Bitcoin briefly broke below $84,000, a level analysts had flagged as the point where sellers take over, as oil and the dollar both climbed on tanker-attack news.
The move came amid broader risk-off sentiment driven by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
For beginners Crypto markets often react to geopolitical flare-ups the way other risk assets do: rising oil and a stronger dollar tend to coincide with investors pulling back from more volatile instruments like bitcoin.
A company backed by the Winklevoss twins has filed with the SEC for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would directly hold ZEC tokens.
Gemini Trust would serve as the fund's custodian, with Winklevoss Capital affiliates eyeing an investment of up to $100 million.
For beginners An ETF lets investors gain exposure to an asset — in this case the Zcash cryptocurrency — through an ordinary exchange-traded instrument, without having to hold the tokens in a crypto wallet themselves.
UK authorities have named six banks to lead a pilot issuance of a government bond using distributed ledger technology — the same technology behind cryptocurrencies.
The DIGIT pilot will test onchain settlement for the bond, with issuance expected by the first quarter of 2027.
For beginners A distributed ledger can record and transfer ownership of assets without a central intermediary; for government bonds this could speed up settlement and add transparency, though it remains an experiment rather than a replacement for the existing system.
The digital ruble, a central bank digital currency issued and controlled by Russia's central bank, has gathered nearly four times more accounts than the regulator itself forecast.
The digital ruble's rollout comes as BRICS nations discuss linking their digital currencies for cross-border payments.
For beginners A central bank digital currency differs from ordinary cryptocurrencies in that it is issued and guaranteed by the state; its fast adoption shows how countries are trying to modernise payment systems and reduce reliance on traditional bank transfers.
Ripple Prime will provide prime brokerage, clearing and financing services to funds managed by Brevan Howard, a $35 billion alternative investment manager.
The deal expands an existing partnership between Ripple and Brevan Howard.
For beginners Prime brokerage is a bundle of services — lending, clearing, custody — that large financial intermediaries provide to funds to make trading easier; crypto firms moving into this business signals growing interest from traditional institutional investors in digital assets.
Crypto exchange OKX raised fresh capital at a $25 billion valuation, extending a March round led by NYSE parent ICE, with new investors including Standard Chartered, Circle and Ripple.
The company is increasingly positioning itself as a global fintech platform spanning crypto trading, payments and tokenized assets, following its investment and joint venture with ICE.
For beginners A funding round at a given valuation shows how much investors are willing to pay for a stake in the company; raising capital from banks and payment giants typically signals a firm wants to expand beyond crypto trading into adjacent financial services.
Paxos' $3 billion USDG stablecoin — a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar — went live on Arbitrum, as Arbitrum joined the Global Dollar stablecoin alliance.
Arbitrum will earn a share of USDG's reserve income and proposed incentives of 100 million ARB tokens to support liquidity and adoption.
For beginners Stablecoin issuers hold reserves (usually in US government bonds) and earn interest on them; by sharing that income with blockchain networks, they give platforms an incentive to promote their token to users.
The Solana Foundation unveiled an open-source DvP ("delivery versus payment") program that lets financial institutions settle trades in seconds instead of days, with input from JPMorgan.
The tool aims to complete asset transfers and payments simultaneously and securely.
For beginners Delivery-versus-payment settlement means the asset and the cash change hands at the same moment, removing the risk that one side pays while the other fails to deliver; cutting this process from days to seconds reduces counterparty risk in trading.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed two rules of its own to regulate crypto after the CLARITY market structure bill stalled in the Senate.
Nonprofit Better Markets said the CFTC is the 'wrong agency' to oversee retail crypto trading and that its approach would leave investors less protected than under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
For beginners Different US regulators oversee different financial products: the SEC handles securities while the CFTC handles commodity futures and derivatives; disputes over which agency should cover crypto determine what protections investors get.
The US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) withdrew two proposed rules that had hung over self-custody wallets and crypto mixers for years without ever taking effect.
The withdrawal is part of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda. One rule targeted unhosted wallets — wallets a user controls directly without an intermediary — and the other targeted mixers, services that blend crypto transactions to obscure their origin.
For beginners Reporting requirements force financial firms to tell authorities about large transactions to fight money laundering; dropping them reduces the regulatory burden on people who hold crypto themselves.
Citi raised its bitcoin price target to $113,000 and its ether target to $3,028 as crypto inflows return.
The bank's analysts tied the revised forecast to renewed capital inflows into the crypto market.
For beginners A price target is an analyst's forecast of an asset's future value based on their model; such forecasts shape investor sentiment but are no guarantee the price will actually reach that level.
Researcher ZachXBT says a Chinese crime network laundered more than $1 billion for the North Korea-linked Lazarus hacking group.
ZachXBT said he infiltrated the network by posing as a customer, gaining information that helped trace funds from the $1.5 billion Bybit hack.
For beginners Money laundering hides the origin of stolen funds through chains of transactions; because blockchain transactions are public, analysts can still trace such schemes despite attempts to obscure them.
Bitcoin came within reach of $87,000, nearly setting an eight-month high, before sellers pushed it back below $86,000 — the second rally to stall in a week.
Rising U.S. Treasury yields and a stronger dollar continue to weigh on bitcoin's attempts to break through resistance at the 2026 yearly open.
For beginners Rising bond yields make safer assets more attractive relative to risky ones, so investors become less willing to pay up for assets like bitcoin.
Strategy spent $176.3 million buying back its STRC shares while purchasing just 334 bitcoin for $28.7 million over the week, whereas Japan's Metaplanet added a net 1,000 BTC in the third quarter, bringing its holdings to 44,000 BTC.
Metaplanet sold 10,000 BTC before buying 11,000 BTC, and unveiled a plan to allocate up to 15% of total assets to strategic investments to fund further bitcoin accumulation.
For beginners Companies holding crypto on their balance sheets choose between buying the asset directly and returning capital to shareholders via buybacks — a decision that changes how exposed they are to the asset's price swings.
According to Chainalysis, the number of unique wallets sending stablecoins — crypto tokens pegged to the dollar — directly between users in China grew 43-fold from early 2024 to the second quarter of 2026, despite the country's crypto restrictions.
Meanwhile payments company Stripe plans to expand its stablecoin cards to more than 100 countries by year-end and is exploring tokenized deposits and DeFi use cases.
For beginners Stablecoins let users send and store dollar-pegged value directly between wallets, bypassing traditional banks and exchanges — a feature especially useful where crypto access is restricted.
Bitcoin ETFs recorded a third consecutive week of inflows, while Ether ETFs swung to outflows of $138 million and Zcash funds posted their first weekly outflow.
The diverging flows suggest institutional demand is spread unevenly across different crypto assets.
For beginners Inflows and outflows from exchange-traded funds offer a convenient way to gauge how large institutional investors feel about a specific asset, since such funds give them regulated market access.
OKXICE, the joint venture of OKX and ICE, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, has filed to launch 24/7 trading of tokenized U.S. stocks.
The platform plans to offer tokenized shares — digital tokens tied to the value of real securities — in more than 60 US-listed companies, using the SEC's new innovation exemption.
For beginners Tokenizing stocks allows them to trade on a blockchain almost around the clock, unlike traditional exchanges with fixed trading hours.
Zcash's NU7 upgrade went live on testnet ahead of schedule, cutting the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.
That gives exchanges, wallets and developers time to test the changes before a planned mainnet launch in November.
For beginners A shorter block time speeds up transaction confirmations on the network, which usually makes a cryptocurrency more convenient for payments.
Bitcoin came within about $500 of its late-September peak before sellers pushed it back under $86,000.
It's the second rally in a week to stall.
For beginners When an asset nears a recent high, some traders lock in profits, which often turns a rally into a pullback — that's how a resistance level works in markets.
Ether beat bitcoin in the third quarter, but its market liquidity — how easily the asset can be bought or sold without moving its price — got thinner, according to Coingecko.
The data on thinning liquidity comes from Coingecko.
For beginners Thinner liquidity means even small trades can move an asset's price more, increasing volatility.
