Cointelegraph

Bitcoin’s back-to-back October losses have put its “Uptober” reputation under the microscope as analysts weigh seasonal trends against institutional demand and economic conditions.
Bitcoin fell 7.3% in October 2026, following a roughly 4% decline a year earlier, according to CoinGlass data.
The losses defied October’s historically bullish reputation, which earned it the nickname “Uptober.” This year, industry figures turned to darker labels, including “Black October” and “Hacktober,” amid a wave of crypto security incidents, including Binance’s record-breaking $6.3 billion hack.
Bitcoin’s seasonal trends shift as monthly volatility declines
October has historically delivered Bitcoin’s highest median return at 15.4%, with gains in 10 of 13 years through 2025, according to Andrew Yang, a researcher at crypto analytics firm Kaiko.
September’s historically bearish reputation has weakened as well. Bitcoin has posted gains every September since 2023, which could reflect traders buying ahead of an expected October rally, Yang told Cointelegraph.
Median monthly Bitcoin return by calendar month since January 2013. Source: Kaiko
Bitcoin’s narrowing price swings may also be making seasonal trends less pronounced, Yang said. Its typical monthly move has declined from 14% between 2013 and 2016 to 9.6% since 2024, leaving less room for sharp seasonal rallies, he added.
Are institutions rewriting Bitcoin’s calendar?
Analysts also pointed to institutional investment and broader economic conditions as increasingly important influences on Bitcoin’s price.
Justin d’Anethan, head of research at Arctic Digital, pointed to exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows and corporate Bitcoin buyers, saying their investment decisions are shaped more by liquidity, interest rates and investment mandates than seasonal trading narratives.
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $515 million in net outflows in October, while spot Ether ETFs saw a record $1.61 billion in monthly withdrawals.
Yang cautioned that spot Bitcoin ETFs, approved in January 2024, are too recent to assess. Still, Bitcoin “increasingly trades like a macro asset, driven more by economic data and institutional flows than by the calendar,” he said.
Two October losses don’t settle the question
Despite two consecutive October losses, analysts cautioned against writing off Uptober entirely.
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, said October has generally performed better during Bitcoin bull markets and worse during bear markets, making the broader market cycle an important factor when comparing returns.
“Price performance depends more on spot demand dynamics than cyclical patterns, and demand doesn’t care about the calendar,” Moreno told Cointelegraph.
Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO, said that traders may be anticipating seasonal gains earlier. “When enough people expect a rally in October, the rally gets priced in before the month arrives,” he said.
“Uptober has historical validity but, like other seasonality metrics, it can also fail at times,” said Arctic Digital’s d’Anethan.
Magazine: Cybersecurity’s Black October: How to protect yourself

Hardware wallet maker Trezor has increased the maximum length of optional wallet passphrases from 50 to 128 characters.
On Sunday, Trezor said the change is available in its Trezor Suite with updated device firmware. Older firmware still limits passphrases to 50 characters.
According to Trezor, a passphrase acts like an additional password that users set alongside their wallet’s recovery phrase. An attacker who obtains the recovery phrase would still need the correct passphrase to access funds in that wallet.
Trezor cited the Coldcard attacks in July, when a firmware flaw caused some devices to generate recovery phrases with insufficient randomness, allowing attackers to reconstruct them. Trezor said strong, unique passphrases protected some affected users.
The update follows a separate warning involving Trezor’s own devices.
On Friday, the company advised customers who bought wallets from former authorized reseller CryptoBilis since March to move their funds to new wallets.
An Indonesian customer reported a suspected implant inside a Trezor Safe 5 that could capture on-screen information, including recovery phrases, and transmit it over a cellular network. Trezor said Friday it had not examined the device and had received no reports of related losses.

Hong Kong has expanded its Project Ensemble pilot to allow round-the-clock settlement of tokenized transactions, as the city’s monetary regulator prepares to bring regulated stablecoins into trials involving tokenized government debt.
On Monday, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said that it had advanced its EnsembleTX project to a new stage allowing 24/7 real-value transactions. The HKMA said the update would help banks and their clients move funds globally, manage tokenized investments and handle treasury operations outside conventional settlement hours.
Participating banks initially settled payments through Hong Kong’s existing dollar settlement system, which limited settlement hours. When the pilot began real-value trials in November 2025, the HKMA said it planned to introduce tokenized central bank money to allow settlement around the clock.
The HKMA launched Project Ensemble in March 2024 to explore how banks could settle tokenized transactions using wholesale central bank digital money. A sandbox opened that August, allowing banks to connect their tokenized deposit platforms and test transactions.
Speaking at Hong Kong FinTech Week on Monday, HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue said the regulator was introducing tokenized central bank money as a “foundation layer” for 24/7 settlement. He said tokenized bonds, money market funds and bank deposits were already being used.
The HKMA also said recognized dealers had completed secondary-market trial trades in tokenized Exchange Fund Bills, a form of short-term debt issued by the regulator. It plans to expand those trials to include regulated stablecoins.
HSBC’s RedCoin reaches 50,000 users
Separately, HSBC Group CEO Georges Elhedery said at Hong Kong FinTech Week that the bank’s recently launched Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, RedCoin, had reached 50,000 users about 10 days after its debut.
“We have 50,000 users,” Elhedery said, adding that HSBC was targeting “multi-million users” as it expands access to the token.
RedCoin’s rollout brings stablecoins to retail payments, while Ensemble’s settlement work has focused on transactions involving banks and tokenized investments.
Elhedery said HSBC was also offering tokenized deposits to wholesale clients in Hong Kong and about half a dozen other jurisdictions, allowing funds to move around the clock.
The bank launched RedCoin on Oct. 23 for transfers and merchant payments through its PayMe application. HSBC said more than 3.3 million PayMe customers could activate stablecoin wallets to use the token. It also plans to bring the stablecoin into its mobile banking app and allow subscriptions to tokenized investments, including a Hong Kong dollar money market fund share class.
HSBC was among Hong Kong’s first licensed stablecoin issuers in April alongside Anchorpoint Financial, a venture backed by Animoca Brands and Standard Chartered. The city’s licensing regime, introduced in August 2025, requires issuers to meet standards for backing reserves, redemption and risk management.
Magazine: Bitcoin turns 18: Has the original rebel grown up?

Bitcoin (BTC) held above its 100-day moving average on Monday ahead of US midterm elections, jobs data and earnings from Apple and Palantir.
Key points:
Kalshi traders put Democrats’ chances of winning control of the House at 93.6% ahead of Tuesday’s US midterm elections.
US nonfarm payrolls are forecast to rise by 65,000 in October as markets favor a December Fed rate hike.
Bitcoin holds its 100-day moving average as trader Rekt Capital compares its price chart with the 2023 recovery.
Midterms follow Bitcoin’s weakest October since 2014
Tuesday’s US midterm elections will determine control of Congress, with prediction market traders heavily favoring a Democratic victory in the House of Representatives.
Kalshi put the probability of Democrats winning the House at 93.6% as of Monday.
President Donald Trump said he would use his veto power if Democrats took control of Congress.
“I guess I’ll become Mr Veto. They’ll be sending stuff up. You veto it,” he said, according to the New York Post.
US midterm elections odds (screenshot). Source: Kalshi
Bitcoin ended the fourth quarter lower in each of the past three US midterm election years, falling 17.3% in 2014, 43.5% in 2018 and 14.8% in 2022. All three periods coincided with Bitcoin bear markets.
Benjamin Cowen, founder and CEO of crypto analytics platform IntoTheCryptoverse, suggested that the midterms can function as a cue to increase BTC exposure due to their short-term bearish impact on price.
“Usually the Q4 dump of midterm years just provide opportunities to buy for those who sold long ago,” he said Friday on X.
In July, Cowen referenced Bitcoin bear-market bottoms coinciding with the second half of midterm years.
BTC/USD was down 6.4% for the quarter as of Monday, after its weakest October since 2014, according to CoinGlass.
BTC/USD liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Jobs data and tech earnings test market expectations
September US job openings data are due Tuesday, followed by October’s nonfarm payrolls report on Friday.
Payrolls are expected to rise by 65,000, after the economy added 29,000 jobs in September, below forecasts for 84,000. Such an outcome notionally increases the odds of dovish policy signals from the Federal Reserve, which is in turn bullish for crypto and risk-asset liquidity.
Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack and Fed Governor Michelle Bowman are among the officials due to speak this week.
Data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool currently shows that markets expect the Fed to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points at the December meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The odds of such an outcome have sat between 67% and 75% for the past month.
Fed target rate probability comparison for December FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
The University of Michigan will also release its preliminary November consumer sentiment survey on Friday, including consumers’ inflation expectations.
Alongside the macro data prints, 20% of S&P 500 companies are due to report earnings in the coming days. Chief among these are tech giants Apple and Palantir, both due to report after the market close on Monday.
The reports follow last week’s tech sell-off, when disappointing guidance renewed concerns about AI spending and profitability.
Economist Mohamed El-Erian described markets as now “acutely sensitive” to tech-sector news headlines in weekend analysis.
“The market is particularly focused on justification for the massive capital expenditures being deployed across the sector, ROI’s, and revenue growth,” he wrote.
Bitcoin chart draws comparisons with 2023 recovery
After closing October down 7.3%, Bitcoin is holding above a moving average that has provided support since mid-August.
TradingView data showed BTC/USD staying above last week’s low near $76,300, without retesting it around the monthly close.
That low was close to the 100-day simple moving average (SMA) for BTC/USD, which has since risen to $76,548.
Bitcoin also reclaimed its 100-week exponential moving average (EMA) in time for the monthly close, with this standing at $77,759.
BTC/USD daily chart with 100 SMA, 100 EMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Trader and analyst Rekt Capital compared the weekly chart with Bitcoin’s rebound from its 2022 bear market low. During the recovery, BTC/USD produced an inverse head-and-shoulders pattern, retested support at the right shoulder, briefly fell below it and then rallied.
Last week’s drop to $76,300 brought Bitcoin back to what Rekt Capital identified as right-shoulder support on the current chart. He is watching for a brief move below that level as a possible next step in the comparison.
“The question now is whether Bitcoin can produce some sort of downside deviation below here over the next few weeks,” Rekt Capital said.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

OKX recorded about $445 million in 24-hour net inflows, the largest among tracked crypto exchanges, while Binance continued to register outflows after reopening withdrawals following its $6.3 billion hack.
Crypto exchange Bybit was in second place with $112 million in net inflows, followed by Gate with $91 million and Bitget with $54 million in 24-hour net inflows, according to DefiLlama.
Binance recorded the biggest net outflows among tracked exchanges, with more than $7 billion, up from $5.8 billion earlier Monday. Binance said it began restoring withdrawals in phases at 6:00 a.m. UTC on Sunday.
At the time of writing, Binance held about $127.9 billion in wallets tracked by DefiLlama, more than four times the $29 billion at OKX, the second-largest exchange by that measure.
Binance suspended withdrawals Friday, soon after late Thursday’s $6.3 billion hack, the largest in cryptocurrency history.
By Sunday, Binance said it had replenished approximately 95% of the affected assets, up from 90% on Saturday. The remaining 5% consisted of less liquid tokens that it continued to buy through market and over-the-counter transactions.
The exchange is using its corporate treasury, a partial deployment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and a portion of its futures insurance fund to replace the stolen assets. Binance has pledged to absorb the losses without passing them on to customers.
About $3 billion in stolen assets frozen by industry partners is separate from Binance’s replacement funds. Binance said Sunday it published a new reserves snapshot and an updated proof-of-reserves report was expected Monday.
OKX’s OKB token rose about 1.4% over the past 24 hours to trade near $113 on Monday, while BNB gained 0.3% to about $708 over the same period, according to CoinMarketCap.

Investors pulled $643 million from US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Friday, pushing October’s net flows into negative territory as crypto markets faced volatility following Binance’s $6.3 billion hack.
Friday’s withdrawals snapped four consecutive days of inflows, leaving the funds with $515 million in net outflows for October, their first negative month since June, according to SoSoValue. The funds still attracted approximately $361 million in net inflows for the year through October.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led Friday’s outflows with $234 million, followed by Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) with $201 million, according to Farside Investors data.
The withdrawals followed Bitcoin’s drop to $77,000 on Thursday. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, confirmed Friday that hackers had stolen about $6.3 billion in crypto assets.
Hardware wallet maker OneKey’s founder and CEO, Yishi, warned on X Friday that IBIT could face similar security threats because it relies heavily on Coinbase to hold its Bitcoin.
Investors also withdrew a net $156 million from US spot Ether (ETH) ETFs on Friday, bringing October’s net outflows to a record $1.61 billion. The previous monthly high was $1.42 billion in November 2025.
October’s withdrawals also erased the Ether funds’ net inflows for 2026, leaving them with roughly $45 million in net outflows for the year.

BTCPay Server has identified an attack vector affecting older versions of its payment software after receiving reports of attackers draining funds from users’ hot wallets.
On Monday, the Bitcoin payment platform said its investigation identified an attack vector targeting instances running version 2.4.1 or earlier, which was released July 23, 2026.
The project said it had received no credible reports of hot wallet drains among users running its latest release, version 2.4.7 and urged operators to update their installations.
The findings followed an earlier warning, in which BTCPay urged operators to shut down server instances while it investigated the unauthorized wallet withdrawal reports. It also shared instructions for operators to shut down their servers.
BTCPay has not disclosed the number of affected operators, the value of stolen funds or technical details explaining how attackers accessed the wallets. It asked affected users to submit information and logs to its security team.
Cointelegraph reached out to BTCPay Server for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
The reports come less than three months after BTCPay restricted remote Lightning access following an August attack that exploited a vulnerability to obtain Lightning Network Daemon (LND) credentials and steal funds.
It remains unclear whether the latest attack vector is connected to the August vulnerability.

The Bank of Korea has reportedly launched its first survey of banks and brokerages on cryptocurrency-related risks, asking how they would be affected by a major exchange hack, a market crash or heavy losses at another financial institution.
The central bank began surveying 18 banks and 13 brokerages on Oct. 23 as part of its first reported review of financial institutions’ participation in the virtual asset market, according to The Herald Business and Yonhap, citing financial industry sources.
The survey includes questions about each institution’s crypto-related staffing and budgets, business activities and reasons for entering the market, along with amounts invested in domestic and overseas crypto companies.
One scenario asks how financial firms would be affected if South Korea’s largest crypto exchange by market share temporarily suspended operations following a major hack or similar incident.
Other questions address a steep fall in cryptocurrency prices followed by a sustained trading slump, and the potential fallout if another financial institution suffered heavy losses from a crypto-related incident.
The survey began before last week’s $6.3 billion Binance hack, but the incident highlights the type of risk the central bank is examining. US authorities have attributed the attack to North Korean hackers.
Responses are reportedly due on Wednesday.
South Korean banks explore stablecoins amid regulatory delays
The review comes as South Korean financial firms have continued testing stablecoin services.
KB Financial Group completed a won-denominated stablecoin pilot in May, while Kakao Pay and KakaoBank partnered with Fireblocks in September to explore digital asset infrastructure.
The Bank of Korea has pushed for bank-led stablecoin issuance, while disagreements over which institutions should be permitted to issue stablecoins have complicated progress on the proposed Digital Asset Basic Act.
“Financial institutions are making their own preparations even as virtual asset legislation is moving more slowly than the market expected,” a Bank of Korea official told The Korea Herald.
Regulators have also stepped up cybersecurity scrutiny. In October, the Financial Services Commission proposed tougher security requirements after finding deficiencies at 130 of 555 financial companies.
The proposals include more frequent vulnerability assessments and greater executive accountability, following security incidents involving 16 companies, including crypto exchanges.

THORChain halted swaps across multiple blockchains on Saturday after an Ethereum block reorganization exposed a refund bug, which may have inadvertently slowed the movement of funds stolen from Binance, according to Chainalysis.
According to THORChain, the incident began at 11:34 UTC on Saturday, when a one-block reorganization on Ethereum removed a 10 ETH deposit that THORChain had already credited. When the swap failed to meet its price limit, THORChain issued a refund against funds the vault had never received. The sender’s actual deposit was also refunded, resulting in an extra 10 ETH payout, which then triggered an automatic pause.
An Ethereum block reorganization, or reorg, happens when the network replaces a recent block with a competing block. The newly discovered flaw lets THORChain refund a payment that Ethereum no longer recognizes as having happened. A malicious actor could potentially exploit that mismatch.
“Now that this is public knowledge, every time there is a block re-org on an external chain, a malicious actor could perform a new transaction with the same nonce and would be paid funds by the THORChain vaults,” the protocol’s team said.
THORChain node operators paused swaps involving assets on 10 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron, while trading continued on Avalanche, Base and XRP, according to the protocol’s network status page.
“Nodes will decide to re-enable chains as they are deemed safe,” said THORChain.
Emergency pause delays Binance hackers’ fund movements
The trading halt also disrupted attempts by North Korean hackers to launder funds stolen in last week’s $6.3 billion Binance hack, according to Chainalysis.
“THORChain just inadvertently delayed the laundering of a significant amount of funds stolen from Binance,” said Chainalysis on Sunday, explaining the emergency pause is “preventing all users, including DPRK’s money launderers, from using cross-chain swaps.”
“Until the service comes back online, neither the hackers nor anyone else can swap through a majority of THORChain’s bridges,” said Chainalysis.
The disruption came as US authorities pressed crypto infrastructure providers to restrict the movement of stolen funds.
On Saturday, the FBI urged THORChain node operators, DeFi services and other virtual asset providers to block transactions associated with addresses used by TraderTraitor to launder proceeds from the Binance hack.
North Korean hackers have used THORChain to permissionlessly swap cryptocurrencies following previous attacks.
However, THORChain has continued to defend its role as neutral, permissionless infrastructure amid scrutiny over stolen funds moving through the protocol.
In its third-quarter report, the project said it maintained that position despite pressure to block transactions linked to hacked funds.
THORChain founder John-Paul Thorbjornsen separately defended the protocol’s commitment to permissionless transactions, warning against shutting it down in response to pressure over illicit funds.
“IMO if THORNodes decided to take the protocol offline next week then the experiment is over,” he said.
“The last bastion of unencumbered and neutral settlement is over. There will simply be no other venue and the protocol would have failed.”
Magazine: Billions flee Binance on reopen, THORChain founder opposes coin freeze: Hodler’s Digest

Binance has recorded $5.8 billion in net outflows over the past 24 hours as customers withdraw funds following the exchange’s record $6.3 billion hack, according to data from DefiLlama.
Binance said it began restoring withdrawals at 6:00 UTC on Sunday. By 3:30 UTC, it had processed $4.6 billion in withdrawals against $1 billion in deposits, resulting in net outflows of $3.6 billion.
Separate data from DefiLlama showed $5.8 billion in net outflows over the preceding 24 hours, as funds continued leaving the exchange after its initial update.
Binance said withdrawals initially surged but have since slowed and are stabilizing. The exchange noted that the outflows represented a small portion of the approximately $171 billion in assets it holds. Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
The flows offered an early test of customer confidence following the $6.3 billion hack against Binance, the largest crypto theft on record.
Binance’s latest update at 12:36 UTC shows it enabled withdrawals for tokens across 15 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and XRP Ledger, adding that it will continue to restore additional assets and networks in phases.
Early data shared by Binance shows that the largest share of withdrawals were in USDt (USDT), followed by USDC (USDC) and Bitcoin (BTC).
On Saturday, Binance said it had replaced 90% of the assets lost in the $6.3 billion hack using funds from its corporate treasury, its Secure Asset Fund for Users and its futures insurance fund.
Magazine: $3.64B flees Binance on reopen, THORChain co-founder opposes coin freeze: Hodler’s Digest

Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek has revealed a design to increase the autonomy of AI coding assistants so they can perform multiple tasks with less human intervention.
The aim is to reduce human input in coordinating and monitoring multiple AI agents, according to a paper published by the company’s DeepSeek Harness team and reported by Singapore’s South China Morning Post on Sunday.
Managing multiple agents demands human attention, the team said, noting that “single-task limits depend on model capabilities, while multitask limits depend on human attention.”
The DeepSeek paper said a person can oversee only three to five active AI agent sessions simultaneously. Its proposed system would distribute tasks among agents and coordinate their work, leaving humans free to review results and make decisions.
The proposal comes amid intense competition among AI developers, including US companies Anthropic and OpenAI, according to the SCMP.
Cointelegraph reported last October that Chinese artificial intelligence models were outperforming US counterparts in cryptocurrency trading, according to data from blockchain analytics platform CoinGlass.
AI chatbot DeepSeek led a crypto trading experiment, being the only AI model to generate a positive unrealized return of 9.1%. The results surprised crypto traders, given that DeepSeek was developed at a fraction of the cost of its US rivals.
Magazine: New DeepSeek ban in US, Swiss-Asia crypto ties deepen: Asia Express

Eighteen years ago today, pseudonymous cypherpunk Satoshi Nakamoto posted the Bitcoin whitepaper, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, to a cryptography mailing list.
Created to bypass opaque institutions and remove the need for trust in financial transactions, Bitcoin (BTC) has been taking on the traditional financial system since its genesis block was mined on Jan. 3, 2009.
Inscribed in that very first block was a message from Satoshi, quoting a headline from The Times: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” It captured the financial crisis backdrop against which Bitcoin was born.
From its early years to adulthood, Bitcoin has had a tumultuous journey, fraught with controversy, intrigue and downright skulduggery.
As challenging as the journey has been, Bitcoin’s future remains on fragile ground, with the fallout from the $6.3 billion Binance hack, the threat of quantum computing, the acceleration of AI-related cyber threats, and questions over its long-term security still looming.
As Bitcoin celebrates its 18th birthday, it’s now old enough to vote in the US midterm elections, but is it ready for adulthood?
Bitcoin’s early years
Undoubtedly, one of Bitcoin’s most memorable moments was on May 22, 2010 when developer Laszlo Hanyecz sent 10,000 BTC to pay for two pizzas in one of the earliest documented Bitcoin transactions.
The Bitcoin Whitepaper. Source: Bitcoin.org
The day would become known as Bitcoin Pizza Day and go down in crypto folklore as the most expensive pizza purchase on record. The coins were worth around $41 at the time, taking the concept of opportunity cost to a whole new high — those pizzas would have cost $780 million at today’s prices.
Bitcoin traded for pennies in its earliest days, but Satoshi understood how that would change one day, writing in 2009, “It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on.”
By late 2013, Bitcoin had broken through the $1,000 milestone for the first time, amid growing public interest with the emergence of the Silk Road darknet marketplace.
Yet nowhere do the laws of physics apply more pertinently than crypto; inevitably, what goes up must come down. In February 2014, Bitcoin’s epic run came to an abrupt end when Mt. Gox, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange at the time, suddenly stopped trading and went offline.
The exchange had lost around 850,000 BTC, including customers’ funds, in a collapse that sent shockwaves through the industry, making Mt. Gox an early poster child for the concept “not your keys, not your coins.”
Craig Wright, Jamie Dimon and China’s first ban
The next dramatic bull run would culminate in Bitcoin’s price climbing from below $1,000 at the beginning of 2017 to almost $20,000 by December.
The rally coincided with a boom in initial coin offerings (ICOs) and a rush of projects promising to use blockchain technology for everything from banking to supply chains, and even Long Island iced tea.
Suddenly, every man, woman and dog wanted a blockchain, even if they had no idea how Bitcoin worked or where it came from.
Everyone, that is, except JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who called Bitcoin “a fraud” in September 2017 and said he would fire any employee trading it.
Bitcoin genesis block. Source: Mempool.space
At the time, Bitcoin was embroiled in a bitter debate over how the network should scale. The so-called “block size war” peaked in August 2017, culminating in the hard fork that created Bitcoin Cash and highlighting the complications of trying to change a decentralized system.
Meanwhile, China moved against the industry, banning ICOs in September 2017, taking action against cryptocurrency exchanges and fanning the market uncertainty ahead of the eventual downturn in 2018.
Speculation over the identity of Bitcoin’s creator had also become a sideshow, fueled by Australian computer scientist Craig Wright’s repeated claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The UK High Court rejected his claim in 2024.
China’s second ban and the collapse of FTX
Bitcoin’s next major bull run came during the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments and central banks unleashed a tsunami of money printing in a bid to cushion economies from lockdowns.
Interest rates fell, liquidity flooded financial markets and Bitcoin, which had plunged during the March 2020 market panic, began a remarkable recovery, reaching almost $69,000 by November 2021.
As if China’s intervention wasn’t enough the first time around, Beijing stepped in again to rain on the parade, announcing a sweeping ban on cryptocurrency transactions and mining in September 2021, and Bitcoin’s price took a hit.
In November 2022, another major cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, collapsed, intensifying the crypto winter and leaving customers facing enormous losses.
The episode led to a loss of trust from the TradFi sector and a spate of regulatory hostility toward crypto, in what the industry would dub “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.” Bitcoin’s downward spiral was once again painful and steep.
The first Bitcoin ETF and $100,000
Just when sentiment in the industry was circling the drain, a silver lining appeared in January 2024 from one of the unlikeliest sources. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, which had repeatedly rejected spot Bitcoin product applications, approved the first US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products.
The SEC approved a US spot Bitcoin ETF. Source: SEC.gov
The nod from the SEC finally gave investors a regulated route to gain exposure to BTC without having to manage wallets or private keys themselves. At the end of that year, Bitcoin’s price broke through $100,000 for the first time.
Since then, traditional finance has continued to move closer to crypto, with banks moving into custody and trading services and heavyweights like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink talking about putting everything from stocks to bonds on the blockchain.
Even Dimon shifted his stance from outright dismissal to allowing clients to buy the asset. The original cryptocurrency went on to hit a new all-time high of more than $126,000 in October 2025.
Bitcoin’s all grown up, but what about the future?
Bitcoin is firmly in the embrace of TradFi once again, with some sizable regulatory tailwinds from Washington and abroad.
The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act has established a federal framework for stablecoins, the SEC has offered greater clarity on how securities laws apply to crypto assets, and Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) has given the local industry a more harmonized regulatory framework.
Yet the institutionalization of the space has led many Bitcoiners to question whether institutions holding so much BTC are concentrating ownership and centralizing supply — and indeed whether the cypherpunk movement has been captured by the very institutions it sought to rebel against.
There are bigger questions looming over Bitcoin’s long-term security, too, including the threat of quantum computing, which many fear could break the cryptography that secures Bitcoin.
A proposed upgrade known as BIP-360 outlines a new type of Bitcoin output to reduce certain quantum vulnerabilities, but as the community learned from the block size war, the challenge will be agreeing on any new implementation before the threat arrives.
And quantum computing is not the only security question Bitcoin needs to resolve. This week’s $6.3 billion Binance hack, the largest crypto exchange hack on record, has renewed fears about the security of centralized exchanges, the stability of crypto infrastructure and the potential for further market turmoil.
There’s also the question of who pays to keep the network secure as the block subsidy trends to zero, and whether transaction fees alone will be enough to compensate the miners securing the network.
Transaction fees accounted for just 0.67% of total miner revenue in the 90 days to Oct. 4 and have remained below 5% of miner revenue for most of Bitcoin’s history. That leaves a huge gap for fees to fill as block rewards diminish with each halving.
Happy 18th birthday, Bitcoin
Bitcoin has endured more than your average teen as it comes of age, surviving exchange collapses, regulatory crackdowns, civil wars and repeated market crashes.
It has also become something Satoshi may not have foreseen: an asset held by Wall Street and traded through mainstream financial products.
Magazine: Will gold’s ‘infinite mint bug’ make Bitcoin more valuable?

Binance said it has reopened its Bitcoin network in phase one of resuming withdrawals after a major hack of about $6.3 billion in funds.
The crypto exchange had suspended user withdrawals after the attack on Thursday, which the FBI blamed on North Korean operatives.
“First batch network now opened in phase one of withdrawals is $BTC bitcoin network,” Binance said on X.
In an earlier X announcement on Sunday, Binance had said it would roll out withdrawal services in phases, which will be progressively available. Updates will be available on its official X channel, it added.
“We are taking a phased approach by prioritizing tokens based on the past week data of user demand, so that each network and asset pair can be restored carefully, with stability and security checks completed before access is reopened,” Binance said.
Users should check the withdrawal page for their selected asset and network, or visit the Binance network status page to confirm availability, the company said.
During the phased rollout, it is expected that there will be some congestion, longer processing times and even temporary delays, Binance said, so if a withdrawal is not successful, users should try again after a short while.
Cointelegraph reported on Saturday that Binance said it had replenished 90% of the assets stolen in the hack, up from 80% a day earlier, and remained on track to resume withdrawals Sunday.
Magazine: Binance hackers raced to move billions before it could be frozen

The FBI said that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of about $6.3 billion in digital assets from cryptocurrency exchange Binance on Thursday.
The FBI said on Saturday in a news release that it refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as “TraderTraitor,” which it has most recently observed converting stolen assets mostly into Ether (ETH).
It expects these assets to be further converted, using DeFi and instant swap services, as the hackers move to more advanced laundering stages.
The FBI urged private sector entities including THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms and other digital asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from addresses TraderTraitor actors are using to launder these stolen assets. A full list of addresses is provided on the news release.
Cointelegraph reported earlier this year that North Korea-linked hackers stole about 60% of the value lost to crypto hacks in 2025, with proceeds used to help fund the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, highlighting a growing reliance on digital assets to generate hard currency.
North Korean defense spending supplemented
Related: Crypto losses from North Korea hackers in 2025 rose 51% YoY: Report
Those findings came from a CertiK report that attributed more than $2 billion of an estimated $3.4 billion in 2025 crypto security losses to groups tied North Korea, across 79 of 656 incidents documented that year.
While North Korea does not publish credible budget data, according to independent research organization MilitarySpend, mid-range consensus places its actual annual defense spending at as much as $6 billion, using purchasing-power-adjusted GDP estimates, though this figure is uncertain.
MilitarySpend adds that revenue from Russia arms transfers — estimated at as much as $5 billion in munitions exported to Russia from 2022-2025 per South Korean intelligence — supplements domestic weapons programs, as does cryptocurrency theft, which provides additional off-budget financing for WMD development.
As Cointelegraph reported, between 2016 and early 2026, North Korea-linked actors stole an estimated $6.75 billion in cryptocurrency across 263 documented incidents, according to CertiK, citing findings by independent onchain researcher Taylor Monahan.
CertiK’s analysis concluded that North Korea has industrialized crypto theft into a core state revenue mechanism.
Magazine: Binance hackers raced to move billions before it could be frozen

Bitcoin has held up better than expected following the $6.3 billion Binance hack, according to Strive CEO Matt Cole, who said the breach does not undermine the cryptocurrency’s long-term investment thesis.
Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction on Friday, Cole said the breach had not changed his long-term investment case for Bitcoin. He compared the attack on Binance’s wallets to a bank robbery rather than a failure of Bitcoin’s network.
Bitcoin traded near $77,400 at 4:00 pm on Saturday, about 4% below its price shortly before the attack began Thursday, according to CoinGecko data.
Strive, a publicly traded company that holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet, reported owning 43,000 BTC as of Oct. 23.
“I do have conviction that over any reasonable time frame, this does not change the investment thesis on Bitcoin,” Cole said.
Cole said Bitcoin’s decline was less severe than he expected given the scale of the breach and broader market weakness, although he acknowledged that it was too early to determine whether the cryptocurrency had reached a price bottom.
Cole described the market as being in an “early spring” recovery phase that could last another six to nine months, with prices gradually rising rather than surging to new highs.
Paul Chapman, financial crime director at Wirex, also distinguished the attack on Binance from a compromise of Bitcoin’s network. “It’s important to be clear that Bitcoin itself hasn’t been hacked — this was an attack on one company’s systems, not the network,” he told Cointelegraph.
Bitcoin reaction compared with Bybit
According to Glassnode, Thursday’s Binance breach was the largest cryptocurrency hack on record, with around $6.3 billion affected, exceeding the combined losses from the next nine largest hacks. The previous record was the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit in February 2025.
Glassnode said three of the 10 largest crypto hacks have occurred since the beginning of 2025, all involving exchanges.
Binance hack exceeds the next nine largest crypto exploits combined. Source: Glassnode
By comparison, following the Bybit hack in 2025, Bitcoin fell roughly 5% from nearly $100,000 to around $95,000 amid the breach and broader market volatility, according to a Bitfinex market report.
Anchorage Digital data cited by CNBC put Bitcoin’s average decline in the first 24 hours after previous crypto exchange exploits at 8.3%.
Binance hack exposes exchange security vulnerabilities
Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan said the attackers appeared to have compromised Binance’s transaction signing process. Binance said Friday that it had found no evidence of leaked wallet private keys, though its investigation remained ongoing.
Blockaid’s analysis identified an Ethereum transaction containing 50 signed authorizations covering different transaction counts. A matching authorization allowed attacker-controlled code to operate through the wallet. Ben-Natan argued that checks before signing could have blocked the malicious authorization.
Magazine: Tampered Ledger reported in Singapore a month before news broke: Asia Express

Attackers behind Binance’s estimated $6.3 billion hack still control billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency despite efforts by token issuers to freeze the proceeds.
The attack, the largest in crypto history, began at 8:04 pm UTC Thursday and the perpetrators, linked to the same North Korean hackers behind last month’s Bitget hack, immediately began converting assets.
The game plan for the hackers was to convert the assets that could be frozen, like USDT and USDC, into ones that could not, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
CertiK engineer Dickson Wu traced $500 million in USDT that was sent to one address, with $325 million sold to market makers for ETH by 20:59 UTC, less than an hour after the hack began.
They were racing against some of crypto’s most powerful gatekeepers: stablecoin giants like Tether and Circle, who had already begun blacklisting addresses associated with the theft.
Binance said Friday that about $3 billion of the stolen assets were frozen onchain out of an estimated $6.3 billion total, and that it is working with law enforcement, issuers and blockchain analytics firms to trace additional funds.
The scale of the theft is mind-boggling, even in crypto terms, but with around half of the assets already frozen, how much of the stolen crypto can the perpetrators actually spend?
Crypto with an off switch
Unlike BTC or ETH, which are decentralized cryptocurrencies with no central issuer and no one to hit the pause button, centralized stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC have issuers that can freeze tokens held at specific addresses.
Binance said it is working with law enforcement to trace the funds. Source: Binance
That gives them the power to act swiftly in incidents like these. Tether froze around $1.567 billion in USDT in total, with the first major freeze happening just 37 minutes after the stolen funds reached the attacker’s main Ethereum wallet.
Circle froze around $823 million in USDC three minutes later, with other issuers like Ripple and World Liberty Financial following soon after.
The ability to immobilize crypto is not exclusively a stablecoin feature, and despite not having central issuers, some decentralized protocols like Arbitrum did not sit idly by.
Arbitrum’s Security Council moved around $30.5 million in ARB and ETH into an intermediary frozen wallet, where they can only be moved after further action by the council or a vote by Arbitrum DAO governance.
One important distinction remains — frozen funds don’t necessarily equate to recovered funds. Immobilizing assets prevents the suspected attackers from spending them, but it doesn’t automatically return them to Binance or its users.
The Aave complication
Decentralized lending protocol Aave adds another layer of complexity to the equation. Between 20:58 and 21:01 UTC, a wallet associated with the attackers deposited $60 million in USDT into Aave V3 on Ethereum and borrowed $44.6 million of wrapped Ether (WETH), around 40 minutes before the first freeze.
LlamaRisk, an Aave risk service provider, said in its 1:00 am update that the attacker’s position subsequently held around $59.9 million in USDT collateral against $43.8 million in debt. Aave said the position remained overcollateralized and did not put protocol suppliers at risk.
Largest crypto heists of all time. Source: Elliptic
Since the USDT had already been deposited into Aave’s lending pool, blacklisting the attacker’s wallet could not automatically retrieve the collateral held by the protocol, as Aave Chan Initiative founder Marc Zeller explained:
“USDT is real money backed by dollars, and the position is criminal but overcollateralized in the eyes of the protocol.”
To prevent further deposits and borrowing, Aave temporarily froze markets across its V3 and V4 deployments, although existing users could still withdraw funds, repay loans and liquidate positions.
Aave later lifted its precautionary freeze across V3 and V4 markets, saying its contracts were unaffected and positions remained overcollateralized.
“Just another day in crypto,” Zeller said.
So what can the attackers actually keep?
Elliptic estimated that $2.84 billion had been frozen by 7:00 am UTC on Friday, while the attackers still controlled around $3.33 billion in assets that issuers could not immobilize.
And while the freeze almost halved the attackers’ profit pool, that doesn’t mean all the remaining funds are safe to recover.
Bitcoin and Ether don’t have a centralized token issuer that can blacklist individual addresses like Tether or Circle. So once stolen assets are converted into these native cryptocurrencies, transactions can be restricted, but freezing them is a lot harder.
Binance has pledged to cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds, and says user assets remain safe; according to the latest update from Binance chief executive Richard Teng, the exchange is already “recovering stolen assets for users.”
Magazine: Cybersecurity’s Black October: How to protect yourself

Raymond Christian Garcia and Isiah Angelo Garcia, both of Waller, Texas, were sentenced to 180 months and 186 months in prison, respectively, for their armed robbery of cryptocurrency and kidnapping of a family in Grant, Minnesota.
The brothers were sentenced on Thursday before US District Judge Donovan W. Frank, according to a Friday news release. They had pleaded guilty in June.
On Sept. 19, 2025, the brothers, who had traveled from Texas to Minnesota, kidnapped Victim 1 and his family in their home at gunpoint, court documents said. They zip‑tied the family at gunpoint and held them for more than nine hours, demanding access to Victim 1’s cryptocurrency accounts.
When the brothers did not receive the amount of cryptocurrency expected, they forced Victim 1 to drive to a cabin in upstate Minnesota, where they obtained additional cryptocurrency from other devices for a total of more than $8 million.
The brothers fled after the victim’s son called 911, and police later identified and arrested them near Houston.
Brothers terrorized family at gunpoint
“Raymond and Isiah Garcia violated the sanctity of a home, abducted a victim, terrorized a family at gunpoint for hours, and disrupted an entire community in a brazen act of violence and greed,” said FBI Minneapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge Christopher D. Dotson.
Cointelegraph reported in July that home invasions had become the most common form of crypto wrench attacks during the first half of 2026, rising to 20 publicly reported incidents from just one a year earlier, according to blockchain security firm CertiK.
CertiK said in July it verified 52 wrench attacks worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 33% from 39 incidents during the same period in 2025. Kidnappings rose to 16 from 12.
Magazine: France is world’s most dangerous place for Bitcoiners: 90 attacks in 7 months

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis said it was targeted in a cybersecurity incident, similar to those suffered recently by other platforms.
“Based on the investigation to date, we have found no evidence of unauthorized access to investigation content, authentication credentials, or session tokens,” it said in a blog post on Friday. Some non-sensitive customer data was exposed.
Chainalysis said it had engaged world-class third-party cybersecurity experts and was using large language models to support a review of its security and strengthen its defenses.
The company added that the security incident was not related to the recent crypto theft at Binance.
Cointelegraph reported on Thursday that Chainalysis had mapped out a network of Russian intermediaries that helped North Korean IT workers cash out millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
Chainalysis posted on X on Friday that suspected North Korea-linked hacks accounted for almost 89% of reported crypto hack losses this year, up from 15% in 2021.
Magazine: Binance hackers raced to move billions before it could be frozen

Soon after the $6.3 billion hack of Binance, the biggest in crypto history, a few political and administration figures began offering opinions, with a US election approaching on Nov. 3 and voting already having begun in many locations.
President Donald Trump was asked at a news conference on Friday about the hack of Binance. “We don’t know. We’re looking at that, the hack with Binance. They’re saying they’re going to get it back, they’re saying they’re guaranteeing it,” he replied.
The crypto exchange said in a post on X late Friday that it would cover any losses. “We want to be clear about our commitment: Binance will absorb the financial impact of these stolen funds, not our users.” It added that about $3 billion of the stolen funds had already been frozen in various locations.
It was not clear whether there was any immediate political advantage to be gained from the hack, which was widely attributed to a North Korean group, but Republican and Democratic sides began staking out positions almost immediately.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican and longtime crypto advocate, cited the stalled Clarity Act in a Friday post on X. “Yesterday, hackers stole more than $6 billion from Binance in less than 4 hours, the biggest heist in history. The Clarity Act would have given crypto firms legal cover to freeze suspicious transactions the instant law enforcement calls. Every minute lost is money gone for good,” she wrote.
Related: FBI and Secret Service join response to Binance’s $6.3B hack
Clarity Act stalled over ethics provisions
The Senate on Sept. 15 failed to pass a cloture motion on the Clarity Act that would have established the country’s first regulatory framework for digital assets.
The bill had stalled over proposed ethics provisions that would restrict government officials and their families from issuing or profiting from digital assets while in office.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission then submitted a regulatory action on Sept. 18 covering crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review, as the agency moved forward with its approach to overseeing the digital asset sector.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig referred to crypto market regulation on Friday after the Binance hack, saying in a TV appearance: “This proves our exact point in proposing regulations for crypto markets. … The real issue here is that these are unregulated offshore exchanges and they don’t have the same sorts of safeguards that we have in our financial markets here in the United States.”
Still, Democratic Representative Maxine Waters said in a Friday news release that “The reported $6.3 billion hack of Binance should be a wake-up call to anyone who thinks the cryptocurrency industry can operate without strong accountability. Yet, Trump and Congressional Republicans have been set on pushing a deregulatory agenda that weakens compliance mandates and oversight of the crypto industry, not to mention the Trump family’s own questionable ties to the company.”
Related: Recap: How Binance’s record $6.3B hack unfolded
Trump family and Binance
She also commented on past relations between Binance and the Trump family, saying, “Remember that after Binance’s owner, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), gave over $2 billion to the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chair Paul Atkins dropped the SEC’s slam-dunk fraud case against Binance and CZ, and Trump fully pardoned CZ, allowing him to again get involved with crypto.”
Meanwhile, Binance said it was working with law enforcement, blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers and other exchanges to trace and recover the stolen funds.
The company also promised to publish a postmortem incident report after conducting a full security review.
“We will provide a detailed technical report outlining what happened, the lessons learned and the additional safeguards being implemented,” Binance said.
Magazine: Binance hackers raced to move billions before it could be frozen