Crypto News and Tradfi News - COINOTAG

• A $1,000 Solana price implies a $589.8 billion market cap on about 589.8 million circulating SOL
• Solana quotes on Oct. 25 ranged from $100.88 on OKX to $101.87 on MetaMask
• Reaching $1,000 would require a 9.8x to 9.9x gain from Oct. 25 levels
The 9.8x Climb Behind the $589.8 Billion Figure
A $1,000 Solana (SOL) would carry a market capitalization of roughly $589.8 billion, if the token ever reached that level on the circulating supply in place today. The figure is arithmetic rather than a forecast: it comes from multiplying a hypothetical $1,000 by a circulating supply of about 589.8 million SOL, a conversion 24/7 Wall St. published on Oct. 25 with no estimate attached for how much capital such a move would demand. A market cap computed this way is a spot conversion, distinct from fully diluted valuations that count locked or unissued tokens; it is a stock measure, while the capital needed to move price is a flow question the multiplication never touches. The distance is the operative part of the number. Readings of the Solana price on Oct. 25 differed by source: the crypto exchange OKX showed $100.88 in its SOL/USD history, while MetaMask, a widely used hot wallet, displayed $101.87 on its price page. Pricing basis matters here: exchange histories and wallet front ends sample the market at different moments, and the two quotes carry reference timestamps that could not be checked against each other, so a direct comparison of the figures is not meaningful. What both agree on is scale: from either level, a climb to $1,000 would take a gain of roughly 9.8x to 9.9x, close to a tenfold advance. Neither quote came anywhere near that territory during the Oct. 25 session, which is what keeps the exercise a conversion rather than a market call. Everything hangs on one variable the calculation leaves frozen: the float of the Solana network itself. New SOL enters circulation on the network's issuance schedule, and the same note concedes that if future circulation changes, the market cap implied by a $1,000 print changes with it.
Solana's 8% Inflation Start and ETF Outflows
The supply side of the arithmetic rests on a primary document. The Solana Foundation's developer documentation sets an initial inflation rate of 8%, a 15% annual decrease in that rate, and a long-term inflation rate of 1.5%, and it states plainly that the schedule covers issuance only: fee burn, slashing and other supply-affecting mechanisms are excluded, so the schedule alone cannot determine how net supply actually changes. Issuance is what underwrites staking rewards, which makes the denominator of the $589.8 billion conversion a moving variable by design. On the price side, 24/7 Wall St. dates Solana's all-time high to Jan. 19, 2025, at $293, and computes the Oct. 25 quote at 65.6% below that peak, a drawdown depth more typical of a bear market than of ordinary consolidation; the same note flags that ATH figures shift with the exchange and pricing method used, and we previously logged the coin closing 64.9% below its all-time high. Flows supply the demand context the calculation omits. Aggregate ETF data shows US spot Solana funds posted a net outflow of $8.52 million on Oct. 22, with several other net-outflow days logged between Oct. 5 and Oct. 22, and cumulative net inflows easing from $1.62 billion on Sep. 29 to $1.54 billion by Oct. 22. That measure tracks money moving through fund shares and cannot be read as spot selling or as a direct cause of price moves. One institutional datapoint points the other way. J.P. Morgan Asset Management said on Oct. 22 that its tokenized money market funds MONY and JLTXX would be offered on the Solana network to eligible US investors, after earlier reporting tracked $453.5 million of weekly tokenized fund inflows on the chain; network usage of this kind does not by itself confirm demand for SOL. A circulating claim of under a 10% chance of reaching $1,000 before 2028 could not be verified: no model or assumptions are disclosed.
The $589.8 billion conversion is best read as a yardstick, not a target. The load-bearing primary record in this story, the Solana Foundation's issuance schedule, itself limits what the arithmetic can claim: supply is not fixed, and burn plus slashing sit outside the published schedule, so a market cap computed at $1,000 on today's float would age quickly. The demand side carries the open conditions. Spot ETF flows have leaned negative, with $8.52 million out on Oct. 22, and JPMorgan's tokenized funds put settlement on the network without a confirmed buy-side effect on SOL. Furthest from measured is the sub-10% probability claim: with no disclosed model or auditable inputs, nothing in the record says how far $1,000 sits from reach.

• Bitcoin and gold both trail stocks, bonds and cash in the 2026 performance table
• Bitcoin has returned roughly 120.6% annualized since 2011, versus 6.3% for gold
• Bitcoin led major assets in 2024 with a 121% gain; gold led 2025, up 63.7%
2026's Worst Major Assets
Bitcoin (BTC) and gold have landed together at the bottom of 2026's major asset table, and the strategist whose data produced the ranking says the pairing is without precedent in his record. Figures compiled by Charlie Bilello, chief market strategist at Creative Planning and a long-running cross-asset scorekeeper, show gold down 7.50% since the start of January and Bitcoin down 7.30%. Both trail stocks, bonds and even cash, a striking result for the two investments investors conventionally reach for when economic uncertainty rises. Bilello's comparison, which ranks the main asset classes against each other every year, has never before shown Bitcoin and gold occupying the last two places at the same time, making 2026 a first in his dataset. Neither asset has managed a positive year-to-date return, which cuts against their reputation as reliable hedges during turbulent markets. The damage is real but contained: a 7.30% drawdown in Bitcoin stays well short of the roughly 20% decline that market convention uses to define a bear market. Still, the store-of-value argument at the core of Bitcoin maximalism has taken a visible knock, because the asset has spent ten months failing to outperform instruments that carry no volatility at all. The Bitcoin price itself sits near $80,492 on Sunday, essentially flat over the past 24 hours, so the ranking reflects an accumulation of small losses rather than a fresh break lower. Bilello's table spans the major liquid asset classes, so the bottom two places mean the two underperformed everything from equities to cash equivalents. More than two months of trading remain before the year closes, and the strategist's own framing leaves the final 2026 standings open. Whether either asset can recover enough ground to climb off the bottom of the table is the question that will decide how the year is scored.
Two Years, Two Reversals
The long-term record still separates this year's result from the structural story. Bilello's figures put Bitcoin's annualized return since 2011 at roughly 120.6%, against 6.3% for gold across the same stretch, which keeps the asset the strongest long-term performer among the classes his comparison tracks. Recent years show how quickly that leadership rotates. Bitcoin ended 2024 as the best-performing major asset class with a 121% gain, a result that dwarfed every traditional alternative. Gold then seized the crown in 2025, surging 63.7% and outpacing the rest of the table. In 2026 the two have swung from the top of the standings to the bottom, an effective two-year reversal of roles at both ends of the same list. For long-term HODLers the message embedded in the numbers is straightforward: a single calendar year says little about decade-scale returns, and yearly leadership has flipped between the two assets three times running. The structural case has also broadened since 2011. Spot ETFs now give institutional balance sheets direct exposure to Bitcoin, a distribution channel that did not exist in earlier cycles, and regulated access has widened the buyer base well beyond the retail cohort that drove past rallies. That widening has not prevented this year's negative return, and it has not stopped gold and Bitcoin from falling together, an outcome that challenges the assumption the two hedge the same risks in a portfolio. Bilello's own reading of the table, per his published figures, is that market leadership can change in a short span even for assets with outstanding historical returns. With more than two months left before the end of the year, the last word on the 2026 ranking has not been written.
Our own composite scoring keeps the story range-bound rather than broken: the live tape shows Bitcoin at $80,492, flat over the past 24 hours, with the trend reading sideways and the Fear & Greed Index at 54, neutral. Resistance at $82,418 scores 96 out of 100 on that composite, while support at $78,535 carries a 98, the strongest level on the board. Perpetual funding runs at a near-neutral 0.0058%, and the long/short account ratio sits at 2.26, so derivative positioning leans long without crowding. As our Bitcoin coverage has tracked, a weekly close below $83,000 keeps Benjamin Cowen's fake breakout scenario in play, Peter Schiff's $75,000 warning activates on a break of $80,000, and Ted Pillows maps a $74,000–$75,000 bottom before any reversal. The full set of levels sits in our Bitcoin technical analysis.

• Spot Bitcoin ETFs closed the week ended October 23 with $304.77 million in net inflows.
• Thursday redemptions hit $635.49 million, the largest daily Bitcoin ETF outflow since late June.
• Monday drew $526.60 million and Wednesday added $528.50 million as Bitcoin reached $85,000.
A Green Week Despite a $635 Million Thursday
Spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs absorbed $304.77 million in net inflows over the week ended Friday, October 23, closing in the green after two straight weeks of redemptions and lifting the cumulative net total from under $56.9 billion to almost $57.2 billion. The funds had entered the period on the back foot, and Monday's print was the session that broke the negative streak. SoSoValue's flow data shows the build arrived in three bursts. Monday carried $526.60 million into the funds, the largest single-day intake of the week, and Tuesday added another $23.16 million, a session that coincided with the first uptick in the Bitcoin price in several days. The heaviest allocation landed Wednesday, when BTC jumped to $85,000 for the first time in two weeks and the products drew $528.50 million in net creations. The mechanics of the vehicle explain why these daily prints carry weight. A spot ETF holds the asset directly: a creation mints new fund shares against deposited coins, while a redemption burns shares and hands the coins back, so the net figure tracks how much Bitcoin institutional allocators moved into or out of the wrapper, independent of exchange order books. Weekly aggregates smooth out that day-to-day noise, which is why a five-session net total is the cleaner read on allocator appetite. The reversal proved just as sharp as the build. Thursday's redemptions reached $635.49 million, the highest daily net outflow since late June and the heaviest in four months, and Friday shed a further $137.9 million by Farside's count. The Wednesday push to $85,000 failed the same day, and the pullback that ran into Thursday and Friday tracked the two largest redemption sessions on the ledger. Even so, two heavy outflow days could not erase the early-week intake, and the weekly balance settled at $304.77 million.
Ethereum Funds Extend a Four-Week Bleed
The same seven days treated Ethereum funds very differently. Their spot products shed roughly $220 million, a fourth consecutive week of net outflows in a negative run that began at the end of September and has produced only three green days since. Monday opened the ledger with $103.28 million in withdrawals, and Tuesday removed another $26.13 million. Wednesday brought brief relief as almost $15 million flowed back in, before Thursday's $110.50 million exodus, the week's heaviest on that side, wiped out the gain. Farside's tally logged a minor inflow of $4.4 million on Friday, the week's second and final green day. Set against the Bitcoin complex, the divergence is wide. Bitcoin's products finished the week $304.77 million to the good while Ethereum's lost about $220 million, a spread of roughly $525 million across five sessions. A single Wednesday session on the Bitcoin side, worth $528.50 million, moved more money than the entire Ethereum week. The Thursday prints ran in the same direction: $635.49 million left Bitcoin's funds and $110.50 million left Ethereum's, each the heaviest day of its own complex's week. The timing of the Ethereum streak matters as context. It started at the end of September, has lasted about a month, and across that entire stretch the funds have managed only three positive days. For the Bitcoin complex the week marked a return to net creation after two red weeks; for Ethereum's it extended a bleed now in its fourth week.
Positioning Between $78,500 and $82,400
Our live monitoring places BTC at $80,685, up 0.2% over the past 24 hours, between two heavily scored levels: support at $78,537.58, scored 98 out of 100, and resistance at $82,401.30, at 96/100. Momentum indicators lean soft, with the RSI at 43.53, a bearish MACD signal and a sideways trend label, so the week's net creation total has not yet turned into directional follow-through. Derivatives are calmer: open interest stands at $15.98 billion and the perp funding rate sits at 0.0057%, close to neutral. Whether the accumulation streak survives the coming sessions likely turns on that $78,537.58 floor; a break would harden the bearish read in our Bitcoin technical analysis and give weight to the cautions around a second weekly close below $83,000 and a slide toward $75,000. New supply is fixed under the Bitcoin halving schedule, so weekly demand shifts of this size feed straight into price, and regulated fund wrappers, unlike tokenized wrapped Bitcoin on DeFi platforms, are where these daily creations show up. Flow watchers note the same weekly pattern echoes past bull cycles. COINOTAG's aggregate sentiment index reads 54 out of 100, neutral.

• Benjamin Cowen posted a YouTube video on October 25 warning of a Bitcoin crash scenario next week.
• Bitcoin has already closed one weekly candle below $83,000; a second would confirm a fake breakout.
• The Russell 2000 has fallen 11.5%, the Nasdaq and Dow about 8%, the S&P 500 roughly 3%.
Cowen Flags a Fragile Bitcoin Setup
Veteran trader Benjamin Cowen warned on Sunday that the Bitcoin (BTC) price has moved onto a knife's edge, with a crash scenario turning live once the Federal Reserve meets next week. In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on October 25, Cowen diagnosed a split market: the MACD, the relative strength index and a golden cross all read bullish, yet the macro environment is flowing the opposite way. A golden cross, the chart pattern in which a shorter moving average crosses above a longer one, is traditionally read as a bullish signal, and he conceded the technicals currently favor the bulls. The equities correction he called for earlier this year, a decline of 10 to 20%, is already under way in his view. The Russell 2000 has fallen 11.5%, the Nasdaq and the Dow about 8% each, leaving only the S&P 500, down roughly 3%, short of the full move. South Korea's market has slid about 26% since late September. The three main US indexes have all touched their bull market support bands, and the altcoin market caps have just brushed the same band, while Bitcoin is the last major asset yet to reach its own. Macro strength backs his read: the dollar is printing higher highs and higher lows, the XLE energy ETF has set a record high, and crude trades near $105 a barrel for WTI and $117–$118 for Brent. The warning lights are already lit in his reading of the daily chart. Bitcoin closed its daily candle beneath the 50-day moving average, and Cowen said the bearish case gains force if that line hardens into resistance within days. A fast reclaim would resemble August, when price snapped back above the average quickly, and Bitcoin must not spend more than a week below it, he added.
The $83,000 Weekly Close Line
The scenario turns on the weekly candle. Bitcoin has already printed one weekly close below $83,000, and Cowen argued that a second such close would effectively confirm a fake breakout. The calendar carries its own tell: rallies in this midterm year topped out on July 21, August 21, September 21 and October 21, with August the lone exception, stretching its top to September 3. Mapped onto this cycle, that extension lands on November 3, midterm election day. From there his script runs. The Federal Reserve holds rates on October 28, the personal consumption expenditures price index comes in hotter than expected on October 29, and long-term yields climb, with the 10-year Treasury yield reaching around 5.3% and shaking risk assets. He sees the 2026 path in long yields echoing 2018, when yields bottomed in late October and rebounded around the midterms, pulling the AI-sensitive S&P 500 into a year-end correction that dragged Bitcoin with it and set a fourth-quarter low after long yields peaked in mid-November. A weekly close above the May high of $83,000 would void the entire setup. Cowen pushed back on the argument that it is too late in a midterm year for another drop, countering that fake breakouts do not unwind slowly: in 2015, the bottom arrived three weeks after the second weekly close below the baseline, and in 2020 the crash came the week after the second weekly exit. Objections that Bitcoin just set a record high and trades above the 50-week moving average cut little with him, since the same was true in 2015 and 2022 and prices still fell. He closed with a discipline note: investors who split their buys across the second half of a midterm year and hold have historically done well, and as he put it, “everyone has a plan until Bitcoin falls 5%.” When talk turns to how well Bitcoin is holding up, he said, seven out of ten times a decline followed.
Our reading is that the call stands or falls on one printed line, the weekly close, and its author has named the condition that would kill it, a finish above $83,000. Broader Bitcoin market coverage has carried a similar bearish tilt: Peter Schiff's $75,000 warning followed the break below $80,000, a bottom at $74,000–$75,000 before a rally is Ted Pillows' base case, and Cryptoquant CEO Ki Young Ju argues fund flows echo past bull cycles. For readers tracking levels independently, our Bitcoin technical analysis page carries the live support and resistance map. Until a weekly candle prints above $83,000, the scenario rests in Cowen's name, with the 50-day moving average and the early-November calendar as his own checkpoints.

• Uniswap governance recorded 60,416,652 votes for and 4,405,601 against the 2025 Uniswap Unleashed proposal.
• The Uniswap Unleashed proposal is marked executed in the on-chain vote record.
• The proposal payload calls the UNI transfer function, naming a recipient wallet address and amount.
“Uniswap Unleashed” Execution on the Record
Treasury tokens at Uniswap do not move because holders vote yes. A community vote is one step in a chain that ends with an executed on-chain transaction, and the record for the 2025 “Uniswap Unleashed” proposal shows exactly where that chain stands. The governance vote record lists 60,416,652 votes in favor and 4,405,601 against, a spread wider than 13 to 1, and the proposal is marked as executed. The same record shows what the measure was built to do: its payload contains calls to the UNI token's transfer function, each naming a recipient wallet address and a quantity of UNI to send. The proposal text set out a budget request for the foundation's grants and operating costs, so the disbursement question comes down to whether those transfer calls ran and to which addresses the tokens went. That is a mechanical check, not an interpretive one. The executed transaction has to be opened and its recipients and amounts compared line by line against the proposal text, because the vote tally alone authorizes rather than pays. On-chain explorers make that comparison public: every executed call resolves to a destination and a token amount, both of which can be checked against the proposal before any payout is reported as fact. A yes result tells the protocol what it may do; it does not tell an observer that tokens left the treasury. UNI holders supplied the votes, but the treasury contract holds the tokens, and only its own functions release them. Uniswap itself is the largest DEX by trading volume, running as an AMM, an automated market maker that prices swaps against pooled balances, with concentrated liquidity shaping how positions are organized inside each pool. None of that market machinery moves treasury funds on a ballot. The only path out is the transfer function the proposal calls, and the only proof of payment is the execution receipt attached to a specific transaction.
Forum Post, Temperature Check, Timelock
The route a Uniswap proposal travels is fixed by the protocol's governance documentation. It starts in public discussion: the author posts the draft on the governance forum and collects feedback there before anything else happens. The next gate is the temperature check, an off-chain vote run through snapshot that measures whether the community wants the item to advance at all. Whatever its result, it moves no tokens; its job is to decide whether the idea reaches the on-chain stage. Execution rights attach only to that stage. The proposal submitted on-chain carries the code meant to run, and when the yes count clears the required threshold the action enters a queue, where it waits out a delay before anyone can trigger it. Only then does the transaction execute, which is why the process documents treat approved, passed and executed as three separate states rather than synonyms. That separation is what makes verification possible in the first place. The check runs in a fixed order: the recipient addresses and amounts written into the proposal, confirmation that the on-chain vote passed, then the executed transaction record. A canceled payout at Ampleforth DAO shows why the last step cannot be skipped. That proposal carried a payout figure in its own text and was withdrawn without a vote or any movement of funds, leaving the allocation as words on a page. Allocated and executed are different numbers, and only the second one describes money that moved. The same discipline applies to any protocol treasury, including this one. Our earlier reporting tracked the demand side of the network from another angle: growth at a 4-year high with 2,295 new UNI wallets. Participation of that kind raises the number of eyes on governance, but it changes none of the mechanics above: votes authorize, the queue delays, and the transaction alone disburses.
Our reading: the 60,416,652 to 4,405,601 result makes passage unambiguous, but the vote is the middle of this story, not the end. What the proposal authorized and what each budget line actually received are separate facts, and only the executed transfer record separates them. The treasury sits behind an exchange protocol whose hooks link 7 external liquidity sources across 3 networks. The milestone also lands with UNI down more than 20% from its $10.22 Sept 22 peak; readers tracking the market side can follow our UNI technical analysis. The outstanding item on the governance side is narrow: match the executed transaction's recipient addresses and UNI quantities against the proposal text. Until that comparison is published, the disbursement stands exactly as filed, executed on the record and unverified in payment.

• Peter Schiff warned on October 24 that Bitcoin could fall to $75,000 after breaking below $80,000.
• Bitcoin fell to about $79,146 on October 24, its weakest print in more than a month.
• US spot Bitcoin ETF redemptions reached $635.49 million on October 22, led by IBIT and FBTC.
Peter Schiff Points to $75,000
Economist and longtime Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff warned on Saturday, October 24, that the Bitcoin (BTC) price could be heading for $75,000 after the asset gave way below $80,000. His call came with the crypto market still trading through the weekend while equity markets sat closed. In a post on X, Schiff wrote that Bitcoin had finally started to break down, that it was hard to believe it had held up for so long, and that with $80,000 gone the next stop was likely $75,000. If that level failed to hold during the session, he added, it would be a very long weekend for holders, especially for ETF investors who cannot sell until Monday. Saturday's selling pushed BTC to roughly $79,146 on October 24, its weakest print in more than a month, although the market stayed above the $75,000 line Schiff named. The asset traded between about $79,400 and $79,700 early in the Saturday session, climbed back toward $80,000, and stood near $80,614 at the time of writing, a 24-hour loss of roughly 2.3% to 2.5%. The recovery left the market sitting a few thousand dollars above the level Schiff says comes next. The warning built on a post from October 22, in which Schiff questioned how long the asset could keep resisting weakness in technology stocks. He pointed to pressure on artificial-intelligence-linked equities, urged holders to sell, and described Bitcoin's relative resilience as a possible precursor to another leg down. The comparison stretched to precious metals: after gold slipped below $4,000 on October 23, Schiff wrote that stocks and gold were both weak, and that this was precisely why Bitcoin's strength had been surprising for so long. A committed gold advocate who has argued against the proof-of-work asset for more than a decade, Schiff has consistently framed BTC as a risk asset rather than a haven, and the weekend warning follows that line.
ETF Redemptions Hit $635 Million
Demand had already thinned before the weekend. On Thursday, October 22, United States spot Bitcoin ETF redemptions totaled $635.49 million in a single day, and the two largest vehicles carried most of it. BlackRock's IBIT saw $254.05 million leave, while Fidelity's FBTC recorded $217.46 million. The outflow day broke a run of three consecutive sessions in which the category had pulled in more than $1 billion. Preliminary figures for Friday, October 23, recorded another $137.9 million leaving the group, with one fund still to report. One unreported fund means the true Friday figure could still move, so we treat that number as preliminary. The structure of these products explains the timing risk at the center of Schiff's warning. A spot Bitcoin ETF holds the cryptocurrency on investors' behalf and issues shares that track its performance, giving buyers exposure through a standard brokerage account without requiring them to manage keys or custody themselves. Those shares change hands only while United States equity markets are open. Bitcoin itself never closes: it trades continuously through the weekend, so the value of what the funds hold can move sharply while the wrappers sit shut. That gap is what Schiff called out. An ETF holder who wants to sell after a Saturday slide cannot act until Monday's open, and by then the price may have moved again. Investors who intend to HODL through the closure face no such constraint, but anyone positioned around a stop or a redemption deadline does. The week's flow record cuts both ways. Three straight days above $1 billion show institutional demand was still arriving earlier in the week, while Thursday's $635.49 million exit and Friday's preliminary $137.9 million show it reversing. Where Monday's print lands decides which side of that swing the market is on when Schiff's $75,000 line comes into play.
Where Schiff and Pillows Diverge
The number this story orbits is $75,000. Our earlier Bitcoin coverage on analyst Ted Pillows put a probable bottom at $74,000-$75,000 before a reversal higher, the same zone Schiff now targets with the opposite conclusion. The two views are not actually opposed about where the decision sits; they part on what a break of it would mean, Schiff reading a slide through $75,000 as confirmation of a longer decline and Pillows treating the area as a floor. What settles the argument is observable: whether spot ETF demand returns when United States markets reopen on Monday. Another run of $1 billion days would undercut Schiff's case, while continued redemptions would push the price toward his line. Our Bitcoin technical analysis keeps those same levels in view through the week.

• Shytoshi Kusama's last X post or interaction dates to May 13, 2026.
• Kusama set his X bio to “Polish” and location to “Close” in September 2026.
• Kaal Dhairya's message confirms the Shibarium reorg problem is solved, with DRPC migration pending.
Silent since May 13
Shytoshi Kusama, lead developer of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has not posted or interacted publicly on X since May 13, 2026, and in that stretch his profile page has become the community's most-read signal source. With no statements coming from the account, members of the Shiba Inu community parse the smallest traces he leaves behind, and the most recent trace landed in September 2026. That month Kusama updated the biography field on his X profile to a single word, “Polish”, and changed the location field to “Close”.
The edits amount to two words, and they have carried a disproportionate share of interpretation. Community members read them as evidence that a project under Kusama's direction may be approaching its completion stage, on the theory that a developer preparing an announcement would first stage his public profile. That reading has one clear weakness: Kusama has never confirmed what the changes refer to. He has not said whether “Polish” points to work inside Shiba Inu, to the independent artificial intelligence initiative he is associated with, or to a separate effort altogether, and his continued absence from the platform keeps all three possibilities open. Until he speaks, every interpretation of the profile remains unconfirmed.
The pattern matters because of Kusama's role. As the ecosystem's lead developer, his account has historically been the channel through which direction on Shiba Inu's technical roadmap reached the public. When that channel goes quiet, the community has no substitute for it, which is why a two-word biography edit in September can draw more discussion than a routine code deployment. The record currently stands as follows: no posts, no replies and no visible activity since May 13, 2026, one bio reading “Polish”, one location reading “Close”, and no statement connecting either to a named project.
Shibarium rebuild advances
While the ecosystem's lead developer stays off the platform, the technical side of Shiba Inu has kept moving. Community figure Mazrael relayed a message from developer Kaal Dhairya confirming that the reorganization problem on Shibarium has been solved, and that the only remaining step in the migration to the new environment is DRPC completing the same transition on its side. A reorg, in which recent blocks get replaced and transactions reorder, counts among the more disruptive faults a layer 2 network can hit, which is why its resolution was flagged first. In his latest assessment on X, Mazrael described Shibarium as still operating in rebuild mode, while noting that new features and various improvements have shipped quietly on the network in recent weeks.
The list behind that description is specific. CreateX, a standard factory tool that lets developers deploy their contracts at the same address on every chain, is now available for use on Shibarium. All 12 contracts covered by Safe v1.4.1 have been deployed to their canonical addresses through the Safe Singleton Factory. The x402 system is fully active on the network, which opens the way for automated agents, including AI trading bot implementations, to settle payments in SHIB, TREAT or wrapped BONE.
Infrastructure work extends beyond contracts. DRPC refers to the remote procedure call infrastructure that lets decentralized applications connect to blockchain networks, while RPC is the basic connection layer for sending data to and from a network's nodes. The Shibarium RPC registration has been renewed in the Ethereum lists/chains registry, and up-to-date connection details are accessible through Chainlist. In September 2026, the official SHIB website and the ShibaSwap page moved to Cloudflare infrastructure, both platforms gained IPv6 support, and the old hosting setup was retired. None of those steps requires Kusama's voice, which is why the two tracks have diverged.
Of the two threads in this story, only one can be verified from outside. Kusama's profile edits are words on a profile page with no statement attached, and they stay speculation until he chooses to explain them. The Shibarium work is different: contract deployments, the renewed registry entry and the x402 activation are all checkable, and each one narrows the gap between the network and production-grade infrastructure. By wiring agent payments in SHIB, TREAT and wrapped BONE, x402 ties Shibarium's payment activity to the ecosystem's tokenomics and places the network closer to the PayFi segment, where machines settle value directly. The nearest fixed point ahead is the DRPC transition, the one item developers still list as open; until it completes, Shibarium formally remains in rebuild mode.

• Ted Pillows published a fractal analysis on October 24 mapping Bitcoin onto the November 2022 bottom pattern.
• Pillows sees a worst-case Bitcoin bottom at $74,000-$75,000 in the sixteenth week of the fractal.
• His roadmap expects a reversal from that zone and a recovery toward $90,000.
Two Calls Point to the Mid-$70,000s
Ted Pillows and EGRAG CRYPTO, two of the most widely followed analysts on X, both read the current weakness in the Bitcoin market as a detour inside a larger bullish structure rather than the start of something worse, and their maps converge on a mid-$70,000s floor if the correction extends. The Bitcoin (BTC) price has been struggling for several days, especially after sellers rejected it at $85,000 on Wednesday, and the asset is now fighting to hold $80,000. Pillows set out the arithmetic behind his view in a post on X dated October 24. A fractal, in trading shorthand, is the idea that a market repeats the shape of an earlier sequence almost bar for bar, and Pillows treats the 2022 aftermath as the template the current chart is copying. He argues the market is closely tracking the sequence that followed the November 2022 cycle bottom: the consolidation through the summer, the rally that carried into late August and September, and the correction now underway from $87,000 down toward $80,000 have, in his reading, unfolded the same way each time. The part of that fractal he is watching now is the sixteenth week after the 2022 bottom, when a sudden flash crash struck the market as the US banking crisis hit. Pillows counts the current market as approaching the equivalent point in its own sequence. Should the pattern keep rhyming, he expects one more sharp correction, one that in a worst case would find a bottom around $74,000–$75,000. EGRAG CRYPTO reaches a compatible conclusion by a shorter route: even a substantial pullback, in his assessment, stays contained within the broader bullish structure the two describe. Neither call sets a deadline; the timing rests on the week count inside the fractal itself. The backdrop both calls share is the same chart, one where $80,000 has become the level the market has to keep.
The hook in Pillows' fractal is what happened in that sixteenth week of 2022. A flash crash, triggered by the US banking crisis, knocked the market down abruptly before it found its footing, and the drop never grew into a longer collapse; investors who held through it, the behavior the market shorthand HODL describes, watched the cycle turn and recover. Pillows' point is that the present market has arrived at the same mile marker, which is why he is willing to name both a floor and a destination. The floor, $74,000–$75,000, is framed explicitly as the worst case. The destination is more ambitious: after the reversal he anticipates, his roadmap targets a recovery toward $90,000. The timing carries one curious echo. Over the same weekend, warnings in a similar direction came from Peter Schiff, the longtime gold advocate whose anti-Bitcoin stance has made him a standing foil for adherents of Bitcoin maximalism. Most analysts waved Schiff's caution off when it circulated, yet Pillows' fractal lands close to the same zone, a coincidence the two arrive at from opposite premises. Pillows parts company with the bearish conclusion attached to it: he does not read a dip into the mid-$70,000s as the opening act of a prolonged downturn. Cycle framing of this kind has run through commentary all quarter, much of it anchored to the four-year cadence of the Bitcoin halving cycle. Ki Young Ju, the Cryptoquant chief executive, has argued that fund flows in this cycle echo past bull cycles, while Leon Wankum has made the longer-horizon case that Bitcoin can outgrow real estate toward a $1 quadrillion market cap. For anyone tracking Bitcoin technical analysis, the two prices that matter are the $80,000 line under attack now and the $74,000–$75,000 zone beneath it, the levels that decide whether this fractal ever gets its test.
A Resemblance, Not a Mechanism
A fractal is a resemblance, not a mechanism. The sixteen-week marker in 2022 arrived with a banking crisis, and today's market has no confirmed equivalent, which makes the call easier to dispute than to disprove. What gives the structure shape is that both analysts left themselves room: the mid-$70,000s dip is their worst case, not their base case, so $80,000 holding would settle the question without proving anyone wrong. Related arguments from our own coverage lean the same direction; BloFin chief executive Matt Hu has argued that crashes in this cycle are running shallower than the 53% drop that closed the last bear phase. Until one of the two paths resolves, the claim stays where its owners left it, with Pillows still expecting a reversal and a run at $90,000.

• Analyst Ali Martinez links continued whale distribution to a potential XRP decline toward $0.98.
• XRP balances on crypto exchanges rose from 11.003 billion to 11.05 billion tokens.
• About 50 million newly deposited XRP tokens now rest on trading platforms.
Whale Wallets Fall From 351 to 339
XRP's largest private holders have begun moving coins, and the number that has not moved is what the market now leans on. On-chain data compiled by Santiment and published by analyst Ali Martinez in his latest metrics post shows 339 wallets still holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP each, a balance band that counted 351 addresses only a few weeks ago. Twelve heavyweights have exited. The band is the core whale tier of the ledger: addresses of that size typically absorb retail supply during drawdowns, which is why their retreat matters more than the raw count suggests. Martinez ties the exit straight to downside risk: continued selling by big capital, in his read, strips the XRP price of its footing and sends it to the $0.98 mark. The flow record points in the same direction. Total XRP balances held on crypto exchange order books climbed from 11.003 billion to 11.05 billion tokens, leaving roughly 50 million coins of fresh sellable supply parked on trading platforms. The base was not new: 11.003 billion tokens already sat on venues, and the inflow simply enlarged it. Those deposits landed while the whale cohort shrank, so supply stacked up at the same time the largest holders reduced their own exposure. The token itself trades near $1.30, pressed against the edge of an ascending price channel that buyers have defended since August, and the gap between that line and the first level sellers would attack is thin. For readers tracking XRP supply concentration, the picture is uncomfortable but specific: a holder cohort that once acted as a safety cushion has visibly thinned, and the pool of tokens waiting on venues has grown alongside the exit. The development also reaches beyond one asset for the wider altcoin market, because whale cohorts of this scale tend to set the tone for how mid-cap tokens absorb selling pressure.
The $1.26 Line Decides
Everything now hinges on $1.26. The support and resistance map drawn from the same Santiment record makes that level the main line of the season: XRP sits right on the edge of the ascending channel on the 4-hour chart, and $1.26 is where the next leg is decided. A successful defense would let buyers absorb the deposited volumes, stabilize the token inside a $1.30-$1.43 corridor and preserve the chances of a repeat assault on the local peak at $1.62. A breakdown does the opposite. Protective stop orders cluster beneath such a level, so a break would set off their cascading execution; the first downside marker is the intermediate floor at $1.11, and once $1.11 gives way, the downward impulse unfolds toward the channel projection at $0.98. Any stabilization attempt from here depends on buyers standing ready to absorb volume at those marks. The chart context was already defensive before the whale exit surfaced: XRP completed a death cross below the 200-day EMA near $1.37, so trend-following positioning had already turned cautious. The distribution also lands weeks after Ripple Swell 2026 gathered 1,500 decision-makers in New York, a reminder that institutional attention around the asset has not faded even as its largest holders reposition. Martinez's wallet-count chart makes clear that 339 addresses are what remains of the cushion, and each of those addresses holds at least 10 million tokens, so the remaining net is coarser but still deep. For holders deciding where their own tokens should sit while the level is tested, our explainer on crypto exchange vs crypto wallet setups covers the trade-off, and granular level work lives on our XRP technical analysis page.
Our reading of the two records is that the count matters less than the composition. Twelve departures sound small next to 339 survivors, but every exiting address carried at least 10 million tokens, so the selling capacity behind the move is larger than the arithmetic of wallet counts alone suggests. The exchange balance is the cleaner tell. Whales who want out must place coins where liquidity lives, and 50 million tokens arrived on venues while the cohort shrank. The $1.26 defense therefore decides whether that supply is absorbed or unleashed, and the 339 remaining addresses are the net beneath it. Whichever way the level breaks, the ledger's own measure of the imbalance now stands at 50 million newly placed tokens against 11.003 billion already held on trading platforms.

• Ripple opens Swell 2026 at The Shed in Manhattan on Oct. 27 with 1,500 decision-makers.
• Ripple combines Swell with Apex and UBRI Connect for the first time.
• Speakers include Brad Garlinghouse, Monica Long, CME's Terrence Duffy and Bullish CEO Tom Farley.
1,500 Delegates at The Shed
Ripple will open its Swell 2026 conference in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 27, gathering 1,500 senior decision-makers from traditional finance, digital assets, academia and the XRP ecosystem at The Shed in Manhattan. The event runs through Oct. 29 and, for the first time in its history, merges three tracks into one program: Swell itself, Apex, its summit for developers and institutions working on the XRP Ledger, an ecosystem that now spans payments and DeFi, and UBRI Connect, the academic conference tied to Ripple's University Blockchain Research Initiative. The speaker list pairs Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and President Monica Long with Terrence Duffy of CME Group, Bullish CEO Tom Farley and executives from BNY, Coinbase, Robinhood, State Street, Barclays and Jump Trading. Duffy leads CME Group, the Chicago-based derivatives marketplace, while Farley runs crypto exchange Bullish. Newly added names include Luca Cosentino, Head of Digital Assets at Cross River; Ergo CEO R.P. Eddy; RedotPay community manager Lucas Zandoná Gomes; and Arf co-founder Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz. Actor Matt Damon will appear alongside Gary White, co-founder and CEO of Water.org. The gathering doubles as a showcase for the XRP ecosystem inside the broader altcoin market, and it puts Wall Street, policymakers, bank executives and fintech teams in the same rooms rather than in separate industry silos. The company behind it builds blockchain payment and digital asset infrastructure with a focus on cross-border transfers and institutional use. Swell has historically served as the stage for Ripple's most significant product and partnership announcements. Traders will watch the XRP price through the three-day window for any headline reaction, and readers weighing an entry around the event can follow our guide on how to buy XRP.
Four Partnerships Before the Doors Open
Four partnerships landed in the run-up before the doors open. Arf announced a deal with Ripple to supply RLUSD-backed settlement liquidity to licensed cross-border payment companies operating on the XRP Ledger; RLUSD is Ripple's stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. Ripple also reached an agreement with Cross River Bank to integrate RLUSD on the ledger into the bank's core banking platform, and Cross River's Luca Cosentino joins the Swell speaker list. In Korea, Meritz Securities said it will use its Ripple partnership to bring institutional-grade custody and tokenization services to the country's capital markets, marking Ripple's first securities partnership in Korea and its fourth Korean institutional deal of the year, following Kyobo Life Insurance, Kbank and Jeonbuk Bank. Custody in this context means storage arrangements built for securities firms, while tokenization is the representation of securities as blockchain tokens. Ripple is also working with Privy, a Stripe company, to add embedded wallet support on the XRP Ledger. Embedded wallets are wallet infrastructure built directly into an application, so users hold and move assets without leaving the app. The integration is designed to support agentic commerce, meaning transaction flows executed by software agents rather than a human at a checkout, through wallets that give AI agents the ability to hold funds and transact, in effect turning each into an AI crypto wallet, including payments through x402, a technical payment approach used for programmable, software-based transaction flows. The Korean deal extends a string of institutional agreements Ripple has closed in the country across 2026. The mood on the ground is already set: a post from RippleX engineer Mayukha Vadari relayed chatter from the Lower East Side, quoting the line “Ripple is a vibe” as Swell branding spreads across the city.
What the Early Deals Change
The front-loading changes what Swell 2026 has left to reveal. Ripple has already distributed this cycle's announcements across payments, banking, custody and wallet infrastructure, which frees the New York program to center on the Wall Street names in the room, from CME Group to BNY. The Meritz deal is the one to track for footprint: a fourth Korean institution inside one year makes the country a recurring base for institutional rollout rather than a one-off market. The Privy work points the ledger toward machine-driven payments. Expectation-heavy coverage tends to pull FOMO positioning into headline days; the measurable test is whether more RLUSD and custody agreements get signed while the conference is in session. Our XRP technical analysis page tracks the levels through the event.

• Stellar's Meridian 2026 conference opens in Lisbon on October 28 and runs through October 29.
• The Fed publishes its rate decision on October 28 at 18:00 UTC after a two-day FOMC meeting.
• The BEA releases Q3 GDP and September PCE inflation data on October 29.
Stellar's Lisbon Agenda
Meridian 2026, the Stellar Development Foundation's flagship conference, opens in Lisbon on October 28 and runs through October 29, gathering financial institutions, payment technology companies, blockchain developers and senior representatives of the digital asset sector in the Portuguese capital. The event places traditional finance and blockchain builders in the same rooms, with sessions running across both days. The published agenda concentrates on blockchain-based payment solutions, stablecoin usage, financial infrastructure and institutional adoption, the four areas where the Stellar network has built most of its institutional work. For XLM holders, the two-day program poses a concrete question: whether the ecosystem announces integrations and product commitments strong enough to show up in on-chain numbers, not only in keynote slides. The watch list has substance. Ascend and M1X Global already settled the first institutional repo on the network with 72 rollovers via Ascend and M1X Global, and validators must adopt Bell Protocol 30 by November 23, a reminder that the protocol's institutional plumbing is being upgraded on a visible schedule. Both items come with firm dates, which gives this year's sessions a concrete baseline. What the market does with any Meridian headline is a narrower matter, because a conference announcement produces a lasting effect on XLM only when it translates into real usage, transaction volume and network activity, and the ecosystem's own framing of the event puts those metrics first. Live pricing sets the baseline going into the week: COINOTAG's monitoring shows XLM near $0.169, up 0.9% over the past 24 hours and little changed since Sunday, when the conference dates firmed up alongside the rest of the calendar. The payment infrastructure track deserves the closest attention. It overlaps with the sector's PayFi buildout, where settlement volume and recurring flows, rather than announcement counts, decide whether an integration survives after the conference floor empties.
A Fed Decision on Day One
Meridian's opening day collides with the week's most consequential macro event. The Federal Reserve concludes a two-day FOMC meeting on October 28 and publishes its rate decision at 18:00 UTC, followed by a press conference half an hour later, per the Fed's own calendar. The statement on the future path of rates may matter more to crypto than the decision itself: signals of further easing generally support demand for risk assets, while a hard line on inflation could deepen selling pressure across the altcoin market. Rate expectations for the December meeting can reprice within minutes of the release. One day later, on Thursday, October 29, the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the advance estimate of third-quarter GDP alongside September personal income and spending, a report that carries the PCE inflation measures the Fed watches, per the agency's release schedule. An inflation print below expectations would support hopes that financial conditions loosen, while a hot one strengthens the argument that rate cuts arrive later in the cycle. The same day brings the European Central Bank's policy decision at 13:15 UTC. On Friday, October 30, the Bank of Japan announces its policy choice, and the yen's role in global funding trades makes its messaging material for leveraged books: a sharp yen rally could push global position reduction, and volatility with it, into crypto. Friday also carries the third-quarter Employment Cost Index, published at 12:30 UTC, one of the wage gauges the Fed monitors. Traders running leveraged positions through the October 28 to 30 window face elevated liquidation risk on either side of these prints, and the practical discipline is to judge each release against expectations rather than the headline. Positions built in futures markets tend to amplify both directions during these hours.
Aggregate readings show no strong conviction in either direction. COINOTAG's own data puts the Fear and Greed Index at 54 out of 100, a neutral score, with Bitcoin holding 68.2% of our tracked market and total tracked capitalization near $2.38 trillion. That mix leaves neither crowded risk appetite nor capitulation, which raises the bar for Meridian announcements to move XLM on their own. The likelier sequence runs the other way: the Fed's October 28 message and the October 29 PCE data set the risk backdrop, and each Lisbon headline is judged against it. XLM sits near $0.169 with sentiment neutral; our XLM technical analysis tracks the levels as the calendar unwinds. The ecosystem's own bar still stands: the conference moves the price only if announcements surface in real usage, transaction volume and network activity.

• Cryptoquant CEO Ki Young Ju flagged Bitcoin (BTC) as flashing a bull-market fund-flow signal in weekend commentary.
• The reading ties the signal to renewed inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, this cycle's main buy-side channel.
• Ki Young Ju attached no price target or timeline, framing the pattern as resemblance, not a trigger.
Ki Young Ju's Flow Signal
Cryptoquant chief executive Ki Young Ju says Bitcoin (BTC) is flashing a bull-market signal in its latest capital-flow data, and he ties that reading directly to renewed inflows into spot ETFs. The claim, carried in weekend commentary from the on-chain analytics firm, is pattern recognition rather than a price call: he argues the current fund-flow picture resembles the setups that appeared in earlier bull phases, when sustained institutional buying preceded the strongest stretches of the rally. For the Bitcoin (BTC) price, the relevance is mechanical. Fund-flow metrics track coins as they move between wallets, exchange addresses and the custodians that hold ETF reserves, and when net coins keep landing in ETF vehicles session after session, that registers in the data as institutional accumulation rather than short-term trading. Each creation order for an ETF share pulls BTC out of tradeable float and parks it under regulated custody, which shrinks the supply sellers can reach at the market price. That is the channel Ki Young Ju is pointing at. He did not attach a price target, a timeline or a specific inflow figure to the call, and the firm's note stops short of calling the pattern confirmed; it describes a resemblance, not a trigger. What would make the resemblance meaningful is persistence. A single day of heavy creations can be driven by one allocator rebalancing a book, while a streak of net inflows across consecutive sessions is what previous bull markets printed before their steepest legs. The burden of proof, in other words, sits with the sessions ahead, not with the print that sparked the commentary. Flows of this kind also lag: by the time a fund-flow signal is visible, part of the buying it describes has already cleared.
The Institutional Buyer Behind the Flows
The deeper part of the argument concerns who is actually on the other side of the trades. The Crypto Whale profile, in the firm's framing, has shifted: the average large Bitcoin holder is increasingly institutional, running allocation mandates, custody arrangements and reporting duties that retail wallets never carried. That shift changes what flows mean. In earlier cycles, buy-side pressure was largely a story of retail deposits arriving on exchanges, and the flow narrative was built from exchange balances; this cycle, the ledger increasingly records institutional vehicles, and ETFs are expected to remain one of the primary sources of Bitcoin buy-side liquidity for as long as the products exist. The same note argues that influence is likely more pronounced now than in previous cycles, because the vehicles are larger, the custody chain is shorter and the buyers behind creations tend to hodl through drawdowns rather than trade them. Steadily rising flows were described as the key technical signal for the bull's continuation: not a single large print, but a rhythm. Persistence matters because it compounds. ETF creations are not reversible the way an exchange deposit is; once shares are created and coins are custodied, that supply is out of active circulation unless the holder redeems, and redemptions are slower and noisier than sales. A market where the marginal buyer holds through volatility behaves differently from one where the marginal buyer is a leveraged trader, and the flow ledger is where that difference shows up first. The counterpoint the note leaves open is equally concrete: if creations stall and redemptions resume, the same mechanism runs in reverse, and a flow-based bull read flips into a distribution read with no change in price needed to justify it. Both directions run through the same plumbing.
Two-Sided Demand, No Streak Yet
Our reading is that fund-flow signals of this kind confirm more often than they anticipate, and demand has been two-sided enough to warrant caution: our coverage recorded a stretch in which Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs shed $773.5 million across two straight sessions, proof that institutional appetite can turn within days. Corporate treasuries are a second, slower and more independent bid, and our reporting on Strategy's $20.91 billion estimated Bitcoin (BTC) gain shows the size of that channel. Whether chart structure backs the flow read is a separate question, one our Bitcoin technical analysis desk tracks independently, and a cycle shaped by institutional products may also print shallower Bitcoin (BTC) crashes than earlier ones, as some desks expect. What is still outstanding is the streak itself: no confirmed run of consecutive net-inflow sessions exists on record yet, and until one does, the bull read rests on resemblance rather than confirmation.

• Strategy estimated a $20.91 billion Bitcoin gain for Q3 in an October 5 SEC filing.
• Robinhood reports Q3 earnings on October 27 with a $0.56 EPS estimate.
• Coinbase is forecast to post a $0.18 per-share loss on $1.20 billion revenue.
847,666 BTC Marked to Market
Strategy (MSTR) has already settled the biggest number of its third-quarter report: an estimated $20.91 billion gain on its holdings, driven by the Bitcoin (BTC) price rally through the quarter, set out in an October 5 filing with the SEC. What the document does not settle is the confirmed result. Strategy states that the figure is a financial estimate that has passed through neither an audit nor a review by an external accountant, so it stands apart from finalized net income until the company reports after Thursday's close, October 29, with a webinar at 5 p.m. ET. The estimate runs through the end of September. The gain reflects coin appreciation rather than operations, since Strategy marks its holdings to market every three months. Its treasury carried 847,666 BTC at the end of September, accumulated at an average cost of about $75,437 per coin, a Bitcoin treasury the firm runs under its stated HODL approach. Analyst consensus expects earnings per share of $21.50, against $8.42 a year earlier, although only three analysts contribute to that estimate. The stock fell 4.6% after its July report, which showed a per-share loss of $24.45 against a $52.04 forecast. A separate October 19 filing shows the board raised the buyback authorization for preferred stock and other digital credit securities from $2 billion to $3 billion, a permission ceiling rather than money already spent. One item the filings leave untouched: MSCI approved rules on October 15 targeting companies that behave more like investment vehicles than operating businesses, and Strategy could lose index spots under them, a risk its own filings do not address.
Robinhood Reports First, on Tuesday
Robinhood (HOOD) opens the reporting window after the market close on Tuesday, October 27. Analyst estimates compiled by ChartRow put earnings per share at $0.56, down from $0.61 a year earlier, while a Hudson Labs preview places revenue consensus at $1.41 billion, 16% above the year-ago figure. Past prints offer bulls little comfort: the stock has closed lower after every one of its last six reports, with post-earnings declines ranging from 2.9% to 13.2%, even though five of the six beat estimates. In July, earnings per share of $0.62 cleared the $0.44 forecast and shares still dropped 3.6% the next session. They slid another 5.25% on Thursday and 1.56% on Friday heading into the release, leaving the stock down nearly 16% in 2026. This is also the first full quarter for Robinhood Chain, the company's blockchain for tokenized assets, which launched on July 1. ARK Invest estimated the network generated about $51 million in revenue over the quarter, ahead of the roughly $41 million Ethereum recorded. Coinbase (COIN) follows two days later, also after Thursday's close, and walks into the release with a loss forecast: analysts see a $0.18 per-share deficit versus $1.44 in profit a year earlier, on consensus revenue of $1.20 billion, down from $1.87 billion and roughly 36% below the third quarter of 2025. The crypto exchange has posted adjusted losses in each of the first two quarters of 2026, so a third would extend a run of three consecutive misses of profit estimates. Its July report showed a $0.39 per-share loss against a $0.14 profit forecast, and the stock fell 10.6% on the print, although its two earlier misses sent shares up 16.5% in February and 4.2% in May. Coinbase closed at $164.45 on Friday, down about 27% in 2026, as the bear market weighed on trading activity. Spot demand has been thin by the same measure: Bitcoin ETFs shed $773.5 million across two straight sessions.
Both Stocks Still in Downtrends
COINOTAG data shows both names entering the prints in daily downtrends. Robinhood trades at $95.19, up 0.90% over 24 hours, with COINOTAG's composite scoring its strongest support at $94.11 (100/100) and its heaviest resistance at $101.11 (93/100); the daily RSI reads 35.6 with a bearish MACD. Coinbase trades at $163.88, up 0.45%, boxed between support at $161.23 (80/100) and resistance at $166.46 (100/100), with an RSI of 38.5. Both charts track a coin market still digesting a 53% drawdown, after which BloFin CEO Matt Hu expects shallower crashes. What the week's disclosures leave unanswered is the confirmed size of Strategy's gain: the $20.91 billion estimate remains unaudited, and Thursday's report is the first place the reviewed number appears.

Solana Takes $453.5 Million of Weekly Fund Flows
Solana (SOL) took the largest share of new capital entering tokenized real-world assets this week, absorbing $453.5 million of inflows into its tokenized funds, the money-market and managed products issued as on-chain tokens. The figure comes from the joint weekly report by the RWA Foundation and Token Terminal, which covers October 18 to 25, 2026, and ranks the ten largest blockchains in the segment by the money they attracted. The two firms compile the ranking from fund inflows, issuer growth and new address data across the largest chains, so the figures measure allocation decisions over one week rather than accumulated market size. Of every dollar that entered those chains over the seven days, 73% landed on Solana. Stellar, the closest pursuer, added $124.5 million. XRP Ledger reached the top ten with only $131,000, a spread that shows the gap in the pace of capital attraction over the reporting period. The same dataset records falling volumes across Ethereum's tokenization infrastructure, with incoming funds and new investors steering toward alternative blockchains instead, a redistribution of capital within the sector rather than broad growth. Solana was the main beneficiary of the shift, posting the strongest growth in the tokenized funds segment of any chain in the ranking. For readers following the Solana price, the numbers describe flows rather than quotes: tokenization activity concentrated on one chain even as the token itself traded far off its highs.
Stocks, Wallets and Stablecoins Follow the Same Route
The rotation reached beyond funds into tokenized stocks. Ethereum's tokenized stock market capitalization dropped $26.0 million over the week, and the liquidity it released moved to BNB Chain, up $135.9 million, and to Solana, up $55.8 million. Address growth repeats the pattern from the user side. Solana added 114,600 new stockholder wallet addresses in seven days, the largest increase of any chain, while the Backpack platform added 58,500; readers weighing custody options can compare the best Solana wallets in our 2026 ranking. The heaviest money still arrived through Binance's retail products, with bStocks growing $127.8 million and xStocks $73.4 million, roughly 94% of the segment's total growth in money for the period. Almost none of that growth came from products outside the two Binance wrappers, which shows how concentrated retail demand for tokenized equities has become. Stablecoins split along a different line. Paxos led issuers by capital inflow, its capitalization up $249.8 million, or 65% of the growth across the top ten issuers, distributed mainly through the Arc and Solana networks. Tether dominated audience expansion instead, providing 90% of all new addresses recorded among the top ten issuers, some 1.7 million crypto wallets in a single week. BNB Chain hosted 1.3 million of those new addresses, ahead of Tron at 212,000 and Solana at 184,000. Institutional allocations stayed in tokenized funds, where Franklin Templeton added $33.9 million and J.P. Morgan $33.6 million, together close to half the weekly growth. The independent fund Spiko led by the pace of investor arrivals with 491 new addresses, and J.P. Morgan has already placed its two tokenized money market funds on Solana.
Cheap Blocks Decide Where Capital Lands
The report's own reading is that capital and new users now choose between two things: issuers with maximum supply volume and platforms with the lowest transaction costs. Solana's week fits the second condition. It captured the largest fund inflows and the largest stockholder address growth while its fees stay a fraction of Ethereum's, and established issuers have already moved issuance onto the network, including J.P. Morgan's fund deployments, so the week's table gives that pitch a number. The token has not followed the flows: the spot market recently closed 64.9% below its all-time high, so a week of inflow dominance has yet to reach price. Institutional names such as Franklin Templeton and J.P. Morgan keep anchoring the funds segment, which keeps the week's mix from reading as purely retail. The dataset covers one week, October 18 to 25, and only the top ten chains, so chains and issuers outside that list sit outside these figures as well.

• Stand With Crypto UK logged 10,092 complaints from 9,803 people between May and August 2026.
• Lloyds Banking Group drew 2,297 complaints, followed by Barclays with 1,569 and NatWest with 1,278.
• Barclays and HSBC UK publish a £2,500 per-transaction limit with a £10,000 cap over 30 days.
Lloyds Leads the Complaint Count
Stand With Crypto UK collected 10,092 complaints from 9,803 individuals between May and August 2026 through its online tool, all aimed at restrictions British banks place on transfers to cryptocurrency platforms. Submissions arrived from every one of the country's 650 parliamentary constituencies, and the campaign's report names Lloyds Banking Group as the most-mentioned lender. Lloyds, which covers customers of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, drew 2,297 complaints, followed by Barclays with 1,569 and NatWest Group with 1,278. Those three groups account for 5,144 submissions, roughly 51% of the total. HSBC UK received more than 1,000, while Virgin Money recorded 103 and the Co-operative Bank 76.
The Lloyds figure stands out because a review of published banking policies, dated August 28, found no publicly stated restriction on cryptocurrency transfers at the group. Revolut appeared in the same category, although its own support documentation lists certain exchanges as unsupported. A bank may accept some transactions and reject others after fraud checks, internal risk assessments or screening of destination wallet addresses, which leaves customers guessing in advance. Published limits differ widely: Barclays and HSBC UK permit £2,500 per transaction with a £10,000 cap over 30 days, NatWest allows £1,000 daily and £5,000 over 30 days, and Santander UK caps a single payment at £1,000 with a £3,000 monthly ceiling. Starling Bank, Chase UK, TSB, Metro Bank, Virgin Money and the Co-operative Bank are listed as prohibiting crypto-related payments altogether. Providers with published limits drew 6,198 complaints, about 61% of the sample; 2,842 concerned institutions with no published restriction, 989 involved outright bans and 63 fell outside those categories.
A Hub Ambition Meets Banking Friction
The report lands as HM Treasury finalizes a framework meant to make Britain a leading destination for digital asset businesses. In a December 2025 announcement, the government paired that ambition with stronger consumer protections, and the planned regime, scheduled for October 2027, will bring additional crypto activities under Financial Conduct Authority authorization. The FCA opened a five-month application window on September 30, 2026, closing on February 28, 2027, and existing anti-money-laundering registration does not carry over automatically. Authorization, however, does not oblige a retail bank to process payments to an authorized firm, which is where the friction sits.
Banking access has already drawn political scrutiny: in August, a cross-party parliamentary group questioned senior bank executives about account refusals, payment limits and the criteria applied when assessing cryptocurrency businesses. Katie Harries, head of European policy at Coinbase, said in an email interview that blanket restrictions would dampen growth of the UK's digital asset sector. “A country cannot credibly invite innovators in while allowing banks to lock consumers out,” she said, noting that bank transfers remain the main on-ramp for customers funding a crypto wallet, even at FCA-registered platforms. She cited research by the UK Cryptoasset Business Council indicating that 40% of attempted transfers to FCA-registered exchanges were blocked or delayed over the preceding 12 months, and that 70% of exchanges described banking conditions as more hostile than a year earlier. Barclays has defended its limits as protection against scams and customer losses, while Stand With Crypto has asked the FCA and HM Treasury to clarify when an industry-wide restriction can be justified under fraud-prevention rules. The report does not measure how many attempted purchases succeeded or how many failed transfers involved suspected fraud.
The dataset carries clear limits: Stand With Crypto did not weight submissions by each bank's customer base, and a voluntary complaints tool attracts dissatisfied users by design. The pattern still matters. That 61% of complaints landed at banks which publish limits suggests transparency alone does not remove friction at the largest retail on-ramps, and the Lloyds anomaly, 2,297 complaints at a group with no published restriction, points to policies customers cannot discover in advance. Banks cite fraud and money-laundering risk, a justification the campaign reads as blanket FUD when applied across an entire sector including FCA-registered firms. As authorization under the 2027 regime proceeds, the binding constraint on UK retail access looks set to be bank payment policy rather than licensing.

• BloFin CEO Matt Hu argued at TOKEN2049 in Singapore that future Bitcoin crashes will be less severe.
• US spot Bitcoin ETFs held about 1.3 million BTC on October 20, broadly unchanged since January.
• Bitcoin's bear-market decline reached 53%, versus crashes of roughly 77%–85% in previous cycles.
Matt Hu's Ownership Thesis
The investor base standing behind Bitcoin (BTC) has changed in a way earlier cycles never saw, and BloFin CEO Matt Hu argues that shift alone should make future crashes less severe. Hu set out the case at TOKEN2049 in Singapore earlier this month, just as the Bitcoin (BTC) price slipped below $80,000 over the weekend. His starting point is ownership: US spot ETFs (exchange-traded funds that hold Bitcoin directly) and corporate treasuries have brought in buyers whose horizons run far longer than the retail cohorts that drove past drawdowns, and in his view that reduces panic selling when markets fall. BloFin's research desk estimates US spot ETFs held roughly 1.3 million BTC on October 20, broadly unchanged from the end of January. However loud the daily headlines about inflows and outflows get, the aggregate balance of these funds, measured in BTC, held steady through the bear market. That stability, Hu argues, is the difference between a market that sells everything at the first stretch of red and one where the marginal holder can wait. The drawdown record gives the thesis some backing: the current decline reached 53% at its deepest, against crashes of roughly 77%–85% in previous cycles, although that comparison assumes June marked the bottom. Each earlier crash ended with capitulation among holders who had bought late and in size, and the makeup of today's holder base is precisely what Hu says has changed. Whale behavior points the same way for now. BloFin Research's tracking shows the 1,000–10,000 BTC holder cohort's 60-day net flow swung from negative 62,600 BTC to positive 5,230 BTC, meaning the largest whale wallets flipped from distribution to accumulation even as prices sagged across the wider Bitcoin market. The question Hu cannot control is whether any of this survives a live stress test, and one arrived within days of his remarks.
The $635.6 Million Stress Test
The stress arrived quickly. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $635.6 million in net outflows on October 22, the largest single-day exit since June 25, after three sessions that together drew more than $1 billion. On-chain research firm Glassnode estimates average acquisition costs near $81,500 for ETF investors and $80,200 for Bitcoin treasury companies, so sustained weakness below those marks would put both groups at a loss on average and test exactly the willingness to hold that Hu's thesis depends on. Hu himself listed what would invalidate his view: a sustained decline in ETF Bitcoin holdings, widespread forced selling by treasury companies, and a shrinking long-term holder base on on-chain metrics. The distinction matters: one heavy outflow day moves price; only a sustained fall in fund balances would show long-term capital actually leaving. Daily flows have been swinging hard in both directions, and our coverage documented how ETFs shed $773.5 million across two straight sessions earlier this month. Glassnode identifies 85,000–87,500 as an important resistance area, and analysts there warn that losing the 80,000–82,000 support zone could expose Bitcoin to a deeper decline toward 73,000–75,000; our Bitcoin technical analysis page tracks these bands as they update. The macro backdrop, meanwhile, works against the rally half of Hu's outlook. His rally case rests on government debt eventually forcing financial repression, a policy mix that holds borrowing costs below inflation and favors assets with fixed supply. Today the opposite is true: the 10-year Treasury yield ended October 23 near 5%, Brent crude climbed above $116 a barrel, and inflation-protected 10-year bonds yielded around 2.6%, limiting the Federal Reserve before its October 28 decision. Against that drag, the institutional bid is still measurable: Coinbase Institutional research estimates ETFs have attracted roughly $6.4 billion in net Bitcoin investment since August, against about $1.5 billion bought by corporate treasuries. Hu also doubts a classic altcoin season returns, since tokenized stocks and real-world assets now compete for the same speculative capital; CoinGecko's third-quarter report showed spot trading volumes down 14.2% while perpetual contract trading open interest rose 40.6%, leverage growing faster than underlying activity.
Flows Versus Fund Balances
Our reading of the record is that the load-bearing number is the fund balance, not the daily tape. The primary research behind this story, BloFin's holdings data and Glassnode's cost-basis estimates, separates two things markets keep conflating: flows, which can reverse within days, and balances, which have not moved since January. With roughly $6.4 billion of net ETF demand since August and the average ETF investor sitting on a cost basis near $81,500, the market is testing precisely the cohort Hu says has changed. If that 1.3 million BTC balance starts falling while Bitcoin trades under those cost bases, his thesis fails on the conditions he set himself; until that line breaks, the shallow-crash call stands as his, not ours.

• Grayscale Research argues Zcash (ZEC) is undervalued at a market cap near $8 billion.
• ZEC holds about 0.6% of the $1.4 trillion crypto currency sector.
• Shielded transactions made up about 90% of all Zcash transfers as of July 20.
Grayscale's Repricing Case
Grayscale Research has made the case that financial privacy is entering a third wave of public attention and that the market still prices it as a fringe feature across privacy altcoins, leaving Zcash (ZEC) undervalued. The firm ties the coming shift to two forces: stablecoins and blockchain applications moving into everyday payments, and artificial intelligence giving platforms and governments new tools to monitor financial activity. The Zcash price has drawn attention in recent weeks, though the firm's argument concerns valuation rather than momentum. ZEC's market cap sits near $8 billion, roughly 0.6% of the $1.4 trillion segment Grayscale labels the crypto currency sector, a group of 15 assets dominated by Bitcoin, which holds about 90% of it. If Zcash captured 5% of that sector, its market cap would rise roughly ninefold. The report frames privacy as a property money needs in order to function: physical cash carries confidentiality by default, and law enforcement typically needs a court order to reach financial records. Bitcoin, in this framing, achieved digital scarcity but not digital privacy; its transparent ledger guarantees auditability while exposing balances, counterparties and transaction history. Zcash, launched in 2016 with a 21 million coin supply cap and a proof-of-work model close to Bitcoin's, lets users choose shielded transactions that prove validity without revealing sender, recipient or amount, built on zero-knowledge proofs, with viewing keys allowing selective disclosure to third parties. Grayscale's core claim is that current pricing assumes privacy demand stays small, and that ZEC therefore carries option value the market has not paid for if that assumption breaks.
Shielded Supply Hits a Record 25%
On-chain records back the demand claim. As of July 20, shielded transactions accounted for roughly 90% of all Zcash transfers, and about 4.2 million ZEC, 25% of the circulating supply, sat inside the shielded pool, an all-time high. That usage followed years of protocol work. Sapling, deployed in 2018, cut proof generation to seconds and memory use to about 40 MB, making shielded payments practical for ordinary users. The NU5 upgrade in 2022 introduced the Orchard pool with the Halo2 proof system, removing the need for the Zcash ceremony that the project's earliest pools had required. In 2026 the Ironwood upgrade fixed a soundness bug in the original Orchard circuit, one that could in theory have enabled undetectable counterfeiting inside the pool, and launched a new independent shielded pool that bars fresh assets from the old one, restoring independently verifiable supply. Wallet infrastructure has consolidated around Zodl, formerly Zashi, which keeps users inside the shielded pool through built-in swaps based on NEAR Intents and CrossPay transfers. Foundry, a leading mining pool operator, announced a US-based Zcash pool for institutional and publicly listed miners in April 2026. Among competing privacy designs, mixer schemes such as CoinJoin only obscure flows on transparent ledgers, Litecoin's MWEB, a Mimblewimble-based extension, hides amounts but offers no full shielded pool, and Monero defaults to privacy. Grayscale still weighs the risks: anti-money-laundering rules and the EU's MiCA framework pressure service providers even though viewing keys offer a clearer compliance route than systems with no disclosure; legacy Sprout and Sapling pools still hold funds; and Electric Coin Company has placed quantum resistance on the roadmap, alongside heavyweight pending work on Tachyon scaling and Crosslink finality.
Our reading is that the disagreement between Grayscale and the market turns on a single assumption: whether privacy stays an optional add-on or becomes required monetary infrastructure. The on-chain record already cuts against the niche label, with 90% of transactions shielded and shielded supply at its 25% record. Capital flows have followed: Grayscale's Zcash ETF crossed $1 billion in assets within 30 days and took in $41.1 million in its strongest inflow week since mid-September, while an earlier leverage unwind forced about $14 million in ZEC long liquidations before the price rebounded. The variables to watch are Tachyon's delivery on shielded transaction costs and whether regulators accept viewing keys for compliance. With a thesis built on repricing rather than cash flow, do your own research and track current levels on our Zcash technical analysis page.

• ZEC futures recorded $14.02 million in liquidations over 24 hours, with longs taking about $10.03 million.
• Futures open interest fell 12.45% to $2.37 billion by October 23 while turnover dropped 10.28%.
• ZEC traded near $1,208, up 4.3% over 24 hours, inside a $1,120.66 to $1,223.01 range.
Longs Take the Liquidation Hit
Zcash (ZEC) crypto futures traders absorbed $14.02 million in forced closures over the past 24 hours, and long accounts carried most of the damage even as the token itself moved higher. A liquidation closes a leveraged position by force once its margin runs out, and aggregated derivatives data shows longs took about $10.03 million of the total against $3.99 million on the short side. Venue data placed the long share on Hyperliquid near 82.2%, a platform-specific reading that does not set direction for the market as a whole, but the closure skew points the same way. The imbalance means traders betting on upside suffered most of the exits while the Zcash price finished the reading in positive territory. A narrower 12-hour window recorded $1.57 million in closures, split between $893,770 in longs and $679,790 in shorts; the two windows overlap, so the figures cannot be added to a running total. Forced exits of this kind concentrate where leverage is dense, and the longside share here points at crowded upside bets built during the month's earlier rally. Sunday's climb followed several sessions in which the privacy-focused altcoin struggled to hold $1,200, and the repeated tests left leveraged longs exposed to each swing. The token last changed hands near $1,208, up 4.3% over 24 hours and about 1% since that reading was taken. ZEC is 5.44% higher over seven days yet still 25.27% lower across the month, and the session band ran between $1,120.66 and $1,223.01 on volume near $575 million. The drawdown is the back side of September's rally toward $1,700, from which buyers have yet to retake control. Positioning had already been shrinking into the weekend: futures open interest fell 12.45% to $2.37 billion by October 23 as derivatives leverage unwound, and futures turnover dropped 10.28% to roughly $7.23 billion.
Our composite support and resistance scoring frames the climb as a rally under a hard ceiling. The strongest resistance sits at $1,234.54, scored 98 out of 100, just above the 20-day average that capped October trade, while the heaviest support stacks at $1,062, scored 96 out of 100. Positioning reads crowded but calm: perpetual futures funding prints a mild 0.0054% and aggregate open interest stands near $722 million. With the trend graded sideways, a daily close above $1,234.54 would be the first clean break of the ceiling and force shorts to chase; losing $1,062 would put the longside closure pressure right back on. A fuller Zcash technical analysis view carries the level detail.
NU7 Heads for Block 3,543,405
Behind the derivatives churn sits a scheduled change to the chain. The Zcash Foundation confirmed on October 22 that Network Upgrade 7, or NU7, will activate at block 3,543,405, expected around November 5, and its Zebra 7.0.0 node software already implements the new consensus rules. The deployment specification fixes the activation height, while the calendar date follows block production. The upgrade cuts the target block interval from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, so transactions should receive their first confirmation roughly three times faster. It also adds a mechanism that temporarily reserves part of network fees for future block rewards, without touching the 21 million coin supply cap or the scheduled daily issuance. Node operators must install compatible software before activation to stay connected to the updated chain. Longer-term work continues as well: the Ironwood shielded pool upgrade, deployed earlier in 2026, tightened supply accounting and carries provisions meant to support recovery if quantum computing ever breaks existing cryptography, though current ZEC transactions are not quantum-resistant. Institutional demand remains a mixed input: Winklevoss Asset Services has proposed a spot Zcash fund that stays subject to regulatory review, and an application alone does not guarantee a product reaches the market. On the chart, analyst BitGuru's market update flagged resistance between $1,220 and $1,270 on the four-hour view and warned that another rejection there could drag price toward $1,140, $1,090 or $1,040. The standing liquidation reading, $14.02 million with the skew on longs, holds until a daily close clears $1,214 and relieves the longside pressure, or support at $1,175 gives way and forces another round of it.

• Dogecoin Foundation converted the House of Doge deal into a three-year trademark license with no automatic renewal
• House of Doge will pay the foundation $400,000 for ending the exclusivity, payment date tied to funding
• The license covers an existing 21Shares ETF, a 2x leveraged ETF and a Swiss-listed ETP
A Three-Year Trademark License
The Dogecoin Foundation has terminated the exclusive commercialization agreement it held with House of Doge and replaced it with a non-exclusive trademark license. The switch, set out in the contract the two parties signed, hands the foundation direct control over where the name of the memecoin may be attached to regulated financial products.
Under the new terms, House of Doge keeps the right to use the Dogecoin and DOGE marks, but only on investment products that already exist: an exchange-traded fund developed with 21Shares, a 2x leveraged version of that fund, and a Swiss-listed exchange-traded product. Any other regulated product, or a tokenized investment product that wants the branding, now requires the foundation's written approval before it can launch. The license runs for three years and carries no automatic renewal clause.
The centerpiece of the old agreement is gone. The official partner designation and the sweeping trademark rights attached to it have both lapsed, and House of Doge has agreed to remove the relevant trademarks from its own company name and from its subsidiaries' names by the end of the year. Termination carries a price: House of Doge will pay the foundation $400,000. The contract sets no fixed date for that payment, which depends on House of Doge first securing the funds.
The foundation did not leave the commercial seat empty. It designated Dogecoin Labs, the company formed around the MyDoge wallet and the DogeOS application platform, as its new official commercial partner. That move centralizes brand stewardship for the Dogecoin ecosystem in an operating company rather than a licensing vehicle, and places the commercial identity of a project built on its own Layer 1 blockchain protocol under direct management. Neither party has published the commercial terms Dogecoin Labs accepted in exchange for the designation.
The restructuring also covers Such App, the payments application that sat inside House of Doge's structure. Under the deal, House of Doge's US subsidiary will transfer the app's software, source code and related assets to Dogecoin Labs, receiving Dogecoin Labs stock with an agreed value of $4 million in return. The contract states plainly that this figure is the valuation basis for a stock swap, not cash proceeds from a sale.
The transfer has not closed. The agreement lists conditions that must be satisfied first: written consent and a release of rights from the lending institution holding a security interest over the assets, plus the handover of the main application assets themselves. A 30-day window runs from the contract's signing date, and if closing has not occurred within it, either party may terminate the arrangement outright. The signing date itself was not disclosed, which leaves the exact day that window expires unclear.
House of Doge, for its part, is moving its product development organization to Dogecoin Labs and refocusing on what remains of its business: regulated investment products and tokenization, the Web3 practice of wrapping assets into tradable tokens. It keeps trademark rights for the existing 21Shares lineup, even though the licensed products have recently seen weekly ETF outflows. Anything new, including tokenized vehicles, returns to the foundation for written sign-off.
The combined structure places MyDoge, DogeOS and Such App under one organization, as laid out at the Dogecoin Labs launch. The foundation's move fixes where each asset sits: the wallet, the application platform and the payments app with the operating company, the regulated products with House of Doge, and the trademark split between a narrow license and the foundation's approval right.
What the Deal Leaves Undisclosed
The swap converts a broad exclusivity into a narrow license plus a contingent payment, and the contingencies deserve as much attention as the figures. The $400,000 termination fee has no fixed payment date and depends on House of Doge securing funds first. The $4 million attached to Such App is an agreed stock valuation, not cash, and closing still requires a written release from a lender whose identity has not been disclosed. Neither side has published the valuation basis for the Dogecoin Labs stock or the terms behind the new partner designation. Community stewardship runs on a separate track, where Mishaboar's four steps for ecosystem growth remain the standing reference. None of the paperwork touches the token's supply or market structure, which our Dogecoin technical analysis tracks separately. The hardest deadline in the file is the 30-day closing window on the Such App transfer.

• Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz rejected total algorithmic content filtering in a Saturday post on X
• Rhode Island's attorney general sued Meta for knowingly profiting from AI-optimized scam advertising
• Schwartz said filters removing posts on deception probability would censor millions of First Amendment-protected posts
The Rhode Island Case Against Meta
The lawsuit Rhode Island’s attorney general filed against Meta Platforms has split Silicon Valley over who carries the cost when scammers operate on a platform, and Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has entered the dispute on the side of open feeds. Schwartz, one of the principal architects of the XRP Ledger, a settlement layer that runs a native automated market maker without any central operator, said in a post on X on Saturday that the “safe vacuum” created by total algorithmic filtering would harm free speech and paralyze the internet community’s collective defense. The argument drew wide attention among XRP holders, the community our XRP coverage follows daily, because the scam formats at issue target exactly those users. The trigger was a debate on X in which users proposed obliging platforms to run strict filters that would cut scam advertising and posts out of personal feeds, with fake “2-for-1 XRP giveaway” schemes cited as the worst abuse. Schwartz answered with a tougher but more practical cybersecurity stance: isolating experts from spam builds a dangerous information vacuum, because once fraud is pushed out of sight, opinion leaders lose the ability to identify new threats early and warn the industry in public. He framed the trade-off starkly, arguing that a feed scrubbed clean by algorithms may look safe while removing the very signals that let recognized figures flag an attack while it spreads. He also criticized regulators who load responsibility onto technology companies, saying the law should target the people who build and operate criminal schemes rather than the platforms those schemes abuse. The exchange unfolded while traders tracked the XRP price, but the substance here is legal and architectural, not market-driven.
Phishing Alerts and a Blame Shift
Schwartz does not argue from theory. He regularly identifies phishing attacks in the XRP ecosystem himself and publishes public warnings, a practice he presents as evidence that human vigilance works where automation alone does not. Phishing is the fraud method that tricks users through fake links, sites or messages into surrendering sensitive data such as passwords, private keys or wallet access, and giveaway posts are its most common crypto disguise. His alerts are frequent enough that ecosystem users treat his account as an early-warning channel before interacting with unfamiliar links. The Rhode Island complaint accuses Meta of knowingly deriving revenue from scam advertising optimized by internal AI tools, a framing Schwartz called the wrong target. He argued that automatic removal of material based solely on the “probability of deception” is a dead-end path that would produce hidden censorship of millions of legal posts protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He compared official attempts to shift blame onto IT giants to holding restaurants liable for serving food to terrorists, insisting the law should prosecute exclusively the authors of criminal schemes. Web3 developers, meanwhile, argue that the only working shield against scams is the transparency of the environment and the vigilance of the community itself, not an algorithm. In his view, the faster threats mutate across the crypto asset ecosystem, the more valuable community-based warning mechanisms become, with automation in a supporting role rather than a commanding one. The warning lands on receptive ground: giveaway fraud runs on manufactured FOMO, and XRP has traded under pressure, having tested $1.26 support after a failed rebound, which leaves holders more exposed to false recovery promises.
Where the Liability Line Falls
Our reading of the posture: this is a state civil complaint, not a criminal charge, and its load-bearing claim is that Meta’s internal AI optimization tools sat inside the revenue chain for scam advertising. That framing is exactly what Schwartz’s intervention contests, and it explains why the argument reaches beyond moderation policy into platform liability. For XRP holders the practical consequence is direct. No algorithm will catch every fake giveaway, so self-custody hygiene carries the defense: verify addresses at the source, never share private keys, and move long-term holdings off connected software, options that include a Ripple (XRP) paper wallet. The scam surface keeps expanding as legitimate yield products grow; Evernorth’s plan to place 473 million XRP into onchain lending gives fraudsters plausible material to imitate, which makes community-level verification the decisive control for now.