed and arrogance” and “had lied repeatedly about the efficacy and safety of his products.” On the other side, the defense tried to claim he simply wanted to “build useful technology” but “succumbed to the ‘fake it until you make it’ mentality,” as reported by the Wall Street Journal
Kwon was “among the loudest and most influential cheerleaders for digital currencies” during the crypto boom in 2021 and 2022 and hailed his cryptocurrency “the future of money” according to the WSJ. His reign plummeted when his cryptocurrencies TerraUSD—which was meant to remain at a value of $1—and Luna both crashed catastrophically. TerraUSD slipped below $1, which caused overproduction of Luna and the decline in its price to nearly $0.
Kwon maintained his system’s algorithm was keeping UST at a stable $1, but in reality Jump Trading bought a significant amount of the stablecoin to prop it up in 2021. The deception enabled a continued flow of money from investors.
But the fix was temporary and UST slipped again, revealing its underlying fragility.
Over 300 letters from victims were read in court, detailing the consequences of the fraud. One said in a letter to the judge that he contemplated suicide when the scam cost his father his retirement money. Another said he lost so much of his family’s savings that his kids couldn’t attend college and his wife filed for divorce.
As Kent Halliburton stood in a bathroom at the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, thousands of miles from home, running his fingers through an envelope filled with €10,000 in crisp banknotes, he started to wonder what he had gotten himself into.
Halliburton is the cofounder and CEO of Sazmining, a company that operates bitcoin mining hardware on behalf of clients—a model known as “mining-as-a-service.” Halliburton is based in Peru, but Sazmining runs mining hardware out of third-party data centers across Norway, Paraguay, Ethiopia, and the United States.
As Halliburton tells it, he had flown to Amsterdam the previous day, August 5, to meet Even and Maxim, two representatives of a wealthy Monaco-based family. The family office had offered to purchase hundreds of bitcoin mining rigs from Sazmining—around $4 million worth—which the company would install at a facility currently under construction in Ethiopia. Before finalizing the deal, the family office had asked to meet Halliburton in person.
When Halliburton arrived at the Rosewood Hotel, he found Even and Maxim perched in a booth. They struck him as playboy, high-roller types—particularly Maxim, who wore a tan three-piece suit and had a highly manicured look, his long dark hair parted down the middle. A Rolex protruded from the cuff of his sleeve.
Over a three-course lunch—ceviche with a roe garnish, Chilean sea bass, and cherry cake—they discussed the contours of the deal and traded details about their respective backgrounds. Even was talkative and jocular, telling stories about blowout parties in Marrakech. Maxim was aloof; he mostly stared at Halliburton, holding his gaze for long periods at a time as though sizing him up.
As a relationship-building exercise, Even proposed that Halliburton sell the family office around $3,000 in bitcoin. Halliburton was initially hesitant, but chalked it up as a peculiar dating ritual. One of the guys slid Halliburton the cash-filled envelope and told him to go to the bathroom, where he could count out the amount in private. “It felt like something out of a James Bond movie,” says Halliburton. “It was all very exotic to me.”
Halliburton left in a taxi, somewhat bemused by the encounter, but otherwise hopeful of closing the deal with the family office. For Sazmining, a small company with around 15 employees, it promised to be transformative.
Less than two weeks later, Halliburton had lost more than $200,000 worth of bitcoin to Even and Maxim. He didn’t know whether Sazmining could survive the blow, nor how the scammers had ensnared him.
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday declared a mistrial in the case of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated brothers charged with carrying out a novel scheme to steal $25 million worth of cryptocurrency in 12 seconds that prosecutors said exploited the Ethereum blockchain’s integrity.
U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke in Manhattan sent jurors home after they were unable to reach agreement on whether to convict or acquit Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Peraire-Bueno of charges that they carried out a first-of-its-kind wire fraud and money laundering scheme.
The mistrial was confirmed by William Fick, a lawyer for Anton Peraire-Bueno at Fick & Marx. A spokesperson for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton did not respond to a request for comment.
Both brothers attended Cambridge, Massachusetts-based MIT, where prosecutors say they studied computer science and developed the skills they relied on for their trading strategy.
They were indicted in May 2024, before President Donald Trump’s administration came into office, ushering in a new, crypto-friendly approach to enforcement. Despite the shift in priorities, the case against the brothers proceeded to trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Nees in his opening statement on October 15 accused the brothers of carrying out a “high-speed bait-and-switch” designed to lure trading bots into a trap and drain the accounts of other cryptocurrency traders.
Prosecutors said that for months, the Peraire-Bueno brothers plotted to manipulate and tamper with the protocols used to validate transactions for inclusion on the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger that records each cryptocurrency transaction.
They did so by exploiting a vulnerability in the code of software called MEV-boost that is used by most Ethereum network “validators,” who are responsible for checking that new transactions are valid before they are added to the blockchain, prosecutors said.
“Then they planted a trade that looked like one thing from the outside, but was secretly something else,” Nees told jurors in his opening statement. “Then, just as the defendants planned, the victims took the bait.”
Katherine Trefz, a lawyer for James Peraire-Bueno at Williams & Connolly, countered that the trading strategy they executed was not just novel but legitimate and “consistent with the principles at play in this very competitive trading environment.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft)
Changpeng Zhao, the multibillionaire founder of crypto exchange Binance, spent four months last year locked in a federal prison. After US president Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October, the government has recast him as a martyr.
Zhao, who goes by CZ, pled guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance. In parallel, Binance admitted to violating US sanctions and settled with financial regulators, which accused the company of failing to report suspicious transactions involving terror groups, child exploitation networks, and cybercriminals, among other violations. In a particularly incriminating exchange detailed in court documents, one Binance employee said to a colleague, “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.”
As part of their respective settlement deals, Zhao agreed to forfeit his role as Binance CEO, and Binance agreed to leave the US, accept supervision by a US-appointed compliance monitor, and pay a record $4.3 billion penalty.
Less than two years later, the narrative has flipped. On October 23, Trump struck the charges from Zhao’s criminal record. The Binance founder was a victim of the “Biden administration’s war on crypto,” a White House spokesperson declared.
The decision to pardon Zhao will reverberate throughout the US crypto exchange market, which Binance could seek to reenter, legal experts claim. It may also come with long-term political consequences for the crypto industry after Trump’s presidency ends.
Whether Zhao’s pardon was justified has been hotly disputed, particularly in light of connections between Binance and World Liberty Financial, a crypto business founded by Trump and his sons. (Through a corporate entity, the Trump family owns a 38 percent stake in World Liberty Financial’s parent company.) In May, Binance agreed to receive a $2 billion investment denominated in USD1, a coin issued by World Liberty Financial, which could earn tens of millions of dollars from the arrangement. In July, Bloomberg reported that Binance had developed the codebase for USD1.
Remarkably, Trump claims to know very little about Zhao. “Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is,” Trump told 60 Minutes in an interview that aired on November 2. “I can only tell you this. My sons are into [crypto],” he said later in the interview.
Zhao’s legal representatives and industry allies have defended the pardon as a rightful corrective. “CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in US history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge,” wrote Teresa Goody Guillén, partner at law firm Baker & Hostetler, which represents Zhao, in an X post.
Ethereum’s largest non-exchange holders are tiptoeing back into accumulation. On-chain analytics platform Santiment reported that wallets holding between 100 and 10,000 ETH, also known as whales and sharks, have begun to rebuild positions after unloading roughly 1.36 million ETH between October 5 and 16.
Notably, the Ethereum collective holdings chart shows that nearly one-sixth of those coins have already been clawed back, as some confidence starts to return to the second-largest crypto asset.
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Whales Reverse Course After Early-October Capitulation
The first half of October was highlighted by one of Ethereum’s most pronounced periods of capitulation this year. Macroeconomic fears due to US tariffs saw the Bitcoin price undergo a flash crash that dragged many altcoins to the downside. During this move, Ethereum’s price also fell very quickly, dropping from highs around $4,740 on October 7 to as low as $3,680 on October 11.
Interestingly, on-chain data shows that the selling pressure from large holders amplified this move, as the chart from Santiment shows a steep decline in their cumulative holdings from about 24.5 million ETH to roughly 22.6 million ETH. This 1.9 million ETH drop reflected clear risk-off behavior among whales and sharks, who had been net buyers since August.
However, once selling momentum began to fade, accumulation started to return. Institutional inflows started to return into Spot Ethereum ETFs, and whale/shark trades started accumulating Ethereum. Since October 16, the same cohort that contributed to the liquidation has begun adding back to their positions. Santiment noted that these holders are finally showing some signs of confidence, demonstrating an incoming extended recovery phase following the shakeout.
According to Santiment’s data, the collective holdings of addresses with 100 to 10,000 ETH have rebounded to approximately 23.05 million ETH after bottoming out in mid-October. A highlighted annotation on the chart shows that 218,470 ETH were accumulated in just the past week, signaling a tangible shift in on-chain behavior.
This increase represents roughly one-sixth of the coins previously dumped, a sign that major investors are gradually re-entering the market after what appeared to be an exhaustion phase. Similar accumulation trends have often preceded a broader recovery in Ethereum’s price, especially when accompanied by stabilization in the ETH/BTC trading pair.
As it stands, the Ethereum price appears to be building a firmer base for the next phase of its recovery heading into November. When whale wallets accumulate, it reduces the circulating supply available on exchanges and reduces selling pressure.
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At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at $3,940 and is on track to break and close above $4,000 again. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have risen a bit in recent days after inflation report showed US inflation cooling to 3% in September, below the 3.1% forecasted by economists.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Senate Democrats sent Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, a letter Wednesday calling for more details about his personal crypto interests. Led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D—Calif.), eight senators demanded Witkoff to explain why his latest ethics disclosure showed he still owned stakes in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency as well as other crypto business entities.
“Your failure to divest your ownership in these assets raises serious questions about your compliance with federal ethics laws and, more importantly, ability to serve the American people over your own financial interests,” wrote the senators.
World Liberty Financial, the crypto business Witkoff cofounded with the President in 2024, said in May that the special envoy was in “the process of fully divesting” from the project. Witkoff has since divested a $120 million stake in his real estate company but hasn’t yet sold his crypto holdings, according to his most recent ethics disclosure, dated Aug. 13.
The Trump advisor still owns cryptocurrency for World Liberty Financial as well as shares in WC Digital Fi LLC, an entity mentioned in World Liberty Financial’s documentation as “an affiliate of Steve Witkoff and certain of his family members.” And, as of August, the special envoy held portions of two other seemingly crypto-related businesses: WC Digital SC LLC and SC Financial Technologies LLC.
Senate Democrats claimed that Witkoff’s ongoing business interests in crypto raise potential conflicts of interest, as his role as top diplomat in the Middle East allegedly overlaps with World Liberty Financial’s business ties to the U.A.E.
Spokespeople for World Liberty Financial and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two deals
The inquiry into Witkoff’s business holdings comes one month after The New York Timespublished an investigation into how his involvement in a multibillion-dollar AI deal between the U.S. government and the U.A.E came at the same time that World Liberty Financial was negotiating its own multibillion-dollar deal with an Emirati state venture firm.
In May, the U.S. signed an agreement with the U.A.E. to build the largest AI campus outside the States. Two weeks earlier, World Liberty Financial announced that a $2 billion investment from the Emirati state investment company MGX into the crypto exchange Binance was paid in World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar. The deal with MGX and Binance not only made USD1 one of the largest stablecoins by market capitalization but also set World Liberty Financial up to reap potentially tens of millions of dollars in interest from the assets backing the $2 billion in stablecoins it had just issued.
The timing of the two deals has alarmed Democrats. Shortly after The New York Times published its investigation, two senators asked inspectors general to investigate whether there was an ethics violation.
Wednesday’s letter has a broader array of signatories from senators beyond Schiff, including Ron Wyden (D—Ore.), Andy Kim (D—N.J.), Richard Durbin (D—Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D—Nev.), Gary Peters (D—Mich.), Elissa Slotkin (D—N.Y.), and Cory Booker (D—N.J.).
They asked Witkoff for a response by Oct. 31.
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Bitcoin is trading around $107,000 after its recent flash crash, maintaining stability to prevent further decline but is yet to return to trading above $110,000. Notably, popular crypto analyst Titan of Crypto shared a detailed Gaussian Channel analysis on X that points to Bitcoin’s macro bull structure remaining intact despite short-term volatility. His post, which was accompanied by a Bitcoin price chart, shows how Bitcoin’s position relative to the Gaussian Channel offers a clear view of the ongoing cycle.
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Bull Market Intact Above Gaussian Channel
Titan of Crypto noted that Bitcoin’s placement above the Gaussian Channel represents strength in the long-term trend. As shown in the weekly candlestick price chart below, the green channel corresponds to bullish phases, while red regions represent bearish downturns, a prime example being the 2022 bear market.
At the time of writing, the upper band is positioned around $101,300 and trending upward. Therefore, Bitcoin’s price action around $107,000 means that it is yet to break into the Gaussian channel and its overall market structure is still solid. From this, it can be inferred that Bitcoin’s current pullback from the October 6 all-time high above $126,000 is only a temporary pause within a larger bull market.
However, although the Gaussian Channel reading looks favorable, Titan of Crypto noted that the indicator should not be treated as a trading trigger. “It’s not a buy signal, it’s a macro context indicator,” he stated. Being above the Gaussian Channel doesn’t necessarily equate to buying more. It simply means the bull market structure is still intact.
The Gaussian Channel works best when combined with other indicators such as trading volume, moving averages, and on-chain accumulation trends to confirm directional momentum.
BTCUSD currently trading at $108,099. Chart: TradingView
Coinbase Premium Gap Turns Red
Speaking of other indicators, on-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that the Coinbase Premium Gap, a metric comparing Bitcoin’s price on Coinbase versus other exchanges, has turned red. As shown in the chart below, Coinbase’s Premium Gap went on a sharp decline from positive premium levels above +60 earlier in the week to as low as -40 when the Bitcoin price fell to $101,000.
Interestingly, the Coinbase Premium Gap has increased to around -10 at the time of writing, meaning US investors are starting to turn bullish again. This can be seen as a bullish signal, as similar dips in US demand were recorded between March and April before the Bitcoin price eventually rallied more than 60% to reach new all-time highs.
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However, a red Coinbase Premium Gap alone is not decisive. It should be interpreted alongside other data points, including ETF inflows, trading volume, liquidity, and derivatives funding rates. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $107,120.
Featured image from Vecteezy, chart from TradingView
XRP has shown some signs of recovery over the past 48 hours, climbing about 5.3 % from its recent low, according to on-chain analytics platform Santiment. The rebound comes as investor confidence appears to be returning, as it coincides with a steady rise in mid to large-sized XRP holders. Particularly, on-chain data shows that the XRP ecosystem now has more than 317,500 wallets holding at least 10,000 XRP tokens for the first time in its history.
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Mid To Large XRP Holders Reach Record 317,500 Wallets
Despite XRP’s recent price woes alongside the rest of the crypto market, on-chain data shows that XRP’s holder base is increasing among crypto investors. Notably, Santiment’s latest data shows that the number of XRP wallets holding at least 10,000 tokens has reached an all-time high of approximately 317,500.
Santiment’s data chart, as shown below, indicates that XRP’s network has added approximately 1.8% more wallets holding 10,000 or more tokens in just the last thirty days. Interestingly, Santiment’s data further shows that the upward slope of this metric has been consistent throughout 2025.
The increase in mid-sized and large wallet count shows that many XRP investors are not concerned about the recent price dips. Instead, many of them are taking advantage of lower prices to strengthen their holdings. As such, a growing segment of investors are buying XRP for long-term gains rather than short-term price action.
XRP, which is currently hovering around the $2.35 range, may benefit from this growing base of committed holders in the long term. Its price trajectory now depends on its ability to sustain momentum above $2.3. If the bullish on-chain sentiment translates into consistent buy pressure, XRP could extend its rebound and target at least $2.8 before the end of the week.
However, if momentum stalls, the price may enter another downward phase before an upward move. Nonetheless, the record growth in wallets holding over 10,000 XRP provides a strong long-term foundation that may support the cryptocurrency’s value in the coming weeks.
Ripple’s Acquisition Of GTreasury Adds Institutional Momentum
Ripple Labs, the company behind XRP, recently announced the acquisition of GTreasury for $1 billion, making this its third-biggest deal in 2025. The deal will bring GTreasury’s treasury-management software, used by global corporations to manage liquidity, cash forecasting, payments and risk, into Ripple’s infrastructure suite.
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GTreasury serves over 1,000 customers across about 160 countries and has more than 40 years’ experience in corporate treasury operations. The move gives Ripple immediate access to the multi-trillion-dollar corporate treasury market and large enterprise clients previously outside its direct reach. There are also reports that Ripple is planning to raise $1 billion to build an XRP treasury.
At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $2.35.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
The next phase of tokenization won’t be won by speed, but by coordination, turning isolated pilots into a unified market. Unsplash+
Gone are the days when tokenization was a niche concept. It’s now a capital markets reality measured in billions, and the question has shifted from adoption to architecture. Can the industry coordinate fast enough to turn a rush of isolated pilots into a single, compounding market? Today, the answer is no, the coordination gap continues to drain value through duplicated integrations, stranded liquidity and regulatory drag.
The inefficiencies tokenization promised to fix
A decade of experimentation left a maze of base layers (L1s), layer-2s and token standards that often cannot speak the same language. An equity token minted on one chain rarely settles natively against collateral on another. Liquidity splinters, market makers must maintain multiple inventories, and the same asset is wrapped three different ways. This functions like walled courtyards, far from a unified market.
Tokenization promised faster settlement and broader access. Instead, firms are building parallel silos that import back-office frictions into a new substrate. Regulators see the duplication and hesitate. Investors face basis risk across wrappers. Issuers pay twice for audits and integration. Growth continues, but at a discount to what the technology could deliver.
The architecture of a unified market
There is no question that assets have to work across chains. Interoperability belongs in the design from day one. Encouragingly, both incumbent rails and emerging protocols are experimenting with exactly this mandate. SWIFT, for example, has shown that its messaging network can coordinate transfers of tokenized value across multiple public and private chains, reducing one of the biggest frictions to institutional scale. Regulators are more likely to bless systems that reuse the controls they already know.
At the infrastructure level, new interoperability protocols are tackling the same challenge with different architectures. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) provides secure cross-chain messaging and programmable token transfers, allowing liquidity and compliance logic to move seamlessly across networks. Wormhole enables verifiable actions through a decentralized guardian network that validates cross-chain messages, while LayerZero connects applications across chains through an omnichain messaging framework built on lightweight nodes and configurable trust models. Each approach addresses the same problem: making tokenized value portable and composable without sacrificing security or regulatory confidence.
Let demand determine where liquidity pools, independent of initial consortium deployments. Cross-chain liquidity pools and smart order routing can direct flow to the best venue while maintaining a unified positions record for risk. The market should set measurable targets: cross-chain fill rates above 99 percent, sub-minute finality between domains, and reconciliation without manual breaks.
Second, standardize both the asset and the identity. A uniform, open token standard for regulated assets should include only the essentials—transfer controls, role-based permissions and lawful enforcement hooks, while remaining compatible with the most common blockchain formats, known as ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155. Emerging frameworks such as ERC-3643 and ERC-7943 are early efforts to codify compliance and interoperability for real-world assets, but they must remain modular, neutral, and open to extension so issuers can evolve without breaking composability.
Pair standardized assets with portable identity. Verifiable credentials and on-chain attestations should travel with the investor, ensuring that KYC and eligibility checks do not restart at every venue. This is the foundation of scalable compliance: identity and permissioning that move with the holder, not the platform.
Finally, synchronize regulation inside the asset itself. Regulators expect familiar outcomes—eligibility checks, sanctions screening, audit trails—but with improved transparency and observability. The EU’s DLT Pilot Regime demonstrates how harmonized infrastructure can evolve within existing securities law, enabling innovation under MiFID II supervision while preserving market integrity.
Bake these controls directly into the token. Rule sets can define who may hold or transfer an instrument, under which jurisdictions, and when forced transfers are lawful. That approach shortens compliance cycles and leverages shared messaging standards with minimal token primitives that any venue can implement. Singapore’s Project Guardian reflects this vision, with banks and asset managers testing regulated tokenization on open infrastructure under supervisory oversight.
Where the power plays are now
The rise of tokenized cash equivalents shows the appetite: assets in tokenized Treasury products have surged as institutions seek intraday settlement and programmatic collateral. Institutional players are no longer debating if tokenization happens; they are competing over where it settles and how it moves. Custodians want to be the universal safekeeping layer. Market infrastructures want to be the neutral hub for cross-chain messaging. Asset managers want to turn tokenized funds into the default cash leg for crypto-native activity. Each move is rational; only coordination scales them.
Consider the signal from mainstream finance. Citi estimates tokenized digital securities could reach four to five trillion dollars by 2030. Boston Consulting Group projects that as much as 18.9 trillion dollars of illiquid assets could be tokenized by 2033. Treat these numbers as a map of where capital intends to go if the rails align. Projects that keep assets stuck on single chains will miss those flows. The regulatory posture is shifting in the same direction. Central banks and industry groups are testing how to move tokenized value across networks using existing messaging standards. These are coordination bets that matter more than headline grabs. They reward open designs that keep compliance portable.
The scoreboard that matters: portability and trust
The next phase of tokenization is a race to make assets both portable and trusted across chains. Portability lowers the cost of capital by exposing issuances to broader liquidity and deeper collateral markets. Trust reduces legal friction, accelerates launches and opens institutional balance sheets to programmable finance. Together, they create network effects that a single-chain strategy cannot replicate, expressed in tighter spreads, lower collateral haircuts and faster listings. A critical enabler of this evolution is the emergence of atomic settlement, allowing cross-chain transactions to execute in full or not at all. Early implementations of atomic swaps already demonstrate how synchronized settlement can eliminate counterparty risk and reduce dependence on intermediaries for finality. As interoperability frameworks like Chainlink CCIP, Wormhole and LayerZero mature, they will bring these mechanisms into regulated environments, turning fragmented liquidity into a unified market fabric where assets and collateral move seamlessly across ecosystems without breaking compliance or auditability.
For decision-makers, the path forward requires prioritizing infrastructure over isolated issuance. The focus must shift toward interoperable rails, open token standards and portable identity frameworks built on verifiable credentials. Success will be measured by new targets: cross-chain settlement rates, shared liquidity depth, atomic swap efficiency and reduced time-to-compliance.
Tokenization is crossing from curiosity to critical infrastructure. The market already punishes fragmentation, thin liquidity, duplicated cost and preventable risk, even as architectures mature. The institutions that align early around interoperability, standardized assets and portable identity will own the compounding benefits of a unified market, while others remain confined to isolated silos.
Coordination is not an afterthought; it is the multiplier that turns pilots into markets. Whether the coming trillions in tokenized value flow through harmonized rails or fracture across closed venues will define the next decade of capital markets. Those who architect for coordination will capture the scale; those who do not will fund it for others.
“Chen Zhi was directly involved in managing the scam compounds and maintained records associated with each one, including records tracking profits from the scams that explicitly referenced ‘sha zhu,’ or pig-butchering,” the indictment claims, alleging there were also “ledgers of bribes to public officials.” One document allegedly held by Chen listed that two scam centers were equipped with 1,250 mobile phones that “controlled” 76,000 social media accounts. The indictment also claims that Chen held images demonstrating “Prince Group’s violent methods” against people who had been trafficked to the scam centers. The document includes images showing people bloodied and beaten.
The seizure of 127,271 bitcoins worth more than $15 billion at the time they were confiscated represents by far the biggest monetary seizure in the US Justice Department’s history—not just of cryptocurrency, but of money of any kind. That US law enforcement record was previously set in 2022 with the seizure of 95,000 bitcoins worth $3.6 billion from a Manhattan couple who later pleaded guilty to stealing them from the Bitfinex exchange, and prior to that with a billion-dollar seizure in 2020 of bitcoins allegedly stolen from the Silk Road dark web drug market by an unnamed hacker. Meanwhile, police in the UK seized 61,000 bitcoins worth $6.7 billion in June from a Chinese woman accused of an investment scam, an even bigger sum than those US records but less than half the sum taken from the Prince Group operation.
“It’s important to note that this seizure is extraordinary not only for its scale but for what it represents,” Ari Redbord, global head of policy at crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs, adding that the seizure is still a “small fraction” of the money generated by scam centers. “These are not isolated scams; they are factory-scale operations powered by forced labor, supercharged by the speed and scale of crypto, and connected through sophisticated money-laundering infrastructure that spans Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, China, and beyond,” Redbord says.
Redbord says the widespread action “strikes at the operational and financial core” of the widespread scam center ecosystem. In recent years, researchers tracking the scam compounds in Southeast Asia have seen them rapidly grow and use their illicitly gained money to invest in increasingly high-tech scam operations. Over the last two years, scam compounds have also been spotted emerging outside of Southeast Asia, with sites emerging in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.
“By targeting the financial architecture—the shell companies, banks, exchanges, and real estate that move and hide these proceeds—the US and UK are dismantling the economic engine that sustains these crimes,” Redbord says. “This is what a 21st-century counter-threat finance campaign looks like—coordinated, data-driven, and global.”
The recent crypto market crash stunned investors across the globe, but one analyst saw it coming long before it happened. Bitcoin plunged from above $125,000 to briefly below $102,000, and Ethereum dropped to below $3,800, exactly as predicted by popular market commentator Ash Crypto earlier this month.
His October 1 post on X warned of a sharp correction meant to liquidate all the bulls before a major rebound in Q4. Now that the dip has played out exactly as he forecasted, Ash Crypto’s outlook for the coming weeks is a powerful rebound phase.
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The Crash Prediction That Shook ‘Uptober’
The sell-off that sent shockwaves through the industry is a quick change in sentiment after Bitcoin’s recent all-time high on October 6. Bitcoin’s decline from above $125,000 to below $110,000 caused widespread panic that flowed into other cryptocurrencies, while Ethereum followed with a sharp drop below $3,800. More than $19 billion in leveraged trades were liquidated across different exchanges in under a day, making it one of the largest wipeouts in crypto history.
However, the timing of the crash aligned almost perfectly with a projection on the social media platform X by Ash Crypto. On October 1, Ash Crypto outlined what he called a “pump-then-dump setup” designed to trap overconfident bulls. In his post, he warned that early-month gains would bait retail traders into believing PUMPtober was real before the market reversed violently to shake them out.
Notably, the analyst predicted that Bitcoin would dip to around $106,000 and Ethereum to $3,800 or lower before rebounding later in the month. According to him, this correction phase would run until mid-October, sometime around the 15th to 20th of October, before transitioning into a powerful recovery in the last ten days of the month.
BTCUSD currently trading at $114,049. Chart: TradingView
What Comes Next After The Drop?
Ash Crypto’s call has proven accurate, especially against the backdrop of widespread ‘Uptober’ optimism that clouded judgment for many crypto traders. However, despite the predicted bearish move, the prediction post also carried a long-term sentiment that aligns with a bullish Uptober.
He explained that once market sentiment turns overwhelmingly bearish and traders begin to assume PUMPtober is canceled, short positions will pile up. It is at this point that a reversal will begin in the final ten days of October, leading to what he described as Q4 parabolic candles.
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Ash Crypto projected Bitcoin will reach between $150,000 and $180,000 by the end of the fourth quarter, while Ethereum will be trading anywhere in the $8,000 to $12,000 range. Following that move, he expects a full-fledged altcoin season that will cause the price of many altcoins to grow 10x to 50x in just a few months.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $114,049, and Ethereum is trading at $4,087.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Coljuegos, Colombia’s gambling authority, has officially granted a concession for the operation of Keno, bringing one of the first blockchain-supported lottery-style games in Latin America to the forefront. The government expects that this new offering will generate more than COP 485 billion ($125 million) in public healthcare contributions over the next five years while bolstering the nation’s gambling sector.
The Government Expects Significant Revenues
Keno, a popular draw-based game gaining popularity across international markets, will be available across all 32 Colombian departments. According to market studies cited by Coljuegos, total sales could exceed COP 2.3 trillion ($587 million) within the next five years. The game’s blockchain-based ticketing system will provide enhanced transparency, improve traceability, and limit the chances of fraud.
When playing Keno, users can select 10 numbers from 1 to 80, matching them against 20 randomly drawn balls generated by an independent Random Number Generator. Winnings depend on how many numbers a player matches, with variable payouts depending on the initial wager. Each stake will cost between COP 1,000 ($0.26) and COP 20,000 ($5.10), with a maximum initial prize of COP 1.68 billion ($428,500).
To attract more players, there will be draws every day, at intervals of 6 to 10 minutes, resulting in 144 to 240 daily rounds. Results will be made public through digital channels like YouTube and official game websites. People will have the option to play via physical terminals or online through authorized digital channels. Coljuegos expects to establish more than 16,000 sales points nationwide.
Gambling Remains a Significant Economic Driver
Coljuegos president Marco Emilio Hincapié stated that the concession followed an open and competitive bidding process involving multiple bidders. He emphasized that the new product represented a significant step for Colombia’s gaming sector as it focuses on innovation and modernization. This offering should also help channel more users toward regulated offerings and away from black market operations.
The gaming concession was awarded through an open process so all interested operators could participate.
Marco Emilio Hincapié, Coljuegos president
Operators offering Keno will receive a four-month pre-launch period to prepare infrastructure and ensure compliance with security and technical standards. This new offering is set to launch in January 2026. Its addition underscores Coljuegos’ efforts to maintain strict oversight while allowing flexibility and innovation within Colombia’s gambling sector.
We seek to expand the offerings for gamblers and consolidate the gaming sector as a fundamental pillar of the national economy.
Marco Emilio Hincapié, Coljuegos president
The introduction of Keno coincides with a period of rising regulatory scrutiny for Colombia’s online betting landscape. Coljuegos recently ordered internet service providers to disable access to the prediction market platform Polymarket, alleging that the company offered unauthorized political betting and cryptocurrency-based wagering. The authority was adamant that any form of betting must receive regulatory approval.
Spacecoin says it has relayed a blockchain transaction entirely through space, moving data from one ground point to another without using terrestrial internet links.
According to reports, the test aimed to show that cryptographic transactions can be sent via satellite radio and still be validated at the other end.
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End-To-End Transaction Via Satellite
Reports have disclosed that the transmission began in Punta Arenas, Chile, was uplinked over S-band radio to a nanosatellite called CTC-0, and then downlinked to a ground station in the Azores, Portugal.
That path covered roughly 7,000 kilometers. Based on reports, the message was processed on the Creditcoin test network rather than a major public mainnet. The demonstration was presented at TOKEN2049.
Company posts and media reports say the event was a single proof-of-concept meant to check whether signature data and transaction integrity survive the trip through spaceborne links.
🛰️ CTC-0 Mission: Complete
Cadets, there’s no better way to hear this very special mission update than straight from Captain Oh.
We’ve officially routed the world’s first end-to-end blockchain transaction through space, proving that our vision of a decentralized,… https://t.co/Y2KCVzSX49
According to Spacecoin’s posts, the nanosatellite used in the test was supplied in partnership with EnduroSat. The firm also mentioned plans to add three more satellites as part of a CTC-1 cluster, scheduled for launch in Q4 2025.
Those additions are intended to increase coverage and allow inter-satellite handoffs. Reports caution that a small cluster of satellites is not the same as continuous global coverage, but it would expand the number of possible uplink and downlink windows for users in remote places.
Technical Limits And Security Concerns
Based on reports and commentary from industry observers, the demo leaves several important questions open. Radio links can be slow and have limited bandwidth. Latency grows when signals travel to orbit and back.
BTCUSD trading at $118,741 on the 24-hour chart: TradingView
The method is vulnerable to interference, jamming, or misrouting if proper safeguards are not in place. While the transaction itself carried cryptographic signatures that were verifiable, experts say operational security for ground stations, frequency licensing across countries, and robust anti-spoofing measures will be essential before any real service can be offered to consumers.
Potential Uses And Practical Hurdles
Reports note potential benefits. Satellite-based routing could provide a backup route for remote communities, disaster zones, or places with unreliable or censored internet.
That said, launching and operating satellites has big costs. Ground terminals are needed. Adoption will depend on price, ease of setup, and whether users can get reliable, timely service rather than intermittent windows.
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Competition And Market Fit
According to Reuters, the announcement frames Spacecoin as aiming at a market that already has major players such as Starlink.
Competing with large networks will require a clear niche — for example, specialized uplinks for blockchain messaging, or partnerships with regional operators. The economics will matter as much as the technical proof.
Featured image from Gemini, chart from TradingView
