小恐龙说趋势

Binance used $100 million to buy Circle stock, and then forcibly pulled USDC’s monthly trading volume on its own platform—from a range of $20 billion to $40 billion—up to consistently stand above $80 billion year-round.

💬 进群聊行情

First, let’s lay out the facts clearly: Binance took a $100 million equity stake in the stablecoin issuer Circle (ticker: CRCL), and at the same time signed a five-year commercial agreement to promote and integrate USDC globally. Clear Street analyst Owen Lau calls this structure a “distributor–shareholder model”—Circle has used it before, and it worked well.

What really changed is reflected in the data. According to Kaiko, when the two firms first collaborated in December 2024, Binance had only 140 spot trading pairs quoted in USDC. Now that number is 329. Before that, from 2021 through the end of 2024, the number of trading pairs had only slowly climbed from 39 to 140. In other words, the recent acceleration is several times faster than the prior three years combined. Throughout 2026, Binance has held the largest share of USDC spot trading volume; daily volumes are in the range of several billion dollars—10 to 20 times that of most other exchanges. Those platforms typically don’t even reach $500 million, and for other major platforms, the USDC trading range basically hasn’t moved; almost all incremental volume has been captured by Binance alone.

But the gap is still striking. USDC’s market cap is about $74 billion, making it the second-largest stablecoin; the top one, USDT, is about $140 billion—nearly double. The CEO of market maker Gravity Team, Martins Benkitis, put it plainly: distribution channels don’t change habits—USDT has more trading pairs and deeper local liquidity, and “people have already gotten used to it.”

Circle hasn’t been idle either. On September 8, it announced a $400 million acquisition of Tazapay, a cross-border payments company based in Singapore. The deal targets the kind of local bank relationships and payment rails in emerging markets that take years to build. Add to that the fact that Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are all pushing into stablecoin payments and infrastructure, and this competition has long shifted from “whose coin is more stable” to “whose pipeline is wider.”

My take: the $100 million Binance bought isn’t a token—it’s distribution. The moat of a stablecoin has never been technology; it’s that users can’t be bothered to switch. So this round can’t be decided in the short term, but USDC has indeed secured an expensive entry ticket. What’s truly worth watching is this: over the next two quarters, will USDT’s share show clearly visible loosening?

When you trade, do you usually hold USDT or USDC? Let’s chat in the comments.
Click the avatar to watch the livestream
Every day, I’ll help you follow crypto hotspots—more than just what happens in the news; it’s about helping you understand the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

#strategy拟对四只优先股按日派息
Once every day for dividends (365 times a year): Strategy with 846,000 BTC needs to change the preferred share dividend to "paid once per day"

💬 进群一起分析行情

Strategy has just submitted a proposal to shareholders, changing the dividend schedule for its four preferred shares—STRF, STRC, STRK, and STRD—from periodic payments to counting every calendar day as the record date (including weekends and holidays), with the funds received on the next business day. Shareholders will vote on it at an online special meeting on October 28.

Note that only the frequency is changing: the stated dividend rate and the total dividend amount remain exactly the same. So why go through all this? The answer is hidden in STRC.

STRC’s annualized dividend yield is 12%, with a par value of $100. But since May this year, it has been trading below $100. After the big Bitcoin drop in June, it once fell as low as $71.25; it has since recovered to about $98.65—still short of $100 by one last breath. Strategy CEO Phong Le made a rare admission on a podcast: the leverage added to STRC by the market was far beyond expectations. Some people used Bitcoin as collateral to borrow money at low cost to buy STRC, profiting from the spread between the "borrowing cost" and the "12% dividend." When Bitcoin fell, leveraged positions were forced to unwind, and the price couldn’t hold naturally. His exact words were, "We didn’t expect this much leverage to come in. It’s been a lesson."

The timeline is also set: STRC will be the pilot. After approval, the first daily dividend will be paid on November 2; STRF, STRK, and STRD will transition in January next year, with the first payment expected on January 4. This move isn’t something Strategy invented. Strive, back in May, provided SATA preferred shares with dividends paid on business days, with an annualized yield of 13%—and its pricing stayed even tighter to 100. Strategy’s difference is that it doesn’t even leave weekends out.

A quick volume comparison shows just how big this experiment is: Strategy holds 846,000 Bitcoins, with total cost of $63.8 billion, averaging $75,416 per coin. Strive has only 26,355 coins. Meanwhile, Strategy is also repurchasing its preferred shares. Of the $2.0 billion authorization, about $1.0 billion has already been used. In the week of September 20 alone, it bought $174 million worth of STRC. After the news, MSTR closed Friday at $158.61, down 2.15%.

My take: splitting dividends into daily payments is essentially an "experience upgrade" for preferred shares—so holders see cash flow every day, reducing selling pressure and shrinking the discount, and making it easier to attract long-term institutions. But this is financial engineering, not fundamental repair: the damage left by leveraged trades and the discount below $100 have not been fixed by this single proposal. When Bitcoin doesn’t rise, coin-holding companies can only adjust their own capital structure.

Do you think "dividends paid once per day" is truly stable, or is it just patching holes with other holes? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Click the avatar to watch the live stream
Every day, follow crypto hotspots with you—more than just seeing what happens in the news, it helps you understand the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

78 billion dollars worth of coins shoved into a “black box”—and now Bitcoin wants to learn too. The price: transaction fees directly quadruple.

💬 加入小恐龙粉丝群

On Thursday, three researchers—Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov, and Aleksei Moskvin—from the cryptography company [alloc] init released a 56-page paper titled “Shielded Bitcoin.” It copies Zcash’s encrypted transfer design: the amount, the sender, and the recipient are all hidden, and there’s no need to change a single rule of the Bitcoin network.

Why bring this up now? The answer lies in Zcash’s data. As of Friday, about 4.9 million ZEC are locked in Zcash’s privacy pool—up 14% since July 30. That’s nearly 29% of the circulating supply, worth about $7.8 billion at current prices. In the past week, there were roughly 63,000 privacy transfers—busiest week since 2022 and the fourth-highest week ever. Total network transfer value exceeded $23 billion—highest since 2021 and second-highest ever. ZEC is up more than 2,300% over the past year. In early September it surpassed $1,000, and on Wednesday it pushed through $1,600 again. Money and attention are flowing into the privacy track—and Bitcoin developers can’t sit still.

But this paper has a hard flaw you can’t get around: it “stores” encrypted transfer data on Bitcoin and hands validation off to another external software stack. In other words, Bitcoin can confirm a transaction, but the privacy payment inside might not have actually passed validation. And the 56 pages don’t spell out how to deposit the real BTC into the system or how to withdraw it—the authors leave that part to another paper about PIPEs. They even admit themselves that the phrase “users control their own coins” only covers in-system transfers, not deposits and withdrawals.

Criticism came fast. Mert Mumtaz, a co-founder of Solana infrastructure firm Helius and a Zcash supporter, directly called it a “synthetic ledger with major trade-offs”: it requires a trusted setup, and fees aren’t anonymized either. Which wallets pay to send the privacy transfer is still visible on-chain. The Cypherpunk who holds and mines Zcash welcomes the research, but nails the point: “Privacy should live at the foundation. No Bitcoin changes are needed—that’s the biggest selling point, and also the biggest flaw.”

By the way, Ethereum is also reviewing an EIP-8182 proposal that aims to build shared privacy pools, for the same reason: scenarios like salaries, fund management, and donations shouldn’t all be fully public. On the cost side, the math is just as clear: one privacy transfer is about 700 virtual bytes, while a regular Bitcoin transaction is only 100 to 200. At the same fee rate, miner fees are about 4x.

My take: privacy isn’t hype. In real scenarios—paychecks, business payments, everyday spending—addresses and amounts simply shouldn’t be permanently tied to the chain. Zcash’s privacy pool grew by 14% over more than a year and locked up $7.8 billion, which shows the demand is real. But placing privacy outside Bitcoin and having users hold synthetic assets effectively shifts the core trust assumptions elsewhere. The real dividing line isn’t whether coins can be hidden—it’s whether the hidden coins still count as yours.

So what do you think: making Bitcoin private is a necessity, or a fake need? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Every day, I’ll keep you on top of Bitcoin and privacy-coin hotspots—not just what news breaks, but also the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the avatar to watch the livestream

$700 million flowed through a bank account—and the U.S. Department of Justice only seized $84 million. The dollar pipeline behind the world’s largest stablecoin was cut in the middle.

📈 进群一起分析行情

On September 14, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California issued a forfeiture order: about $84 million in bank deposits plus 1.18 million USDT were frozen. The money, on paper, belonged to a payments company called Capstone Ltd., incorporated in Montana and with an office in Sacramento. Tracing the line upward, Tether and an exchange in the same group were flagged as the two crypto firms standing behind it—yet neither was charged with any wrongdoing.

Start with the transaction records. From March to December 2025, more than $700 million was posted from Capstone’s corporate account at Wells Fargo. After stripping out the portion related to U.S. Treasury securities, about $337 million still had been transferred out. Nearly two-thirds of it went to hundreds of recipients, most outside the United States. Capstone is registered with FinCEN as a money services business, but the complaint says that when it introduced itself to Citibank, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase, it described itself as an “IT services company.” When asked whether it managed third-party funds and whether virtual currency was a high-risk business, the answers were all “no.”

The timeline tells the story even more clearly: in May 2025, Citibank shut down Capstone’s account due to anti–money laundering concerns, and the flow immediately shifted to Wells Fargo. In February 2026, the FBI searched the operator Kotaro Shimogori’s residence in Sacramento. On April 2, EQIBank, a digital bank with a license in Dominica, only then learned that about 80% of its financial assets had been frozen. On July 15, a civil forfeiture complaint was filed; the next day, the judge denied its motion to unfreeze the funds.

The contrast is striking. EQIBank says about $89 million was seized—about 80% of its financial assets. It has warned that if it cannot get the money back, it may not be able to continue operating. The Dominica regulator has placed it under enhanced supervision, with liquidation among the options. But in Tether’s view, this portion caps at about $63.8 million: less than 0.034% of total assets. Compared with the $4.11 billion in excess reserves, it is only about 1.55%—less than half of the $1.5 billion in operating profit in a single quarter. The reserves and the peg of USDT have not been touched; on the financial statements, it appears to be rounded off. For that bank and the customers waiting to redeem, however, it is a life-or-death question.

The real information is not that Tether has risk, but that the stablecoin’s dollar inflows and outflows still have to detour through layer after layer of payment providers and offshore banks. USDT settles on-chain in seconds, but minting and redemption must pass through these manual checkpoints. The more layers in the chain, the more compliance-failure points there are—any one of which can drag the whole system down. This year, Tether cooperated with U.S. law enforcement to freeze $344 million in USDT and recover nearly $61 million, and it is also moving toward more “legitimate” channels—taking an investment in Pave Bank and having USA₮ issued by licensed banks. Yet the global USDT principal still rests on offshore intermediaries. The reserve assurance report as of September 30 will tell us whether it needs to recognize impairment for this money.

Do you think the next big risk for stablecoins will come from the on-chain layer or from the banking channels? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Click the profile picture to watch the live stream.
Every day, I’ll help you track stablecoins and regulatory hotspots—more than just reporting what happens, I’ll show you the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

10.7 billion tokens will be unlocked all at once on November 24, which equals 90% of the entire currently circulating supply.

📢 进群聊行情

The Monad Foundation’s own tokenomics documentation is very straightforward: the mainnet will go live on November 24, 2025. During the first year of the team token lockup, the portion released on the day it reaches one full year is about 10.7% of the initial supply. The initial supply is 100 billion MON, which translates to an absolute number of roughly 10.7 billion tokens.

Today, CoinGecko shows the circulating supply is only 11.83 billion tokens. Dividing 10.7 billion by 11.83 billion gives about 90%. In other words, the team allocation locked for a full year is released at once, with a size nearly equal to all the tokens currently circulating in the market.

This isn’t the only unlock deadline. The team has a total of about 27 billion tokens (27% of the initial supply), released over three years starting from the anniversary date. Investors have about 19.7 billion tokens (19.7%), locked for four years with a one-year cliff; after that, they unlock monthly at a rate of 1/48. Category Labs has another ~3.95 billion tokens (3.95%) in its treasury, reserved for future employee incentives.

The data itself is also somewhat messy. Different aggregators list the total unlock amount for November 24 ranging from 16.6 billion to 17.1 billion tokens. The disagreement comes down to one interpretation: investors’ “one-year cliff”—is it a one-time maturity at 12/48 (about 4.9 billion tokens), or does only the first tranche mature? The original documents are not clear about both. So any claim about the total amount on that day is just model assumptions, not evidence. The only number that holds up is the team’s 10.7 billion tokens.

A more common pitfall is the denominator. Some data sources show MON circulating supply is around 51 billion tokens, more than four times higher than CoinGecko. Work it out from market cap divided by price: MON’s current price is $0.0263, market cap is about $311 million—this calculation comes out to exactly 11.83 billion tokens. Why the huge difference? Because “unlock” and “circulating” are two different things. On the first day of the mainnet, there are about 49.4 billion tokens not yet locked; of those, about 38.5 billion are allocated for ecosystem development, managed by the foundation—technically free to use, but not actually in the market. If you mix these together, the 90% becomes 21%.

My view: this is an event with a clearly defined date, clear terms of scope, and it won’t be canceled. But the unlock changes the “amount that can be sold,” not whether the team will sell—no document promises that the team won’t sell, nor that they won’t sell in batches. Two months remain until November 24. For holders, this window is only useful for re-checking your position size and the duration of your staking lock, not for guessing the price.

What really matters isn’t how many tokens there are that day, but what the market expected before that—and how much real demand the ecosystem has generated since launch that can absorb the supply. By the way, over the last 30 days, MON has actually been down (about -7.8%), and it has only bounced back a bit over the last 7 days (about +8.0%).

Do you think this “window before the unlock” is an opportunity to exit early, or a low point after the bad news is already over? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Click the avatar to watch the livestream

Every day, I’ll help you track the biggest crypto market highlights—not just what happens in the news, but also how to understand the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

One month, doubled—yet the founder admits, “I also can’t figure out why it’s going up”

💰 加入聊天室

In the past 30 days, Zcash (ZEC) has risen 102%, with the current price around $1,529 and a market cap of about $25.9 billion. But co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson reiterated on X that his year-end target of $5,000 remains unchanged, while admitting he doesn’t have a clear explanation either.

Over the past month, ZEC surged from under $800 to above $1,600. Its 24-hour high even touched $1,621. The acceleration phase was basically concentrated in the last two weeks. This isn’t the first time he’s called it: he previously said ZEC would break $1,200 before September 25—yet that target was left far behind. This time he pushed the timeline to year-end, aiming for $5,000, which is about 3.3 times the current level.

What’s really pushing the price might not be his words. The spot ETF (ticker ZCSH) formed from the Grayscale Zcash trust has been trading for about a month, and its assets under management have already surpassed $1 billion. We wrote about its shares on September 20—when its AUM was still $890 million. In just a bit more than a week, it crossed $1 billion. Institutions are buying ZEC directly through traditional products, a level of treatment privacy coins have rarely received in the past.

My take: This rally isn’t driven by a single piece of good news. It’s capital repricing the “privacy” old narrative. Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs for fully encrypted transfers. Its total supply is fixed at 21 million ZEC, the same halving structure as Bitcoin, and it’s also been labeled “post-quantum resistant.” Against the backdrop of U.S. regulators increasingly tightening their focus on on-chain transparency over the past two years, a “selectable anonymity layer” suddenly becomes a scarce asset.

But two things need to be made clear. First, $5,000 implies another 3.3x rise from the current price. The founder’s prediction is his opinion—not a promise. He even acknowledged that there’s no clear reason for this move, which suggests emotion is playing a big part in the short term. Second, privacy coins have always been a focus of regulation. Any shift in policy could cause this move to give back quickly. Things that pump fast also drop without warning—over the past 24 hours, it has already pulled back by about 3.6%.

What do you think: is this a value reappraisal of the privacy track, or another wave of sentiment-driven bubbles? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Click the avatar to watch the live stream

Every day, I’ll help you track the biggest crypto market hotspots— not just what’s happening in the news, but also the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

$950 million was put into the pot, and $406 million can never be recovered. The pitch back then was «up to 15% return per week».

🤖 加入小恐龙的粉丝群

On Friday, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against the Cash FX Group and three individuals. The CFTC alleges they operated a pyramid-scheme-style Ponzi scheme under the guise of cryptocurrency and foreign-exchange trading, raising more than $950 million in total.

The three individuals are Cash FX and its CEO Huascar Jose Lopez Castillo (Brazil), The Conversion Pros and its CEO Ronald Pope (Oregon), as well as Justin Halladay (Florida).

According to the CFTC, the publicly claimed purpose of the $950 million was to be placed into a commodity pool to trade retail forex contracts. The marketing package promised three things: expert-level traders running the operations, proprietary algorithms, and artificial intelligence, along with a guarantee of up to 15% returns per week. In reality, actual forex trading was minimal. Most participants’ funds were diverted—used to pay so-called trading profits to early participants—while millions of dollars were transferred to each defendant. The account statements shown to participants were also fake.

The figure of “15% per week” is, by itself, the biggest giveaway. Compounded weekly, it comes to roughly 1,400 times in a year—if that were truly the case, the pool would have already consumed all foreign-exchange markets worldwide. The CFTC’s stated minimum loss is at least $406 million, meaning nearly 58% of the principal is gone. And the reason this kind of pitch can raise $950 million is not technology—it’s the “AI + algorithm + stable high returns” three-pronged tactic. In a crypto context, it almost automatically triggers a credibility stamp.

It’s also worth noting the timing. Just days after the CLARITY Act was defeated in the Senate by a 49-to-50 vote, the CFTC submitted a regulatory framework covering crypto-asset trading and markets to the White House for review. Meanwhile, law-enforcement agencies publicly said they would shift focus back to their core duty: “protecting the public from fraud and manipulation.” David I. Miller, the Director of Enforcement, was blunt: this action targets large-scale fraud. Rules take time to make—yet the enforcement blade does not stop.

Translation: In this market, the biggest source of losses for retail investors is often not market volatility, but the combination of “fixed high returns + quantitative algorithms + AI endorsement.” People may complain if Bitcoin falls 5% in a day, but a promise of 15% every week swallows principal—and it’s irreversible. Compliant return curves are never straight. The straighter the line, the more likely it is to be a curve where new money is used to pay old money.

Has anyone around you been persuaded to enter projects like “AI quant + fixed weekly returns”? Did you get your money back in the end? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Every day, we bring you updates on key crypto regulatory headlines—not just what happens, but also the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the profile icon to watch the live stream

#circle与tether冻结bitget黑客钱包
$387.5 million was siphoned off, and the stablecoin issuer only managed to freeze $318,000 in the end.

⚖️ 进群看每日策略

At 18:31 on September 24 (UTC), a globally top-tier exchange saw abnormal transfers begin from its hot wallet. The loss figure was revised from the initially reported $183 million to $351.6 million within 24 hours, and then to today’s $387.5 million—this is the biggest crypto theft of the year. The largest chunk was about 103 million XRP (worth about $157 million); the remaining assets were bridged away across at least 5 chains.

Most crucially, nobody stole any private keys. The exchange’s CEO said in a livestream and on a tweet that the attackers breached a backend system in the wallet infrastructure, forged transaction data, and tricked the platform’s own authorization process—allowing the system to treat the abnormal transfers as normal operations. Deposits and trading were normal throughout; only withdrawals were paused.

On-chain sleuth DCF GOD found clues earlier: a newly created wallet spent $19.67 million USDT0 within 6 minutes, buying 7,111 ETH at a price about 5% higher than the market rate, using UniswapX and 1inch Fusion. So far, the outflow of funds has stopped. The platform is still investigating in collaboration with Mandiant and SlowMist. The CEO said some IPs match the VPN choices typically used by a certain North Korean hacking group.

Now to the part about getting funds back. On Friday at 05:00 (UTC), Circle blacklisted an address marked “Exploiter 8.” It held only 170.47 ETH, 218,023 USDT, and 99,990 USDC—totaling about $318,000. Tether subsequently also froze this address. Other hacker addresses still hold more than 63,000 ETH—none of which any issuer can move. $318,000 divided by $387.5 million yields a recovery rate of 0.08%.

The real backstop is the platform itself: the exchange’s user protection fund is larger than $464 million. The CEO said it will fully cover this loss, and users’ account balances will not be affected. Back in 2023, the fund was only $300 million. Compared with the April Drift hack of $285 million, where the attacker used Circle’s own cross-chain tool to move about $232 million USDC from Solana to Ethereum, people like ZachXBT criticized Circle at the time for acting too slowly.

Translation: This attack didn’t require stealing private keys—it forged the “authorization” itself. The entire security narrative around cold wallets, multisig, and self-custody doesn’t hold up as a defense in the face of forged credentials. What’s worth remembering most is the ceiling on freezing capability: the stablecoin issuer can only freeze a thin layer of the stablecoin. After the CLARITY Act 49–50 failure, the U.S. has no unified federal rules. In the end, it isn’t regulation and it isn’t the issuer that backstops users—it’s how thick the protection fund is on the exchange’s assets-and-liabilities balance sheet.

When you choose a platform, do you look at the size of its protection fund and its reserve structure? Or do you assume that if something goes wrong, someone will cover it anyway? Chat in the comments.

Every day, we’ll bring you the latest crypto security hotspots—it's not just about what happened in the news; it’s about understanding the logic and the opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the profile picture to watch the livestream

#coinmarketcap完成收购coinglass
1.15 billion people are watching prices, but only 5 million are keeping an eye on leverage—now these two numbers are in the hands of the same company.

💥 进群一起分析行情

On September 25, data platform CoinMarketCap completed its acquisition of derivatives data platform CoinGlass. The deal value was not disclosed. CoinGlass covers 28 exchanges, with more than 2,500 types of contract products. It tracks open interest, funding rates, liquidations, long/short positions, options, and ETF fund flows. The brand, website, app, free tools, API, and pricing all remain unchanged. The team is also not folded into the parent company’s organization and continues to operate independently.

The difference in scale between the two sides is very clear. CoinGlass has more than 5 million monthly active users, and about 10,000 paid API customers. CoinMarketCap’s own disclosed monthly active user count is about 115 million. In other words, with the same set of leverage data, distribution has expanded from 5 million to over a hundred million people overnight. Back in April 2020, CoinMarketCap was already acquired by one of the world’s largest exchanges. This time, CoinGlass is entering the same kind of structure.

Why is it worth talking about? Because spot prices are shown to everyone, while leverage data is used by a small number of people. Derivatives account for the bulk of crypto trading volume. Open interest indicates how many positions are still in play; the funding rate is the thermometer for perpetual contract premiums/discounts; liquidation data directly marks where leverage gets force-closed. This kind of thing has happened for real once already this February: CoinGlass’s data showed that Hyperliquid, Aster, and Lighter fought each other on trading volume, open interest, and liquidation figures—directly triggering a “data war” around on-chain perpetual contracts. Whoever controls the data definition controls the narrative.

Put simply: the true value of this purchase isn’t adding one more page, but putting things that directly affect short-term volatility—like liquidation heatmaps and position distribution—into a larger distribution pipeline. There’s no downside for ordinary users in the short term; the free tools remain as they are. But it’s worth recognizing that as spot data, derivatives data, and liquidation data gradually consolidate under the same set of definitions, the market’s control over how to define “how hot leverage is” is also becoming centralized. Bitcoin’s market activity has never been just about price—behind it is who’s adding leverage and who—long or short—can’t hold out first.

When you check the market, do you look at open interest and funding rates too, or do you only watch the price chart? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Every day, I’ll help you keep up with the hottest topics in the crypto market—not just what’s happening in the news, but also how to understand the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the avatar to watch the live stream

#bitwise申请上市near协议etf
One coin per week, up 36%: the spot ETF just cleared approval, but 30% of the staking yield was taken away first.

🔄 加入小恐龙粉丝群

Bitwise’s NEAR protocol ETF has already received listing approval for the NYSE Arca exchange, with the ticker NRR. The Form 8-A filed on September 24 shows that the listing application has been approved, and the shares are registered under the Securities Exchange Act’s Section 12(b). According to CoinGape, as long as the remaining certifications and filings are completed, trading could begin as early as next week. NEAR moved first: within 24 hours, it surged as high as $5.05, up about 20%; over the week it accumulated roughly a 36% gain, and the current price is around $4.87.

What’s really worth watching is the product structure. This ETF plans to stake 100% of the NEAR it holds, with a 0.75% management fee. It sounds like free yield, but the prospectus is very direct: the additional NEAR generated from staking is split—33% goes to staking-related fees, and the trust keeps only about 67%. In other words, the on-chain staking portion’s annualized return has already put 30% into the service provider’s pocket; you get what remains. The benefit is that you don’t have to run verification nodes yourself or worry about penalties and private keys; the cost is that this “packaging” itself comes with a price.

On-chain data tells a different story. NEAR’s total staked/locked value has broken through $210 million. Over the past 24 hours, open interest in futures rose nearly 15% to about $1.49 billion, with a near 10% jump within just four hours. But spot trading volume over the same period fell 33%. Derivatives are adding leverage while spot is shrinking—this combination usually means price action is being driven by short-term funds, not supported by spot buying.

In translation: this is another example of the “altcoin ETF wave.” After SOL and XRP, the regulator’s stance has loosened to the point where it’s willing to accept a single-chain ETF with a staking structure. For the project team, it effectively adds another passive capital channel aimed at U.S. accounts; for participants, you need to distinguish whether you’re buying the coin’s price or the staking yield that has already had fees deducted. The 36% weekly gain has already priced in a lot of expectations—on the day the ETF is officially listed for trading, it may end up following the old script of “good news, sell the fact.”

Do you think a staking-included ETF is the industry’s next step toward standardization, or that it packages the risks more prettily? Let’s discuss in the comments.

Every day, bringing you the latest crypto market hotspots—not only watching what’s happening in the news, but also helping you understand the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the profile picture to watch the live stream

#sec委员peirce将于10月2日离任
Five-Year Exemption Just Landed, Yet the Committee Member Closest to Crypto Is Determined to Leave on October 2.

⚖️ 加入聊天室

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce—insiders in the industry call her “Crypto Mom”—posted her resignation letter on X on Friday, September 25, with her last day being October 2. After she leaves, only two SEC commissioner seats remain: Chair Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda.

Most awkwardly, in the same batch of announcements where she declared she would step down, the SEC was also pushing crypto policy outward. The Friday crypto FAQ answered when marketing, software modifications, and network upgrades would count as “significant managerial efforts,” how staking-derivative token receipts should be characterized, and when secondary-market activity would count as a “promoter” acting to promote an investment contract. Going a step further, the SEC also unveiled a five-year innovation exemption to open the door to tokenization of securities.

Peirce’s approach differs from the previous two chairs. In those years, Clayton and Gensler focused on enforcement. Throughout her tenure, she wrote policy statements and guidance, methodically sorting mining, staking, and meme coins into the right boxes. Last year, she was assigned to lead the SEC’s newly established crypto working group. The nickname “Crypto Mom” came from a speech she herself claimed in 2019.

In the week before she departed at the New York SIFMA conference, she spoke about something else: KYC and anti–money laundering were piling up “ever larger piles of data.” The bigger the pile, the harder it becomes to find the needle. She suggested switching to zero-knowledge proofs and attribute credentials—proving you meet the requirements without having to hand over your name and address. The situation hasn’t been easy either: Revolut recently leaked customers’ passports and complete Bitcoin transaction records after an incident involving a forged government data request.

Let’s translate it: with this move, the industry in Washington has lost an institutional voice. The SEC now has only two commissioners. Under the rules, the two can still hold meetings, but the White House has not nominated a new commissioner so far. After the CLARITY Act failed 49–50, the CEO of the industry group Blockchain Association, Summer Mersinger, also stepped down. In the short term, it’s no longer about which person is in the seat—it’s about whether this machine can still turn itself.

Do you think losing a “Crypto Mom” like this is good or bad for the industry? Chat in the comments.

Every day, I’ll keep you focused on crypto regulatory hotspots—not just what happens in the news, but also help you understand the logic and the opportunities behind it 👀🚀

Click the profile picture to watch the live stream.