Tag:

Puts

Solana’s Q3 Revenue Sharp Growth Puts It Ahead Of All Major Crypto Networks

by admin October 3, 2025

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

With major digital assets like Solana experiencing notable upside action once again, the broader cryptocurrency market appears to have flipped into a highly bullish state. Solana’s ongoing upward trend in price has coincided with a remarkable surge in the blockchain’s on-chain activity and adoption.

Q3 Blockchain Revenue Race Heats Up, And Solana Is Leading

Following a recent rally in the price of SOL, there has been a strong uptick in on-chain activity and engagement. Specifically, the Solana blockchain is experiencing substantial inflows, as revenue increases sharply.

The report from Solana’s official page on the social media platform X reveals that the blockchain is witnessing one of the fastest revenue growth rates in history. A surge in user activity, active DeFi participation, and a surge in demand for on-chain applications likely drive this sharp growth in revenue.

Furthermore, the development highlights the blockchain’s competitive advantage and durability in a dense market. While competitors have found it difficult to keep up, Solana’s effectiveness and scalability keep drawing in developers and funding, putting it at the vanguard of blockchain ecosystem expansion and profitability.

According to the data, Solana has cemented its position as a top-performing blockchain in the third quarter of this year in terms of overall revenue generated in the quarter. With over $222 million in revenue recorded in Q3, the blockchain has surpassed all major crypto networks in the sector.

SOL network revenue explodes | Source: Chart from Solana on X

It is worth noting that after dominating Q3 of 2025, Solana has now led all major crypto networks for 4 consecutive quarters as number 1. SOL’s persistent dominance in revenue for the past four quarters is obviously sending a strong message about SOL’s place in the future of decentralized finance and scalable blockchain infrastructure.

Over the last year, the platform highlighted that users on the SOL blockchain have paid the network more than $2.1 billion for blockspace. Interestingly, data shows that over 46% of the entire fees were paid in cryptocurrency.

SOL Blockchain Is Becoming The Hub For Stablecoins

The Solana blockchain’s adoption and interest are evidenced by the large number of stablecoin flows on the chain. In another X post from the official Solana page, stablecoin adoption on SOL is surging at an unprecedented pace when compared to other chains.

In terms of stablecoin inflows, the SOL blockchain is at the top, outpacing all layer 1 and layer 2 chains over a period of 24 hours. This development implies that SOL is becoming the go-to settlement layer for stablecoin transfers due to its lightning-fast transaction speeds and incredibly cheap costs, which encourage record inflows and on-chain activity.

With this dramatic increase in stablecoin inflows, SOL’s role in global crypto payments and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is clearly growing. In addition, it solidifies the network’s standing as the leading hub for dollar-pegged assets in the dynamic blockchain market.

SOL trading at $231 on the 1D chart | Source: SOLUSDT on Tradingview.com

Featured image from Adobe Stock, chart from Tradingview.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

Source link

October 3, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Bug Bounties Hit Limits as AI Puts Crypto Hackers on Equal Footing

by admin October 1, 2025

In brief

Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi, told Decrypt at Token2049 in Singapore that AI tools once limited to security firms are now accessible to groups like Lazarus, enabling massive attacks.
Bug bounties have paid out over $100 million but have “hit the limits” as there aren’t “enough eyeballs” to provide necessary coverage, he said
The $1.4 billion Bybit hack bypassed smart contract security by compromising infrastructure, exposing gaps where defenders are “not doing so hot,” Amador said.

AI has handed crypto attackers the same tools defenders use, and the results are costing the industry billions, experts say.

Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi, told Decrypt during the start of Token2049 week in Singapore that AI has turned vulnerability discovery into near-instant exploitation, and that the advanced auditing tools his firm built are no longer exclusive to the good guys.

“If we have that, can the North Korean Lazarus group build similar tooling? Can Russian Ukrainian hacker groups build similar such tooling?” Amador asked. “The answer is that they can.”

Immunefi’s AI auditing agent outperforms the vast majority of traditional auditing firms, but that same capability is within reach of well-funded hacking operations, he said.

“Audits are great, but it’s nowhere near enough to keep up with the rate of innovation and the rate of the compounding improvement of the attackers,” he said.

With over 3% of total value locked stolen across the ecosystem in 2024, Amador said that while security is no longer an afterthought, projects “struggle to know how to invest and how to allocate resources there effectively.”

The industry has moved from “a prioritization problem, which is a wonderful thing, into it being a knowledge and educational problem,” he added.

AI has also made sophisticated social engineering attacks dirt cheap, according to Amador.

“How much do you think that phone call costs?” he said, referring to AI-generated phishing calls that can impersonate colleagues with disturbing accuracy. “You can execute that for pennies with a well-thought-out system of prompts, and you can execute those en mass. That is the scary part of AI.”

The Immunefi CEO said groups such as Lazarus likely employ “at least a few hundred guys, if not probably low thousands working around the clock” on crypto exploits as a major revenue source for North Korea’s economy.

“The competitive pressures stemming from North Korea’s annual revenue quotas” drive operatives to protect individual assets and “outperform colleagues” rather than coordinate security improvements, a recent SentinelLABS intelligence report found.

“The game with AI-driven attacks is that it speeds up the rate at which something can go from discovery to exploit,” Amador told Decrypt. “To defend against that, the only solution is even faster countermeasures.”

Immunefi’s response has been to embed AI directly into developers’ GitHub repositories and CI/CD pipelines, catching vulnerabilities before code reaches production, he noted, while predicting this approach will trigger a “precipitous drop” in DeFi hacks within one to two years, potentially reducing incidents by another order of magnitude.

Dmytro Matviiv, CEO of Web3 bug bounty platform HackenProof, told Decrypt that “manual audits will always have a place, but their role will shift.”

“AI tools are increasingly effective at catching ‘low-hanging fruit’ vulnerabilities, which reduces the need for large-scale manual reviews of common mistakes,” he said. “What remains are the subtle, context-dependent issues that require deep human expertise.”

To defend against AI-powered attacks, Immunefi has implemented a whitelist-only policy for all company resources and infrastructure, which Amador said has “arrested thousands of these attempted spear phishing techniques very effectively.”

But this level of vigilance isn’t practical for most organizations, he said, noting “we can do that at Immuneify because we are a company that lives and breathes security and vigilance. Normal people can’t do that. They have lives to live.”

Bug bounties hit a wall

Immunefi has facilitated over $100 million in payouts to white-hat hackers, with steady monthly distributions ranging from $1 million to $5 million. However, Amador told Decrypt that the platform has “hit the limits” as there aren’t “enough eyeballs” to provide the necessary coverage across the industry.

The constraint isn’t just about researcher availability, as bug bounties face an intrinsic zero-sum game problem that creates perverse incentives for both sides, according to Amador.

Researchers must reveal vulnerabilities to prove they exist, but they lose all leverage once disclosed. Immunefi mitigates this by negotiating comprehensive contracts that specify everything before disclosure occurs, Amador said.

Meanwhile, Matviiv told Decrypt that he doesn’t think “we’re anywhere close to exhausting the global pool of security talent,” noting that new researchers join platforms annually and progress quickly from “simple findings to highly complex vulnerabilities.”

“The challenge is making the space attractive enough in terms of incentives and community for those new faces to stick around.”

Bug bounties have likely reached their “zenith in efficiency” outside of net-new innovations that don’t even exist in traditional bug bounty programs, Amador added.

The company is exploring hybrid AI solutions to give individual researchers greater leverage to audit more protocols at scale, but these remain in R&D.

Bug bounties remain essential as “a diverse, external community will always be best positioned to discover edge cases that automated systems or in-house teams miss,” Matviiv noted, but they’ll increasingly work alongside AI-powered scanning, monitoring, and audits in “hybrid models.”

The biggest hacks aren’t coming from code

While smart contract audits and bug bounties have matured considerably, the most devastating exploits are increasingly bypassing code entirely.

The $1.4 billion Bybit hack earlier this year highlighted this shift, Amador said, with attackers compromising Safe’s front-end infrastructure to replace legitimate multi-sig transactions rather than exploiting any smart contract vulnerability.

“That wasn’t something that would have been caught with an audit or bug bounty,” he said. “That was a compromised internal infrastructure system.”

Despite security improvements in traditional areas like audits, CI/CD pipelines, and bug bounties, Amador noted that the industry is “not doing so hot” on multi-sig security, spear phishing, anti-scam measures, and community protection.

Immunefi has launched a multi-sig security product that assigns elite white-hat hackers to manually review every significant transaction before execution, which it said would have caught the Bybit attack. But he acknowledged it’s a reactive measure rather than a preventative one.

This uneven progress explains why 2024 became the worst year for hacks despite improvements in code security, as hack patterns follow a predictable mathematical distribution, making single large incidents inevitable rather than anomalous, Amador said.

“There’s always going to be one big outlier,” he said. “And it’s not an outlier, it’s the pattern. There’s always one big hack per year.”

Smart contract security has matured considerably, Matviiv said, but “the next frontier is definitely around the broader attack surface: multi-sig wallet configurations, key management, phishing, governance attacks, and ecosystem-level exploits.”

Effective security requires catching vulnerabilities as early as possible in the development process, Amador told Decrypt.

“Bug bounty is the second most expensive, the most expensive being the hack,” he said, describing a hierarchy of costs that increases dramatically at each stage.

“We’re catching bugs before they hit production, before they even hit an audit,” Amador added. “It would never even be included in an audit. They wouldn’t waste their time with it.”

While hack severity remains high, Amador said that “the incidence rate is going down, and the level of severity of most of the bugs is going down, and we’re catching more and more of these things in the earlier stages of the cycle.”

When asked what single security measure every project at Token2049 should adopt, Amador called for a “Unified Security Platform,” addressing multiple attack vectors.

That’s essential, as fragmented security essentially forces projects to “do the research yourself” on products, limitations, and workflows, he said.

“We are not yet to the point where we can handle trillions and trillions of assets. We’re just not quite there at prime time.”

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

October 1, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme Performance Puts Pressure Back on Intel and Apple

by admin September 29, 2025

It’s important to note that this was all tested on the X2 Elite Extreme configuration, which comes with six additional CPU cores over the standard X2 Elite. There were no X2 Elite systems to test, so we don’t know what those multi-core scores will be. I’ve been told that GPU performance will also scale up on the X2 Elite, but we don’t yet know how much faster the X2 Elite Extreme is over its sibling.

The other caveats? The reference unit on which all of this was benchmarked is a bigger laptop than many current Snapdragon X Elite options—a 16-inch laptop with a 0.67-inch thick chassis. That’s not overly large, but performance in smaller laptops with less thermal headroom may perform differently. Qualcomm did have a few other reference designs on display, such as a 2-in-1 detachable, mini PC, and all-in-one desktop. These weren’t available for testing, but were a preview of what to expect next year when these chips launch in actual devices.

Finally, benchmarks are benchmarks. Take all of this with a grain of salt. How these chips will affect real-world performance in all the apps you use every day will be different. We’ll have to wait until these processors land in laptops to really stress test them, and we’ll have a better idea of how they perform against the competition.

X2 Elite Extreme and X2 Elite Confusion

Between the X2 Elite Extreme and the X2 Elite, there are technically three specific SKUs. The exact chip from the benchmarking session, the X2E-96-100, represents the top-tier performance in the lineup, with 18 cores and a dual-core 5-GHz boost. This is the chip that will be sold as the X2 Elite Extreme.

Confusingly, there are two Snapdragon X2 Elite chips, one that also has 18 cores and one with 12 cores. The difference between the two 18-core models is memory bandwidth. Although all three chips have a new neural processing unit capable of 80 TOPS, the X2 Elite chips are limited to 8-channel memory, whereas the X2 Elite Extreme has integrated 12-channel memory with a bandwidth of up to 228 GB per second.

That might sound like a subtle difference, and it will be for most people, but AI workloads are extremely memory-dependent—that lower bandwidth will be a bottleneck for anyone tapping out the NPU. With the X2 Elite Extreme configuration, the focus seems to be on speeding up AI workloads, rather than more conventional faster CPU or GPU performance.

Qualcomm seems to want to push the focus of AI in its top-tier configuration, but so far, the real jump in performance seems like it would be between the 12-core and 18-core versions of the X2 Elite. But we’ll have to wait until we can review these systems in new hardware.

Adding another top-tier chip with its own branding is an interesting move for Qualcomm, especially since the company seems to have the most success with its mid-tier chips that showed up in laptops around $1,000. But it’s a strategic move, especially if the company wants to achieve its goal of taking 50 percent of the Windows PC market share in 5 years.

Source link

September 29, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Thrustmaster T248R wheel review: an updated model that puts pressure on the mighty Logitech G923

by admin September 20, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Thrustmaster T248R: One-minute review

It’s not a new racing wheel you’re looking at here, but instead a revamped and thoughtfully tweaked 2025 edition of the existing Thrustmaster T248. The youthful maverick that is the T248R features many small but noticeable improvements, including a visual facelift, upgraded gear shift paddles, and a sharper digital display that offers genuinely useful readouts.

As for the tech powering your driving sensation, that’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s a downside that the T.HD wheelbase is built on a hybrid of gear and belt-driven feedback, which can’t compete with direct drive for smooth, fast, precise feedback.

And with the price of direct drive bundles tumbling down lately into price points not that much more than the price of this bundle, that’s definitely a major consideration for anyone hovering over the ‘add to cart’ button.

(Image credit: Future)

On the other hand, nobody does belt-driven feedback quite like Thrustmaster, so the driving sensation you actually get out of this wheel in your hands isn’t anything as old-fashioned as you might imagine.

It’s plenty powerful for the entry-level sim racer it’s designed for, outputting a peak 3.1Nm of torque, and there’s some subtlety to the feedback too, which doesn’t produce a detrimental amount of cogging (that grindy, stuttering feeling associated with older belt-driven feedback).

Down at your feet, the pedal base is everything you could ask for at this price. It stays where you put it, even on a carpeted floor; the three pedals are well-spaced apart from each other, and the brake has a satisfying amount of stamping force thanks to its stiff load cell.

It’s a wheel to be recommended, ultimately, but it’s a qualified recommendation. If the cheapest direct drive wheels like the Nacon Revosim or the Thrustmaster T598 are out of budget, or you simply don’t race enough to justify the extra outlay for the improved sensation, this bundle makes a lot of sense.

That’s even factoring in the great Logitech G923, a true titan of non-direct drive wheels at the sub-$300 mark. Logi’s wheel offers slightly better build quality, and its TrueForce feedback offers impressive detail, but those are marginal gains over this dependable and well-priced T248R.

(Image credit: Future)

Thrustmaster T248R: Price and availability

List price: $349.99 / £249.99 (around AU$512)
Priced cheaper than outbound T248 and Logitech’s G923
It may be old tech, but it still offers great bang for buck

Price is a vital bit of context here. It’s true that direct drive (DD) is becoming much more affordable, with bundles like Nacon’s Revosim and the fantastic T598 from Thrustmaster’s own stable bringing high-quality DD sensation to the masses at a price point below $500. But this T248R’s pricing is so far below that $500 threshold that a belt and gear-driven bundle is still a worthwhile consideration.

That does mean the looks and finish quality do feature some obvious compromises compared to the G923. But with a crystal-clear digital display, nice tactile buttons, quiet shifters, and a high-quality set of pedals, there’s real value here. The build quality and driving experience are more than enough for casual racers and even more committed enthusiasts on a budget.

Thrustmaster T248R: Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Weight

12.6lb / 5.7kg

Peak torque

3.1Nm

Features

Digital display, load cell brake pedal, magnetic shifters, cushioned pleather wheel finish

Connection type

USB-A

Compatibility

PC, PS4, PS5

Software

My Thrustmaster

Thrustmaster T248R: Design and features

Well built, if a little plasticky
Pleather wheel feels great
Useful display

Thrustmaster has been making the T248 in its various iterations for long enough to know that its audience isn’t likely to be attaching it to a sim rig, so it’s sensibly built both the wheel and pedals to be used comfortably at a desktop. The pedal base is heavy and grippy, which is absolutely crucial for an enjoyable drive.

The last thing you want when you’re stamping on a load cell brake at 180mph in Assetto Corsa Competizione is to feel the whole base shift position or rotate, and happily, there’s next to none of that with this bundle, despite a relatively stiff load cell on the brake. The aluminium contact points on the pedals are a nice touch at this price, too.

Working our way up, the wheelbase and wheel itself show a few more concessions to the affordable price point. Primarily, all the plastic. Although it’s a definite upgrade versus the outgoing T248 (which will still be on sale in Xbox config, as this new T248R supports PC, PS4, and PS5 only, so is targeting the best PS5 racing wheel market), there is still a lot of quite light, flimsy plastic used on the face, inner wheel, and hub.

Thrustmaster’s done its best to disguise some of this with a carbon fiber-style weave effect, but realistically, it’s fooling no one. Personally, for this price, I can live with it, but it’s worth noting that the slightly pricier G923 does look and feel more substantial and somehow, well, more pro.

Buttons are laid out sensibly around the centre, and at the top there’s a digital display with a sharper resolution now, which can give you some really useful readouts and telemetry – a definite perk for the price.

The biggest weakness in the T248’s overall design comes in the desktop clamp. There’s no major issue here – it does its job in keeping the wheel fixed in position on your desk, but now with the same rigidity or assuredness as the G923, whose two tightening screws at either side of the wheelbase lock it tightly in position. Here, there’s just one central screw, and while it does keep out of the way of your legs, it’s not as secure a contact point as Logitech’s.

(Image credit: Future)

Thrustmaster T248R: Performance

Plenty of power
A pleasing sensation considering the older tech
Buttons, shifters, and pedals all feel great while driving
How does it feel to drive a lap with this updated model?
Well, firstly, it’s pretty straightforward to get onto the track in the first place, since most games recognise this as either the older T248 or the TGT wheel. That means you’ve got default assignments for inputs across the wheel, and pretty good axis and force feedback values from the off. Every title I tried with this new model was recognised enough that all my mappings were done for me, and I didn’t need to calibrate the wheel axis by axis.
On the track, Thrustmaster’s unique hybrid of belt and gear-driven force feedback shows its merits. It does feel very different to direct drive – it’s nowhere near as smooth to rotate the wheel, for starters. But it’s also not coggy or rough in the way that older traditional belt-driven models (remember the MOMO Force?) used to be.
Instead, you’ve got a happy medium between smooth wheel actuation and rumbly feedback that feels about right for the price point. Does it offer the same variety of feedback types as Logitech’s TrueForce-enabled G29? It does not.
The Logi wheel conveys tarmac rumble a little better and gives a more convincing sense of weight to the vehicle you’re driving, but that doesn’t really have a meaningful effect on lap times.
(Image credit: Future)
I noticed how well built the input buttons feel as I was driving, too. It’s common for the face buttons – translated from a traditional console controller and arranged around the wheel – to feel loose and flimsy on a lower-end wheel, but here they feel higher quality. You’re always sure that a button input was registered properly.
It’s a small tweak, but the magnetic paddle shifters have been lavished with some redesign attention to produce a smoother, quieter shift. I’d say more than that, it just feels nicer than it did to change gears on the older T248.
Speaking of, previously the digital display was monochrome and had a limited viewing angle, but it’s much sharper now and thus much more useful. You don’t have a dynamic rev counter, but you do have an RPM light that lets you know when it’s time to upshift. While on the main display, you might have your current lap deltas.
I’m a particular fan of the pedals, and they contribute a lot to the quality of the driving experience in this bundle. It’s great to have a load cell brake that can be adjusted for stiffness by swapping elastomers and springs in, and equally great to feel so planted when you exert a pedal input.
(Image credit: Future)

Should I buy the Thrustmaster T248R?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

If the Thrustmaster T248R doesn’t hit your apex, try these similarly priced rivals.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyRow 0 – Cell 0

Thrustmaster T248R

Logitech G923

Hori Apex

Price

$349.99 / £249.99 (around AU$512)

$299.99 / £299.99

$119.99 / £99.99

Weight

12.6lb / 5.7kg

4.96lbs / 2.3kg

3.09lbs / 1.4kg

Peak torque

3.1Nm

2.2Nm

N/A

Features

Digital display, load cell brake pedal, magnetic shifters, cushioned pleather wheel finish

TrueForce feedback, dial controls, rev display

Textured wheel grip, simple setup

Connection type

USB-A

Compatibility

PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, or Xbox Series X/S, PC

PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

(Image credit: Future)

How I tested the Thrustmaster T248R

Tested in F1 24, F1 25, Rennsport, ACC, and AC Evo
Two weeks with a desktop
A variety of FF strength settings tried

I loaded up my usual racing titles to test this updated T248R wheel, since I’m already familiar with how they feel with a variety of both belt-driven and direct drive wheels.

Happily, every title recognised the wheel to some degree and offered sensible default mappings and values.

There’s a range of different force feedback strength levels available here via Thrustmaster’s ‘BOOST’ tech, although in practice, that’s no different from adjusting the strength of any other wheel via the in-game settings or manufacturer app. Nevertheless, I adjusted to different strengths during testing.

Finally, and importantly, all testing was conducted at a desktop setup, since this bundle can’t easily be mounted onto a sim rig like my Playseat.

$0 Shiba Inu Twist Puts Bears in Vanish Mode, What’s Coming For SHIB?

by admin September 13, 2025

Amid the broad crypto market resurgence, which started about two days ago, Shiba Inu has also flipped to the positive side of the market.

However, the leading memecoin has witnessed an unusual silence in its derivatives market over the last hour, according to data showcased by Coinglass.

The data shows that Shiba Inu experienced a mild, one-sided liquidation on September 12, where it recorded a total liquidation of just $20.87 in one hour. Nonetheless, Shiba Inu delivered a surprising twist in this hourly liquidation trend, as its bears were left with no record to account for.

Specifically, SHIB recorded $0 in short liquidations during the period. This means that the overall liquidation of $20.87 recorded during the period was catered for by only long traders.

Is SHIB momentum still intact?

While situations like this have often had the crypto community speculate bullish outlooks for the concerned cryptocurrency, the trend has only sparked curiosities among market watchers, as they keep a close eye on SHIB’s price action in relation to the unusual derivatives activity.

Notably, the rare setup in Shiba Inu liquidation over the last hour suggests that traders betting against the meme token’s potential upsurge are currently out of play.

Scenarios leading to this situation could be traced to either little-to-no interest in the asset’s derivatives market (which means no short positions were opened at all), or the token’s price action during the period had moved in favour of short positions, causing them to suffer no liquidation during the period.

While the trend signals reduced downward pressure on Shiba Inu, the extremely low long liquidation also highlights that bullish positions remain intact, with only a tiny fraction of bullish traders being wiped out of the market.

Kospi’s Record High Puts BTC Bulls on Notice: Analyst

by admin September 11, 2025

South Korea’s benchmark equity index, the Kospi, has reached a record high of 4,340 points, driven by prospects of shareholder-friendly policies and positive global market sentiment.

The new high has prompted one analyst to urge caution among bitcoin BTC$108,783.53 bulls, suggesting that the surging Kospi could mark the end of the BTC bull run, consistent with the historical relation between the two assets.

“Every time the Kospi has set a new record high, Bitcoin was trading close to its all-time high of the cycle. The last time this happened was back in 2021,” crypto analytics platform Alphractal said on X.

BTC and Kospi peaked concurrently in late 2017 and 2021. Kospi and BTC price charts. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

The chart indicates that the Kospi reached its peak in the second half of 2021. BTC also peaked closer to $70,000 in November that year, eventually falling into a year-long bear market.

A similar pattern emerged in late 2017, with concurrent peaks in the two assets. Also note the concurrent interim tops around June and July 2011.

Incremental signal

The pattern, though limited to support definitive conclusions, warrants attention, as it underscores the shared sensitivity of Kospi and BTC to global risk-on/risk-off flows and shifts in investor risk appetite and macroeconomic conditions.

When risk sentiment is positive, capital flows into emerging market equities, such as the Kospi, which is heavily export-oriented and influenced by global trade dynamics, as well as into riskier assets like bitcoin.

Conversely, during periods of heightened uncertainty or risk aversion, both tend to decline together. This close relationship highlights how Bitcoin, despite its unique characteristics as a digital asset, is becoming increasingly intertwined with broader financial markets and subject to similar economic forces.

“Now that the Kospi has reached a new all-time high, it serves as yet another incremental signal that the bitcoin cycle may be nearing its conclusion. Smart money flows continuously between major economies, stores of value, risk assets, and—sometimes—extremely speculative instruments, like memecoins, often without fundamentals,” Joao Wedson, founder and CEO of Alphractal, said.

Read more: Dogecoin Leads Gain, Bitcoin Pops to $114K as M2 Setup Opens BTC Catchup Trade

Source link

September 11, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Ant Digital puts $8.4B of Chinese green energy assets on its blockchain

by admin September 9, 2025

Ant Digital, the tech arm of Jack Ma’s Ant Group, is tokenizing $8.4 billion worth of energy assets to create a globally accessible green energy market.

Summary

A division of Jack Ma’s Ant Group is quietly tokenizing clean energy assets in China
The company plans to issue RWAs based on energy assets and open them up for investment
Plans to list these tokens globally are pending regulatory approval

China’s biggest multinational firm is quietly moving to put energy infrastructure valued at over 60 billion yuan, or $8.4 billion, on the blockchain. According to a September 9 report by Bloomberg, Ant Digital, the tech arm of Jack Ma’s Ant Group, has been collecting data from infrastructure such as wind turbines and solar panels and uploading the data to its AntChain network.

The company plans to issue real-world asset tokens based on this infrastructure, which would enable it to secure financing for clean energy development. According to Bloomberg, some of these tokenization efforts have already begun.

Ant Digital is also considering listing these tokens on decentralized exchanges. Notably, this could enable investors from all over the world to gain exposure to China’s push toward clean energy. Still, the company did not wish to comment on the plan, as the move largely depends on approval from Chinese regulators.

China’s green energy push

Despite accounting for the largest share of fossil fuel emissions in the last 20 years compared to any other country, China is investing heavily in renewable energy. According to a report from Renewable Capacity Statistics, renewable energy currently accounts for over 50% of Chinese energy generation capacity.

China sees renewable energy as its ticket to energy independence due to a lack of domestic oil reserves. Chinese authorities also cited their commitment to renewable energy goals as the main reason for their 2021 ban on crypto mining.

Source link

September 9, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

BTC Traders Snag Cheap OTM Puts Bracing for NFP Shock

by admin September 4, 2025

As the August U.S. nonfarm payrolls report (NFP) nears, bitcoin BTC$109,544.20 traders on the CME are snapping up inexpensive bearish bets by purchasing far out-of-the-money puts, hedging against the possibility of an unexpectedly strong jobs print that could trigger a sell-off in risk assets.

The NFP, due Friday, is expected to show that the economy added 110,000 jobs, up from 73,000 in July, according to consensus estimates from FactSet. The jobless rate is expected to have held steady at 4.2%. Meanwhile, hourly earnings are projected to rise 0.3%, the same as in July.

The labor market outlook has already darkened, with JOLTS data revealing that job openings declined more than expected to 7.2 million in July, while a low quit rate points to moderating wage pressures. Early Thursday, ADP’s private sector employment report revealed that employers added just 54,000 jobs in August, a steep decline from the 104,000 positions recorded in July.

These figures strengthen the case for Fed rate cuts, a bullish development for asset prices. Yet, traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) are considering the possibility of an upbeat NFP report, which could dent Fed rate cut bets and send BTC lower.

“We’ve seen robust appetite for leveraged downside exposure through 5-delta, OTM puts, with consistent demand across the curve. This positioning signals investors are bracing for the possibility of an upside surprise in August’s NFP report that could re-anchor the Fed’s focus on inflation and reduce the odds of rate cuts this year,” Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, told CoinDesk.

Put options give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price by a specified future date. Traders buy puts to hedge against or to profit from a drop in the asset’s price.

The 5-delta put options are deep out-of-the-money puts with strike prices well below the current market price, making them relatively inexpensive compared to options closer to the spot price. Traders often buy these cheap “lottery ticket” puts as speculative bets on sharp downward moves or as low-cost hedges against extreme bearish scenarios.

Downside fear

Selby observed that, unlike previous pre-NFP periods when put buying was mainly focused on long-term expiries, this time the activity is spread across both short-term and long-term expiries.

“The breadth of put buying reflects a market recalibrating around asymmetric risks, as much of this activity is centred around far OTM puts, indicating traders still see a materially strong jobs print as an outside chance. That lines up with our view that even an in-line or slightly stronger-than-expected payrolls number would not be sufficient to tilt the Fed’s balance of risks back toward its price stability mandate,” Selby told CoinDesk.

Options listed on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by volume and open interest, also exhibit downside fears, with short and near-dated puts trading at a notable premium to calls, according to risk reversals tracked by Amberdata.

BTC’s daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

As of writing, BTC changed hands at $109,950, down 2% on a 24-hour basis, according to CoinDesk data. The recovery from weekend lows ran out of steam above $112,000 on Wednesday, reinforcing the Aug. 3 low as key resistance.

Source link

September 4, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

US Commerce Dept. Puts GDP Data on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana Blockchains

by admin August 31, 2025

The Department of Commerce announced Thursday it has begun uploading its GDP data onto nine blockchain networks, and will also enter partnerships with decentralized oracle networks Chainlink and Pyth to integrate U.S. macroeconomic data within the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem and the broader crypto economy.

The department’s GDP data release for Q2 2025 has already been uploaded to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and six other blockchains: Tron, Avalanche, Stellar, and Ethereum layer-2 networks Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. They were aided in that effort by crypto exchanges Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken, the department announced.

Chainlink confirmed to Decrypt that the company was not involved in the effort to upload the GDP data directly onto those networks.

Going forward, the partnerships with Chainlink and Pyth will enable the dissemination of verified U.S. government data—including GDP statistics, the inflation-tracking Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, and Real Final Sales to Private Domestic Purchasers, a key measure of economic demand—across the DeFi ecosystem.

The initiative marks the first time that a federal government agency has ever published economic data on-chain. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—whose Wall Street firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, is deeply involved in the crypto economy—teased the move at a White House cabinet meeting earlier this week.

What is the purpose of such an integration? Answers vary. Pyth, in announcing the partnership with the U.S. government, hailed it as a step towards “increas[ing] confidence in public information systems” through data transparency.

Chainlink more specifically celebrated the ways in which U.S. government data will now be able to be used to fuel and support DeFi activity. The company said Thursday the verified data will soon support related prediction markets, encourage the development of new types of crypto assets, and increase the adaptability of tokenized assets, among other use cases.

The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond when asked by Decrypt what tangible benefits its new on-chain initiative will offer the federal government, versus other means of data publication.

“It’s only fitting that the Commerce Department and President Donald Trump, the ‘crypto-president,’ publicly release economic statistical data on the blockchain,” Commerce Secretary Lutnick said today in a statement. “We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world.”

The companies involved in today’s announcement have already benefited mightily from it. Pyth’s native token, PYTH, exploded by some 69% in value within minutes of the news breaking—a gain worth nearly $1 billion, in terms of the token’s fully diluted valuation.

Chainlink (LINK) popped a more modest 7.6% to $25.82, before settling back down to $24.76 at writing. The price gain was still, given LINK’s value, worth over $1.8 billion. The token notably, however, has surged over 40% in the last month—a pump worth over $7 billion.

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s crypto embrace this year, and attended both a White House crypto summit in March as well as President Donald Trump’s signing of the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act there last month.

“I just want to express my deep gratitude,” Nazarov told Trump at the crypto summit, “for the seriousness with which you are approaching our industry.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional details after publication.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

August 31, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Holding this amount puts you in that category

by admin August 30, 2025

Scott Melker, host of “The Wolf of All Streets” podcast, revived his “Bitcoin rich list” in his Aug. 29 newsletter—a table showing how BTC is spread across wallets of different sizes.

Melker said he last compiled the list in 2023, and his latest version offers a snapshot of how Bitcoin ownership has changed over the past two years.

Summary

Addresses holding at least 1 BTC account for the top 98% of holders, Melker says.
The most significant two-year change is that the number of addresses holding up to 0.0001 BTC has doubled.
The price of becoming a wholecoiner is growing year after year; hardcore bitcoiners say it’s never too late to invest in BTC.

You don’t have to be a ‘wholecoiner’

Melker claims that owning 0.1 BTC makes a person one of the top 8% holders.

Also, you don’t have to be a “wholecoiner” — a person holding at least 1 BTC — to become a top-tier Bitcoin owner. Why? When BTC is traded at around $110,000 (its current price is $108,500) even owning 0.1 BTC makes you richer in Bitcoin than 92% of all other Bitcoin holders.

And holding one Bitcoin or more puts you above 98% of all holders.

This data doesn’t exclude holdings stored on the wallets of the crypto exchanges. Of 20 addresses holding the largest amounts of BTC (between 36,000 and nearly 250,000 bitcoins), only eight belong to unidentified entities.

Generally, the data shift between 2023 and 2025 is not drastic. Melker notes that in two years, the overall number of Bitcoin addresses grew by 10 million, reaching over 56 million.

The most notable change is an inflow of addresses holding between 0.00001 and 0.0001 BTC. It grew from 3.5 million to 6.9 million. “That makes sense, as more people start small,” Melker says, adding:

“That stability is actually healthy. It shows Bitcoin ownership distribution is maturing.”

From the additional data attached to Melker’s write-up, we can learn that the amount of Bitcoin dust reached an all-time high in 2025 at 1.58 thousand BTC. Bitcoin dust refers to leftovers, too small to be sent due to an insufficient amount to pay transaction fees.

Meanwhile, the dormant wallet chart indicates:

12.5 million of Bitcoin (over half of the total supply) are still for a year.
Over 10 million bitcoins have remained inactive for more than two years.
Almost 8 million bitcoins have not moved in three years.

The curve showing the amount of BTC on dormant addresses got sharper following the 2024 presidential election after President Donald Trump vowed that America will never sell its bitcoins.

Becoming a wholecoiner in 2025

If holding 0.1 BTC makes someone “Bitcoin rich,” then owning a full bitcoin—the coveted “wholecoiner” status—certainly does too. But the price of becoming a wholecoiner has risen dramatically over time. Buying 1 BTC in 2013 was a very different proposition than buying it in 2025.

At nearly every stage in Bitcoin’s history, skeptics have insisted it was “too late” to buy, arguing that the price had already climbed too high to rise further. Countless stories online reflect this doubt, with many early adopters regretting that they sold too soon. Even back when Bitcoin traded under $100, people hesitated to buy back in because it already felt “expensive.”

One of the most famous examples comes from early adopter Greg Schoen. In 2011, he tweeted that he had bought 1,700 BTC at $0.06 each, only to sell at $0.30. He lamented missing the chance to sell at $8, which would have netted him $13,600 instead of just $510. That tweet became so iconic that Schoen auctioned it as an NFT in 2022. What he couldn’t have known is that by 2025, his 1,700 BTC would be worth more than $180 million.

Today, only a little over 2,000 Bitcoin addresses hold more than 1,000 BTC. Whether Schoen is still among them remains unclear, but his story illustrates a timeless theme in Bitcoin: almost every era feels like it’s “too late”—until the next one arrives.

I wish I had kept my 1,700 BTC @ $0.06 instead of selling them at $0.30, now that they’re $8.00! #bitcoin

— gregschoen.eth (@GregSchoen) May 16, 2011

Top-tier Bitcoin bar

The number of addresses that hold above one Bitcoin (less than 2%) is slightly below one million. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, 18.1% of adults worldwide hold assets exceeding $100,000.

It signifies that a Bitcoin-rich person is far from being the biggest fiat-rich person. The top-tier bar for bitcoiners is set lower than for the fiat money holders. It reflects how early it is to view Bitcoin as a widely adopted asset used to hold vast fortunes.

Despite all the hype, government adoption, and inflows of institutional money, Bitcoin remains a special interest of a growing, but not yet ubiquitous, group of people.

Source link

August 30, 2025 0 comments