CRYPTO NEWS

Week of October 19–25, 2026

Germany’s Sparkassen savings banks start selling crypto inside their banking app

Germany’s Sparkassen — a federation of roughly 340 public savings banks serving about 50 million customers — began a phased rollout of crypto trading inside its regular banking app on October 19. Customers of the first participating banks can buy and sell Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana and Polygon’s POL under the product “Krypto – powered by Deka”, at €0.99 per order plus the spread. DekaBank runs the service and holds the coins with Börse Stuttgart; withdrawals are limited to a short whitelist of regulated providers, not to a customer’s own wallet. Read the scale precisely: this is not a nationwide switch-on. Each Sparkasse opts in on its own, 30 to 40 more banks are expected to join each month, and the association still calls crypto highly speculative and warns of total loss.

JPMorgan puts its dollar deposit token, JPM Coin, on the Ethereum mainnet

JPMorgan extended JPM Coin (ticker JPMD) — its U.S. dollar deposit token, live on Coinbase’s Base since November 2025 — to the Ethereum mainnet on October 19. Approved institutional clients can now move bank-issued dollars on Ethereum itself, in seconds, around the clock, for payments and for settling or collateralising tokenised-asset trades. The bank says it chose Ethereum for its liquidity and because institutional clients already use it. Precision matters: JPMD is a deposit token representing dollars held at JPMorgan, not a public stablecoin — access is permissioned, it does not trade on public markets, and JPMorgan has not disclosed how much JPMD exists on Ethereum.

Switzerland approves its first retail spot Bitcoin ETF: BBIT

Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA approved the country’s first exchange-traded fund that holds Bitcoin directly and is open to retail investors on October 20. The fund is BIT Asset Management’s Bitcoin Fund ETF (ticker BBIT), structured as a Swiss collective investment scheme whose assets are held separately from the management company — unlike the debt-style exchange-traded products that have traded on SIX since 2018. FINMA classified it as an alternative-investment fund and granted an exemption from the usual diversification rules, citing Bitcoin’s long trading history and volumes. Approval is not a launch: trading on SIX Swiss Exchange is expected in November, and fees and the custodian were not disclosed.

U.S. finalises its stablecoin rulebook: the OCC’s GENIUS Act rule

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued its final rule implementing the GENIUS Act on October 21 — the first full federal rulebook for payment stablecoins. Issuers under OCC oversight must hold reserves worth at least as much as the stablecoins outstanding and generally process redemptions within two business days; the ban on issuers paying holders interest for simply holding a stablecoin stays, while third-party reward arrangements will be judged case by case instead of being presumed violations. The rule covers national banks, federal savings associations and approved nonbank issuers. Both the rule and the Act take effect on January 18, 2027 — a finished rulebook, not a live licensing window: the OCC will announce separately when it starts accepting applications.

Solana’s Alpenglow goes live: a new consensus for the first time since 2020

The activation this newsletter flagged last week happened on schedule. Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade took over on mainnet on October 21 at epoch 1064 (slot 459,653,000), retiring TowerBFT — the consensus in place since the network’s 2020 launch. Its Votor component moves validator votes off-chain into aggregated certificates, cutting the finality target from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. Execution, programs and fees are unchanged, and because vote transactions no longer fill blocks, reported transaction counts drop mechanically — an accounting change, not a drop in user activity. The 150 ms figure remains a design target to be measured under load, and Rotor, the planned block-propagation component, is not part of this activation.

J.P. Morgan brings its tokenised money market funds to Solana

Three days after JPM Coin reached Ethereum, J.P. Morgan Asset Management made its two tokenised money market funds — MONY, a private fund for qualified investors launched on Ethereum in December 2025, and JLTXX, a U.S.-registered government money market fund — available on Solana on October 22, through its Morgan Money platform. Qualified U.S. investors can subscribe and redeem on either chain and receive token balances at their blockchain addresses. JLTXX held about $628M in total fund assets at September 30 — a fund figure, not a Solana balance: the bank disclosed no Solana-specific assets, and the tokens represent fund shares, not holdings of SOL.

HSBC launches RedCoin, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, to 3.3 million PayMe users

HSBC rolled out its first stablecoin, RedCoin (RCHKD), inside its PayMe payments app on October 23, opening wallets in phases to more than 3.3 million users. The token redeems one-for-one against the Hong Kong dollar, is backed by segregated high-quality liquid assets under Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance (HSBC holds issuer licence FRS02), and starts with person-to-person transfers and payments at more than 100,000 merchants. Tokenised fund subscriptions through the HSBC Hong Kong app are planned by the end of 2026. Two honest caveats: 3.3 million is the eligible user base, not activated wallets — HSBC published no usage figures — and the bank has not disclosed which blockchain RedCoin runs on.

Franklin Templeton adds about $150M of tokenised fund shares to the XRP Ledger

Franklin Templeton issued roughly $150M in new sgBENJI shares — tokens representing its Singapore-domiciled OnChain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund — on the XRP Ledger, in two $75M subscriptions recorded on October 22 and reported by CoinDesk on October 24 after a review of the ledger itself. The ledger position rose from about 48 million to nearly 193 million shares, worth roughly $200M at the recorded $1.039 share price, making Franklin the second-largest tokenised-asset platform on the ledger behind Ripple’s RLUSD, per RWA.xyz. All the shares sit in a single wallet that shares authorised signers with Franklin’s issuing account; whether it represents one investor or pooled clients is not established. And the standing distinction: these are fund shares recorded on the ledger, not a purchase of XRP.

Cardano: no mainnet milestone this week — a testnet step only

Kept deliberately short, because the bar is mainnet news: Cardano’s public testnet for the upcoming Dijkstra upgrade reopened on October 21, running node 11.1.3 on protocol version 11 — version 12 and the Dijkstra hard fork are not active. That is a testing step, reported here for completeness and labelled as such; nothing on Cardano mainnet changed this week.

The Weekly Premiere and the Shorts that mattered

Weekly Premiere (October 25): Weekly Close Tonight: Every Floor Held — So Far — Sunday’s weekly close with every major floor still holding at the close, the week graded level by level, in plain language. The channel published 30 videos between October 19 and 25.

Shorts of the week:

• BREAKING: Franklin Templeton Adds $150M to XRP Ledger (October 24)
• BREAKING: HSBC Launches Its First Stablecoin for 3.3M Users (October 23)
• BREAKING: Switzerland Approves First Retail Bitcoin ETF (October 20)

All videos: cryptot.shop/videos · Channel: youtube.com/@cryptoTshop

Panel sentiment: one zone decides — $76K to $82K on Bitcoin

The panel agrees on the map, not the direction. Everyone treats the $76,000–$82,000 Bitcoin zone as the test of the moment, with the Fed meeting and the November 3 midterms promising volatility, and nobody calls a confirmed cycle top. Dan Gambardello watches the 50-week average near $76,000 — weekly closes above it stay significant — with a $64,000–$69,000 higher-low zone if it fails, and an Ethereum bear scenario toward $1,800–$2,000; his altcoin thesis (the Others/BTC ratio bottomed in June 2025) is still waiting for its move. Ben Cowen stays the counterweight: Bitcoin in a “precarious position”, a stock correction arriving in pieces, and Bitcoin still to retest its bull-market support band while Ether and the altcoin totals already have — which is why, in his view, altcoins keep bleeding toward Bitcoin. George is patient-bullish: Bitcoin holding $81,000–$82,000 while whales and institutions accumulate, XRP the week’s resilient one, and his standing line — HODL and dollar-cost averaging are the only strategy proven over four cycles. CryptoFace published no long-form analysis this week (his October 21 live has no available transcript, so nothing is invented here): his Shorts lean defensive, with gold call options for 2027 as a hedge. CoinsKid published nothing new; his last video dates to October 10. These are opinions, not facts, and none of this is financial advice.

Week of October 12–18, 2026

A double inflation shock: CPI at 3.7%, producer prices at 6.3%

Two U.S. inflation reports landed back to back. Consumer prices rose 3.7% in September from a year earlier (Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 14) — above the 3.6% economists expected, with core CPI at 2.6% — and producer prices followed on October 15 with a 1.3% monthly jump, up 6.3% year over year, the biggest annual increase since December 2022, driven mainly by a 10.8% surge in energy. Markets quickly repriced the Federal Reserve’s October 27–28 meeting: the odds of another rate hike jumped from roughly one-in-five before the CPI print to close to a coin flip. Bitcoin slipped below $82,000 on the CPI release and briefly under $80,000 after the PPI, with roughly $900M in leveraged positions liquidated on October 15 — a macro story, not a crypto-specific one.

Charles Schwab completes its full crypto rollout: direct Bitcoin and Ether trading

Charles Schwab completed the full retail rollout of Schwab Crypto in mid-October: eligible clients can now buy and sell spot Bitcoin and Ether directly inside their usual Schwab accounts — on Schwab.com, Schwab Mobile and thinkorswim — at a flat 0.75% fee. Execution and sub-custody run through Paxos via Schwab Premier Bank. The scale is the story: about 40.1 million retail clients and roughly $13.33 trillion in client assets. Access excludes New York and Louisiana for now, transfers in and out are being enabled in stages, and Schwab says Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink are planned by the end of 2026 — planned, not live.

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, joins both of the Bank of Russia’s crypto registers

The Bank of Russia added Sberbank to its register of crypto exchange operators on October 12, six days after the bank joined the separate digital depository register — giving Russia’s largest lender both registrations created under the country’s new crypto law, in force since September 1. Registration is a regulatory status, not a product already trading: Sberbank is testing Bitcoin, Ether and USDT in its app and plans to open trading to clients on December 1. Domestic crypto payments remain prohibited in Russia.

Deutsche Bank says its Bitcoin and Ether custody is weeks away — not live yet

Deutsche Bank’s corporate bank co-head Gerald Podobnik told Reuters on October 16 that the bank’s first digital-asset custody service is only weeks away. The initial service, for institutional and corporate clients in Germany, would custody major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, with stablecoin services, tokenized deposits and digital securities to follow, and expansion into Asian financial centres planned for 2027. Read it precisely: this is a near-term launch window, still subject to the supervisory procedure and technical sign-off — no exact date and no first client were named.

Interactive Brokers launches Ether staking through zerohash

Interactive Brokers launched Ethereum staking for eligible Interactive Brokers LLC clients on October 13, through its Client Portal Staking Dashboard. Infrastructure provider zerohash runs the staking service; rewards, when earned, are credited as additional staked ETH and can compound. Ether is the only staking asset at launch, availability varies by affiliate and country, and rewards are variable and not guaranteed — no rate or adoption figure was disclosed.

Cross River Bank embeds Ripple’s RLUSD on the XRP Ledger into its core banking system

Cross River Bank announced on October 15 that it is integrating Ripple USD (RLUSD) into its Core Operating System, so fintech clients can reach RLUSD settlement on the XRP Ledger through the same single API they already use for ACH, wires and real-time payments — no blockchain infrastructure of their own to build. Settlement on the ledger takes about three to five seconds, around the clock. Ripple says RLUSD’s market value is above $2.5B, with over $1B issued on the XRP Ledger. The distinction matters: RLUSD is a dollar stablecoin; XRP itself is the ledger’s native asset, and this deal is about the stablecoin rail.

Solana sets October 21 for Alpenglow, its biggest consensus change

Anza set the date: Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is scheduled to activate on mainnet on October 21 at epoch 1064 (around 14:50 UTC), replacing TowerBFT — the voting system in place since 2020 — with a new mechanism called Votor. The target is finality of roughly 150 milliseconds, versus about 12.8 seconds today; it remains a target until activation is measured live. Validators must run Agave 4.3.0-based software, and the alternative Firedancer clients will not support the initial migration. This week’s news is the date being set — the activation itself belongs to next week’s edition.

Charles Hoskinson says he is personally building a new programming language for Cardano

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said he is personally developing a new programming language for Cardano, working with Input Output engineer Lucas Rosa. He described it as combining transaction intents — users state the result they want — with proof-carrying data built on Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs, so applications can verify that conditions were met. That is the whole announcement: no name, no technical specification and no launch timeline were shared, and Cardano already supports languages such as Plutus and Aiken.

The Weekly Premiere and the Shorts that mattered

Weekly Premiere (October 18): Two Floors Broke: Sunday’s Weekly Close Grades the Week — Cardano and Ether both closed just below their validation floors on Saturday, Bitcoin stayed almost flat, and Sunday’s weekly close grades the whole week — plus the Sunday panel review and the refreshed Power 5 levels, in plain language.

Shorts of the week:

• BREAKING: Schwab Opens Bitcoin & Ether Trading to All Clients (October 17)
• BREAKING: Russia’s Biggest Bank Cleared to Trade Crypto (October 13)
• Cardano Sits on $0.2236: Tonight Validates or Saves It (October 17)

All videos: cryptot.shop/videos · Channel: youtube.com/@cryptoTshop

Panel sentiment: bullish underneath, split on how clean the path is

Nobody on the panel reads the week’s flush toward $80,000 as a top. George (CryptosRUs) sees whales accumulating since July and points to the dense short liquidity around $83,000–$85,000; CryptoFace expects the biggest move up is still ahead but warns the path will be choppy, with thin liquidity and bots; Dan Gambardello calls this the best altcoin setup he has ever seen — his risk models still read low, and he puts Cardano’s 200-week average near $0.47 as the “starting line” of an ADA bull market, with $0.17–$0.19 support if the structure breaks. Ben Cowen remains the counterweight: he lays out a credible bullish technical case (golden cross, holding the 50-day) and a bearish one (a fake breakout toward $83,000, then macro taking over), and refuses to pick. CoinsKid published nothing new this week; his October 10 framework — one last corrective leg near $79,836, accumulation not distribution — still stands unupdated. On ADA, George is the only other voice: positive on Hoskinson and Midnight, frank about Cardano’s low liquidity and TVL. These are opinions, not facts, and none of this is financial advice.

Week of October 5–11, 2026

Thailand finalizes rules for local Bitcoin and Ether ETFs

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission published its final rules for locally listed spot Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds, effective October 16. Funds must list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, track a single asset, keep at least 80% of net assets exposed to it, and hold the coins with custodians regulated in Thailand. Investors must acknowledge the risks before buying, and brokers cannot lend clients money to purchase the funds. Bitcoin and Ether are the only eligible assets at launch; other coins can be added later based on liquidity, market acceptance, network security and investor protection. This is a rulebook taking effect, not a fund already trading — managers still have to file and launch individual products.

U.S. spot ETFs shed ~$1.25B — XRP funds buck the trend

After weeks of inflows, U.S. spot crypto ETFs reversed hard in the five trading days ended October 9. Bitcoin products lost about $681.1M, ending a three-week inflow streak; Ether products lost about $542.1M, their worst week since January, in a ninth straight outflow session streak that began September 29; and Solana products lost about $24.8M, ending a record 14-week inflow run. XRP products were the exception, extending their weekly inflow streak to a 13th week. Year-to-date flows for Bitcoin and Ether funds remain positive — this was a broad de-risking week, not funds going to zero.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam activates on Sepolia and finalizes

Ethereum’s next upgrade, Glamsterdam, activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53 UTC and finalized without critical failures. The package pairs enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732) with block-level access lists (EIP-7928), gas repricing and 18 EIPs in total, and Sepolia tested a gas limit near 200 million — roughly triple mainnet’s current 60 million — with early blocks using only a fraction of that room. The Hoodi testnet is tentatively next, around October 27, and no mainnet date has been set; the target remains Q4 2026. ETH holders have nothing to do.

Cardano’s CIP-0113 programmable tokens go live on mainnet

The Cardano Foundation launched CIP-0113 on mainnet on October 7: a native token standard that lets issuers of stablecoins, tokenized funds, bonds and other regulated assets build compliance rules — identity checks, anti-money-laundering and sanctions screening, freeze and seizure, and transfer restrictions — directly into their tokens. The ledger itself enforces those rules on every transfer, mint and burn, no hard fork was required, and the controls apply only to tokens whose issuers opt in: ADA itself is not affected. The standard completed multiple independent security audits and launched with support from Eternl, GeroWallet, CardanoScan and BloxBean, plus recognition from Switzerland’s CMTA.

XRP Ledger activates Permission Delegation, then Batch, back to back

The XRP Ledger switched on two protocol amendments on consecutive days. Permission Delegation (XLS-75) activated October 8 at 21:29 UTC, letting an account delegate up to 10 specific permissions — such as payments or trustline management — to other accounts without sharing its private keys. Batch (XLS-56) followed on October 9 at 14:47 UTC, alongside its fixBatchV1_2 correction, grouping multiple transactions into a single all-or-nothing operation: if one step fails, the whole batch rolls back. Both changes target institutional workflows — separated duties inside banks and custodians, and safer multi-step settlement — and both were confirmed active on-ledger.

Evernorth pushes its Nasdaq debut to October 12

Evernorth, the XRP treasury company covered in last week’s edition, delayed its public debut by four days. An administrative delay moved the expected closing of its merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II to October 9, with trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN now expected to begin Monday, October 12, according to its October 6 SEC filing. The company said the delay is not expected to affect the closing. At closing, Evernorth still expects to hold roughly 473 million XRP. Note the distinction: XRPN will be shares in Evernorth — XRP itself is not being listed on Nasdaq.

Solana ships an institutional settlement standard — and 200ms slots

Two Solana milestones landed in one week. On October 6, the Solana Foundation released Solana DvP, an open-source, MIT-licensed delivery-versus-payment program: the asset and the cash move in a single atomic transaction, so neither side can complete without the other. J.P. Morgan contributed input on institutional settlement requirements; the program is a Foundation release, not a bank product, and it still needs live design partners. On October 9, mainnet completed the final step of SIMD-0525 at epoch 1053, cutting the target slot time from 250ms to 200ms — half the original 400ms. Per-slot compute budgets shrink in proportion, so this is faster cadence, not doubled capacity; the first full epoch under the new target averaged about 218.3ms per slot.

The Weekly Premiere and the Shorts that mattered

Weekly Premiere (October 11): Bitcoin Above $83K Intraday: Tonight’s Weekly Close Decides — why an intraday push above $83,000 is not a close, what tonight’s weekly close decides, Wednesday’s September CPI print, and the week’s ETF outflows, in plain language.

Shorts of the week:

• BREAKING: Thailand Allows Bitcoin & Ether ETFs (October 9)
• BREAKING: XRP Ledger Bug Could Have Printed XRP From Nothing (October 10)
• ETF Outflows Explained: $542M Left Ether Funds (October 11)

All videos: cryptot.shop/videos · Channel: youtube.com/@cryptoTshop

Panel sentiment: bullish underneath, split on the Q4 path

Nobody on the panel is calling a new bear-market low: the week’s drop — roughly $1B in liquidations, Bitcoin down toward $80k before recovering — is read almost everywhere as a leverage flush, not a top. Dan Gambardello is the most structural bull: his business-cycle gauge has flipped to expansion for the first time in 50 months, his risk scores are still low (alts 12, ADA 22), and he is pre-building a profit-taking ladder so he does not round-trip this cycle; he also notes Cardano is among only eight markets in Robinhood’s new U.S. crypto perpetuals. CryptoFace finished his live long on Ether — a $2M position — while admitting Bitcoin’s chart looked even stronger, and turned cautiously interested on ADA at the bottom of its range. CoinsKid sees accumulation, not distribution, but still expects one last corrective leg (his 1.618 target sits near $79,836) before a push toward at least $93,675, with XRP compressing in a bullish flag under ~$1.46 resistance. George stays bullish on the trend since June–July and floats a short squeeze toward $87,400–$88,000, while flagging real macro headwinds. Ben Cowen remains the caution: everything hinges on the ~$81,000–$83,000 line, mid-term-year Q4 weakness is a pattern he refuses to ignore, and a sustained loss of that zone reopens his ~$60,000 scenario. These are opinions, not facts, and none of this is financial advice.

Week of September 28–October 4, 2026

Weak U.S. jobs report cools the Fed hike debate

The September U.S. jobs report came in far below expectations: employers added just 29,000 jobs against forecasts of roughly 84,000–90,000, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%, and July–August figures were revised down by a combined 60,000. Treasury yields fell on the release and market pricing for an October Fed rate hike dropped sharply — a relief valve for risk assets after weeks of tightening fears, and the macro backdrop behind Bitcoin’s push back toward the high $80k range late in the week. One soft report does not end the hiking cycle, but it changed the odds the market was trading on.

After the record week, ETF flows split: BTC in, ETH out

One week after their record run, U.S. spot crypto ETFs diverged. For the week of September 28 to October 2, Bitcoin products still posted net inflows of about $82.9M — a steep slowdown from the prior week’s ~$2.39B — while Ethereum products recorded about $118M in net outflows, reversing the ~$690M they had just taken in. Solana products added only about $0.8M, down from $188.1M the week before. The takeaway is not a reversal of institutional interest; it is a cooldown after an exceptional week, with the three Power 5 ETF complexes moving in different directions for the first time in weeks.

SEC clears 3x Bitcoin and Ether futures ETFs for listing

The SEC approved a Cboe BZX rule change allowing the listing of six triple-leveraged Volatility Shares funds, including 3x products tracking Bitcoin and Ether futures, alongside gold, silver, oil and gas. These are futures-based funds that reset their leverage daily — not spot products — and that daily reset cuts both ways: one modelled 3x daily Bitcoin strategy was down 44.4% this year even though Bitcoin itself was down only 3.2%. Listing approval is a market-structure milestone, not an endorsement, and leveraged daily-reset products are built for short-term trading, not holding.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam reaches the Sepolia testnet

Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, activates on the Sepolia testnet on Tuesday, October 6 at 13:53 UTC (epoch 353,024), per the Ethereum Foundation. The package combines the Amsterdam execution-layer changes with the Gloas consensus-layer changes, headlined by enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732) and block-level access lists (EIP-7928), plus gas repricing. Sepolia node operators must update both execution and consensus clients before the fork. This is a public rehearsal, not a mainnet launch: the mainnet date remains unscheduled, with only a Q4 2026 target, and nothing is required from ETH holders.

Petrobras tests Cardano to track lower-carbon fuel

Brazil’s state-controlled energy giant Petrobras is testing Cardano in two research projects announced by the Cardano Foundation on September 30. The first, CS-SAF, built with PUC-Rio University’s Ledger Labs, turns each sustainable aviation fuel attribute into a standardized token on Cardano, with metadata aligned to the CORSIA aviation emissions scheme, so an environmental benefit can be minted, transferred and retired — and claimed only once, closing the double-counting gap in book-and-claim fuel sales. The second tracks Diesel R, Petrobras’ partly renewable diesel, across production and transport to support Scope 3 emissions reporting. Both projects are research-stage: no volumes and no rollout timeline have been disclosed.

Evernorth clears its merger vote: ~473M XRP headed to Nasdaq

Armada Acquisition Corp. II shareholders approved the business combination with Evernorth Holdings on September 30, clearing the path for what the companies describe as the largest publicly traded pure-play XRP treasury. The deal and related placements have raised over $1B in commitments; at closing, expected October 7, Evernorth expects to hold roughly 473 million XRP, with trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN expected to begin October 8. Investors include Ripple, SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR. Separately, XRP Asia launched on October 3 at XRP Seoul 2026, an initiative to grow XRP Ledger adoption across Asia-Pacific with regional banks and payment companies.

Fiserv goes live: North Dakota’s Roughrider Coin settles on Solana

Fiserv’s digital asset platform entered production on October 1, and its first live use case is a state bank stablecoin: Roughrider Coin, a U.S. dollar-backed token governed by the Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned bank in the U.S. More than 90 participating North Dakota banks and credit unions can access it through Fiserv’s Commercial Center to move money between institutions, with transactions settling on Solana. VersaBank USA issues the coin and handles minting, burning, custody and reserves, while Fireblocks provides the digital-asset infrastructure. Access is permissioned and bank-to-bank only — there is no public trading — but as a settlement rail, this is a production deployment inside real banking workflows, not a pilot announcement.

The Weekly Premiere and the Short that mattered

Weekly Premiere (October 4): Crypto Week Ahead: ADA, BTC Levels & What Analysts Watch — Petrobras × Cardano, Fiserv × Solana and the Roughrider Coin, and the Power 5 levels for the week ahead, in plain language.

Short of the week: Brazil’s Oil Giant Is Testing Cardano — Here’s Why It Matters (October 4).

All videos: cryptot.shop/videos · Channel: youtube.com/@cryptoTshop

Panel sentiment: the bottom is in — the timing is the fight

All five analysts on our panel now agree the cycle bottom is behind us: Bitcoin held a weekly close above the May high (~$82.8k), and even Ben Cowen, the panel’s skeptic, says the burden of proof has shifted to the bears — though for him everything still hinges on the ~$83k level holding. Dan Gambardello argues the four-year cycle is an illusion and that a confirmed business-cycle expansion sets up a historic bull market; he has also shifted his main Cardano-ecosystem exposure toward Midnight (NIGHT). George (CryptosRUs) is the most bullish voice, talking about $100k before the U.S. midterms. CoinsKid counts wave 1 as unfinished but expects a months-long wave-2 correction into 2027, and CryptoFace is trading tactically long while calling ETH’s $2,800 line the bull confirmation — and remains openly negative on ADA. Same conclusion, opposite clocks: patience, not euphoria, is the technical read for October. These are opinions, not facts, and none of this is financial advice.

Week of September 21–27, 2026

Bitget loses ~$387.5M in hot-wallet breach

On September 24 at 18:31 UTC, Bitget detected unauthorized transfers from parts of its hot and warm wallet infrastructure. The exchange first estimated losses at $351.6M, then revised the figure to ~$387.5M on September 25 after tracing additional Zcash and TRON transactions — a fuller count of the same incident, not a second breach. The attacker compromised a backend system, spoofed transaction data, and tricked Bitget’s own authorization process into signing the transfers — an echo of the February 2025 Bybit theft. Stolen assets span Ethereum, several EVM networks, the XRP Ledger, Zcash and TRON, and include XRP and ETH. Mandiant and SlowMist are assisting the investigation; CEO Gracy Chen said the attack is consistent with DPRK-linked techniques. Withdrawals restart in phases from September 28, and Bitget says its User Protection Fund will cover the loss.

Bitcoin ETFs post biggest inflow week of 2026: ~$2.39B

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs just closed their strongest week of the year: ~$2.386B in net inflows from September 21–25, the biggest weekly total since October 2025. Monday alone drew ~$999M — the largest single-day inflow since October 6, 2025, and the ninth-largest since launch. It capped seven straight inflow sessions (September 17–25, ~$3B total) and flipped 2026 year-to-date flows back to positive (~+$934M) after sitting near −$5.8B in mid-July. Bitcoin broke the $82–83k ceiling that had capped every rally since early September and tagged $87,386 — its highest print since January 31.

Vitalik maps Ethereum to 2030; Glamsterdam testnet goes live October 6

Vitalik Buterin published “The Cryptographic World Computer,” an essay laying out Ethereum’s path to 2030 — and said the Hegota upgrade planned for next year may be the last “normal” upgrade recognizable to early users. More immediate: the Glamsterdam hard fork activates on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, 2026 at 13:53 UTC, with mainnet targeted for Q4 2026. The upgrade brings native proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists — parallel transaction processing with less reliance on external relays. ETH spot ETFs added ~$690M on the week while ETH tested $2,800.

Cardano’s institutional week: Fireblocks support, x402 payments

On September 24, the Cardano Foundation announced Fireblocks will add full support for Cardano Native Tokens — custody, sending and receiving — expected by March 2027, opening the network to the banks, exchanges and fintechs on the Fireblocks platform. Three days earlier, ADA entered the x402 payments SDK, and the Foundation had joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program on September 15. ADA responded with a ~21–26% weekly rally, breaking back above $0.25 and printing its first daily golden cross of 2026.

XRP Ledger new accounts jump 323%; Batch V1.1 slips to October

The XRP Ledger recorded 11,432 newly created accounts in a single day — a 323% jump over the 30-day average of ~2,700. On the protocol side, the Batch V1.1 amendment (XLS-56) dipped back below the 80% validator threshold, restarting its two-week activation window: earliest activation is now October 9, with the companion fixBatchV1_2 amendment moving through voting alongside it. U.S. spot XRP ETFs added ~$75M on the week — an eleventh straight week of inflows — and Ripple hardened its pipeline with AI-driven code reviews plus a dedicated security team.

Solana ETFs smash records: $188M week; Alpenglow hits testnet

U.S. spot Solana ETFs just had their biggest week since launch: $188.21M in net inflows from September 21–25, with all seven funds positive every session. Bitwise’s staking-enabled BSOL took $128.46M — 68% of the total — and the complex has now posted 13 straight weeks of inflows while stablecoin supply on Solana hit an all-time high of $17.3B. On the tech side, the Alpenglow upgrade (150ms block times, fault tolerance raised from 33% to 40%) reached its second testnet on September 24. SOL broke $121, up from $97 at the start of the month.

Where the TA crowd stands

Dan Gambardello is calling the start of the altcoin bull market (with a possible October dip first); CoinsKid counts an unfinished wave 1 with BTC targets of $86–98k before a deeper 2027 correction; Ben Cowen — the panel’s skeptic — puts everything on the weekly close above ~$83k and warns most alts would give back gains on rejection; George (CryptosRUs) sees the bull market back. For spot holders with zero leverage, the shared read is simple: positions held, eyes on the weekly close. None of this is financial advice.

Week of September 14–20, 2026

CLARITY Act stalls in the U.S. Senate

On September 15, the U.S. Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act: the cloture motion fell 49–50, well short of the 60 votes needed. Every Democrat voted no — joined by four Republicans over ethics guardrails and CFTC staffing — leaving the most ambitious federal crypto market-structure bill effectively dead for 2026.

XRP Ledger Batch amendment (V1.1) hits 80% validator support

Amendment XLS-56 — "Batch V1.1" — crossed the 80% validator approval threshold (29 of 35 validators) on September 15, entering its 14-day activation window. Barring a loss of support, it activates around September 29, 2026. The feature bundles up to 8 transactions into a single atomic operation — built for settlement use cases like delivery-versus-payment.

CFTC sends crypto rulemaking to the White House

Two days after the CLARITY Act failed, the CFTC submitted its crypto market-structure rulemaking package ("Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets", RIN 3038-AF80) to the White House's OIRA for review. The draft isn't public yet, but the move signals the agency intends to write crypto market rules under its existing authority. The same day, it issued no-action relief for "passive" software providers.

SEC grants 5-year "Innovation Exemption" for onchain trading of tokenized stocks

The SEC issued an order granting a conditional 5-year exemption (through September 17, 2031): qualifying "Tokenized Securities Venues" can trade tokenized U.S. NMS stocks onchain through permissioned automated market makers without registering as an exchange. Liquidity providers get a parallel exemption from the "dealer" definition. Tokens must carry the same rights as the underlying shares — dividends, voting, the works.

Week of September 7–13, 2026

Liquid Network exploit: ~4,000 BTC drained, ~3,400 returned

Blockstream's Liquid Network, a Bitcoin sidechain, was hit by an exploit that drained roughly 4,000 BTC (~$320M). The attackers — described as white hats — agreed to return about 3,400 BTC (~$270M) once the bug was patched, keeping roughly 600 BTC (~$47M) as a bounty. Bridge withdrawals and L-BTC services stayed paused while the incident was investigated.

Germany moves to end tax-free crypto after 1 year of holding

Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance drafted a bill that would end the country's famous tax exemption after 12 months of holding. Gains on crypto acquired after December 31, 2026 would be taxed at a flat 25% (+ solidarity surcharge, ~26.375% effective) — like stocks. Existing holdings keep the old regime. The draft still has to clear cabinet and the Bundestag.

Canada's OSFI clears tokenized bank deposits

Canada's federal banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), issued official guidance: tokenized deposits are "not legally distinct" from traditional deposits. Federally regulated banks can therefore offer blockchain-based deposit products inside the existing framework — no bespoke regime required. A first among major jurisdictions.