Live Feed

U.S. federal prosecutors have charged 18 people with conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in connection with the theft of $263 million worth of BTC, Crypto Briefing reported. It marks the first major case in which RICO charges have been applied to a cryptocurrency theft. Malone Lam, identified as the ringleader, and others are accused of posing as Google and Gemini representatives in August 2024 to obtain wallet access information from a victim and steal more than 4,100 BTC. Investigators found the stolen funds were later laundered through cryptocurrency exchanges and used on luxury cars, private jets and mansions. If Lam’s planned guilty plea proceeds as scheduled, it would become the 11th guilty plea among the defendants tied to the case.

Securitize has expanded support for using BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL as collateral in crypto prime brokerage, NewsBTC reported. Eligible institutional investors can now post BUIDL tokens as off-exchange collateral through supported prime brokers. BUIDL is BlackRock’s tokenized fund that invests in traditional financial assets including U.S. Treasuries.

Bitcoin held above $79,000 despite a sharp rise in the Japanese yen, marking a different pattern from the yen carry trade unwind in 2024, according to a BeInCrypto analysis. BeInCrypto said the dollar-yen exchange rate fell from 160.39 yen last Wednesday to 154.50 yen on Monday, implying a 3.7% rise in the yen’s value over three trading days. It said a similar yen surge in August 2024 triggered a broad unwind of carry trades, in which investors borrowed low-rate yen to invest in risk assets, sending BTC and ETH down by as much as 20%. This time, however, BTC stayed above $79,000. BeInCrypto reproduced the English phrase "Bitcoin survived its first yen shock."

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said improving U.S. Internal Revenue Service tax treatment for block rewards is more important than adjusting Solana’s token burn, fees or inflation structure, Cointelegraph reported. Under current U.S. rules, staking rewards are treated as taxable income upon receipt under certain conditions.

Kraken parent Payward has filed an application with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to launch crypto perpetual futures products, NewsBTC reported. The products are set to be offered through Bitnomial, which Kraken acquired, and will use BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP and ADA as the underlying assets. The launch must go through a 30-day regulatory self-certification review process.

Polish prosecutors have charged a suspect with allegedly misusing 7.8 million zloty ($2.1 million) in user funds from crypto exchange Zondacrypto, Cointelegraph reported. The suspect is accused of participating in an organized crime group and siphoning off user funds by illegally altering the exchange’s electronic records. Prosecutors requested detention, citing flight risk and concerns about interference with the investigation. Three other people were previously charged and detained in the same probe, and prosecutors estimate total losses tied to Zondacrypto at no less than 350 million zloty. Zondacrypto’s Estonian operator, BB Trade Estonia, was declared bankrupt in August.

Australia’s financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC has revoked the registration of crypto service provider GetCoins after finding it had been misused in organized cryptocurrency investment scams, CryptoSlate reported. AUSTRAC said the findings came from a joint probe with the National Anti-Scam Centre that was launched following customer complaints. The agency said it canceled GetCoins’ registration on June 4, and a deregistered firm can no longer provide related services.

Centralized exchange spot trading volume reached $811 billion in August, up 15% from the previous month, Cointelegraph reported. The rebound came a month after July volume fell to its lowest level in two years, with Coinbase and KuCoin posting the most notable increases among exchanges.

Crypto trader Killa said investors looking to profit from altcoins should consider selective buying in the early stage of a BTC bull market, even from a broadly bearish view on most altcoins. Killa said that in a past cycle, while BTC rose from $16,000 to $74,000, many altcoins surged 300% to 500%. Killa added that the early phase of a bull market, before Bitcoin dominance spikes and begins to dominate the broader market, is the key entry window for altcoins. Based on that view, Killa said positions entered in advance are already showing meaningful gains. SOL bought at $76 has risen about 50% from the entry price, while a HYPE position entered at $51.55 has gained about 70%, Killa said. Killa added that with the importance of early positioning growing before a broader bull-market expansion begins, Killa plans to build selective positions to prepare for sequential rebounds in individual altcoins, including a recently entered swing-long position in ASTER with a target return of 50% to 100%.

LAPTOP, a meme coin issued by Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, is scheduled for an official launch on the Base network on Sept. 9, BlockBeats reported. According to the report, 800 million of the token’s 1 billion total supply, or about 80%, is concentrated in a single Gnosis Safe multisig wallet. The top five addresses collectively hold 99.85% of the supply, pointing to a severe imbalance in token distribution. On the smart contract side, the token appears to use a standard LayerZero architecture without blacklist or transfer-tax functions. However, the owner can later expand functionality by setting cross-chain peers, leaving risks tied to top-level administrative control. In addition, policies presented by the project, including a 30% founding team lockup, politically linked burns of up to 30%, and a 20% airdrop, are not currently implemented directly in the on-chain smart contract. As a result, whether those pledges are actually carried out will need to be verified through any future deployment of additional contracts. With many similar coins already appearing in the market, investors should exercise caution until an official liquidity pool is established and the final address is confirmed.

Arbitrum generated about $2.6 million in revenue over the first six days of September, ranking third among all blockchains by revenue. The performance was driven not only by fees from Arbitrum’s layer-two network, but also by licensing fees from the recently activated Robinhood Chain and a surge in treasury operating income. At that pace, Arbitrum’s annualized revenue run rate would exceed $150 million.

Whale Alert reported that 3,400 BTC has been transferred from Liquid Hack to Liquid. The transaction is valued at about $268 million.

Bitcoin’s Miner Position Index, or MPI, fell to -1.2, well below its annual average, signaling that miner selling pressure remains highly subdued, according to Bitfinex. Bitfinex said an MPI reading above two is typically interpreted as a sign that miners have resumed selling holdings. The exchange added, "채굴자들이 물량을 계속 축적하며 출금을 자제하고 있다. 지난달 상승 시점에도 MPI는 잠시 2.8까지 반등하는 데 그쳤다"

Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with the Nasdaq-100 and gold has reversed from March, according to Glassnode. In March, Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation coefficient with the Nasdaq-100 stood at 0.57, while its correlation with gold was 0.21. As of Sept. 7, those figures had flipped, with Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq-100 falling to 0.22 and its correlation with gold rising to 0.57.

Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, plans to launch a memecoin targeting Donald Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported. The token’s ticker is LAPTOP. The report said Hunter Biden’s laptop issue emerged as a political scandal just before the 2020 U.S. presidential election and remains a recurring political meme in U.S. politics and the cryptocurrency market.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has fallen below $79,000. BTC is trading at $78,995.47 on the Binance USDT market.

Garrett Jin, BitForex’s founder, has closed his entire Bitcoin long position worth $170 million, or about 1,331 BTC, booking a final realized profit of $1.02 million. The position had been held for about three and a half months. Jin has faced allegations of profiting from insider trading ahead of the largest-ever forced liquidation event in October last year. Jin is now left only with a loss-making short position in Zcash. The position totals 39,760 ZEC, worth about $47 million, with unrealized losses reaching $24 million. Earlier today, Jin averaged down on the ZEC short position after losses mounted, then fully exited the profitable BTC long later the same day.

Aave has begun paying USDe rewards through the dedicated Ethena market in its V4 protocol on the Ethereum mainnet. The DeFi lending platform said Aave V4 has built two dedicated Spokes environments that support major synthetic assets, including USDe and sUSDe, as collateral. Through the setup, users can deposit and borrow USDe to run looping strategies aimed at maximizing yield. Backed by Aave’s lending infrastructure, supply of USDe, a delta-neutral synthetic dollar, has recently surpassed $12 billion, and at peak times Aave has served as a key liquidity venue supporting more than 50% of total USDe supply. It added that the "liquid leverage" feature introduced in V4 reduces sUSDe unstaking wait times and improves liquidity, while whitelist-based safeguards have also been applied to address risks tied to large-scale redemptions.

Ethereum developers have decided to formally include Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) in the Hegotá upgrade scheduled for 2027, enabling users to pay transaction fees without ETH. Under the current system, users cannot move funds without Ether for gas fees even if their wallets hold enough stablecoins. EIP-8141, proposed by Vitalik Buterin and others, separates signature verification, fee payment and transaction execution into individual "frames." That would allow payment apps to cover fees on a user’s behalf or deduct gas fees in stablecoins at the protocol level without a third-party intermediary. The proposal would also support atomic batching of multi-step transactions, immediately revoke permissions if an approval fails, and add account abstraction features that let users replace private keys while keeping the same account address or switch to quantum-resistant security keys. The current specification remains in draft form, and details may be adjusted before final adoption.

Bitcoin’s recent rally has been driven by spot demand rather than leverage, crypto market maker DWF Labs said on its official X account. DWF Labs said the latest BTC gains reflected a spot-led move, with open interest in the BTC futures market falling to 669,600 BTC from 762,200 BTC since mid-August, when the sharp upswing began. Inflows through spot ETFs also continued, it added. Spot BTC and ETH ETFs drew a combined $1.2 billion last week, marking a third straight week of inflows above $1 billion, the first such stretch since July last year. DWF Labs also said renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran were pushing oil prices higher, while market expectations for U.S. monetary policy were tilting toward rate hikes. This week’s U.S. Producer Price Index and Consumer Price Index releases could be key variables, DWF Labs added.

Bitcoin is holding firm near $80,000 even as stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs data has pushed the probability of a September Federal Reserve rate hike above 66%, according to a latest report from crypto exchange Bitfinex. Bitfinex said August U.S. nonfarm payrolls, released last week, rose by 162,000, far above expectations, lifting the likelihood of a September rate hike to above 60%. BTC climbed to $82,320 on Sept. 3 and is now moving sideways in a $77,200-$82,100 range. U.S. spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows of $986.7 million last week, while stablecoin supply continued to increase. Bitfinex said ETF inflows and rising stablecoin supply are supporting BTC prices, but higher short-term Treasury yields are limiting further upside. As a result, sideways trading is likely to continue until BTC clearly breaks above $82,100, the top of its short-term range.

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC), sometimes referred to as a dark coin, has surpassed a $20 billion market capitalization after hitting its highest price since 2016, Cointelegraph reported. According to CoinGecko, ZEC rose to $1,249.28 on Sept. 7 and was recently trading around $1,190. The token is up about 45% over the past week and 138% over the past 30 days. Cointelegraph said a key driver behind the latest surge was crypto asset manager Grayscale’s conversion of its existing ZEC trust product into an exchange-traded fund. The ETF, which trades under the ticker ZCSH, was listed on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25.

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service is examining whether unusual trading took place on Bithumb after as much as 70% of Bitcoin trading on the exchange was concentrated in 10 accounts, KBS reported. When Bitcoin rose from around 91 million won to above 100 million won in two days on Aug. 19, the top 10 accounts’ share of Bithumb’s total Bitcoin trading value climbed to as high as 70%, compared with a usual level of about 30%, according to the report. KBS said the pattern resembled unfair trading in which volume or buying interest is inflated to encourage retail purchases and lock in gains. The Financial Supervisory Service has classified the concentration in specific accounts on Bithumb as an unusual phenomenon and asked the South Korean exchange for a list of top traders and raw trading data, KBS reported. The regulator is also checking why Bithumb waived fees for API trading, which places large automated orders, during the period when the concentrated trading occurred.

Cointelegraph outlined five key factors to watch in the Bitcoin market this week: - U.S. CPI and PPI data are due, while the probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike is trending higher. - Japan has carried out its largest-ever yen intervention, raising the possibility of U.S. Treasury sales. - Spot demand for BTC remains weak. - BTC closed the week above $80,000 for the first time in four months. - Bullish signals have emerged in BTC on-chain indicators, pointing to a possible repeat of the recovery seen in early 2023.

Global cryptocurrency market capitalization rose 17.6% from a month earlier to $2.7 trillion in August, according to Binance Research’s monthly market report. The report said crypto ETFs saw their largest inflows of the year in August. BTC rose 24.8% on a recent weekly basis, placing the gain in the top 1% of weekly advances since 2020, while cryptocurrencies also took up a larger share of investor portfolios. Among users holding stocks, the crypto share of portfolios increased to 72% from 64%, while the stablecoin share fell 22%. The share of perpetual futures trading volume tied to traditional finance, or TradFi, assets shrank to 20% from 40%.