WMA: Bitcoin Drops to $88,000 as FUD Drives Market Down

Researchers at East Texas A&M University have developed what they describe as the first implemented and experimentally evaluated post-quantum design for Bitcoin's Lightning Network, protecting off-chain communication and payment functions without requiring changes to Bitcoin consensus. The PQLN research, published by Ahmet Kurt, Abdul-Salem Beibitkhan, Yacoub Hanna and Abdullah Aydeger, covers Lightning gossip, peer transport, invoices, payment onions and BOLT 12 offers. The team implemented the system in rust-lightning and tested it with real Lightning nodes. PQLN uses ML-DSA digital...

Bitcoin's rally above $87,000 has triggered the strongest wave of bullish social sentiment since 2024, while almost $1 billion of fresh U.S. spot ETF inflows and a large short squeeze added fuel to the breakout. BTC surged through levels that had capped the market for months on September 21 before trading around $85,200 early Tuesday. Bitcoin is now up roughly 10% over seven days, with 24-hour trading volume above $60 billion. The breakout has rapidly changed crowd positioning. Social discussions...

Strategy has returned to Bitcoin buying with a 950 BTC purchase as the cryptocurrency briefly climbed above $85,000, extending a broader market rebound fueled by ETF demand, short covering and improving risk appetite. The company acquired the Bitcoin between September 14 and September 20 for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670 per coin. The purchase lifted Strategy's holdings to 846,000 BTC, acquired for approximately $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416. The purchase marks Strategy's first weekly...

Bitcoin payments app Blink Wallet restored services on September 19 after an attacker gained unauthorized access to a limited number of custodial accounts and withdrew funds, prompting the company to temporarily shut down its platform. Blink initially paused services while investigating the incident, saying the large majority of funds remained secure. Its non-custodial wallets were unaffected. The interruption came days after separate security warnings involving DCENT Wallet and Core Lightning, adding another wallet-related incident to a busy September for Bitcoin...

Ledger has patched a vulnerability in its Ethereum hardware-wallet app that could allow a malicious dApp to replace a transaction during the approval process while the device continued showing users the transaction they originally reviewed. Security firm TestMachine disclosed the signature-substitution flaw on August 21 after reproducing it on Ledger hardware. Ledger had already shipped Ethereum app version 1.22.2 on August 12, with its release history listing security fixes for the update. Malicious dApp Could Change the Transaction Before Signing...

Base creator Jesse Pollak has pushed back against criticism that Coinbase is selling ETH while benefiting from Ethereum, pointing to the exchange’s roughly 150,000 ETH corporate position and years of investment across the network. Pollak argued that Coinbase has held about 150,000 ETH through multiple market cycles, while describing the company as the largest ETH holder outside dedicated digital asset treasury companies by a wide margin. Coinbase’s latest regulatory filing backs up the scale of that position. The company held...

A crypto user lost 1,010 ETH after following an old Tornado Cash bookmark into a phishing frontend that captured the private withdrawal credentials needed to access the deposited funds. The victim deposited the ETH into legitimate Tornado Cash contracts, but the malicious interface obtained the private note generated during the process. The attacker then used those credentials to withdraw the assets within roughly 12 hours without compromising the underlying Tornado Cash smart contracts. Phishing Frontend Targeted Private Withdrawal Notes Tornado...

Ethereum’s network-growth metric has accelerated sharply in August, with new daily ETH addresses climbing from 121,210 on August 8 to 212,560 on August 16. The increase represents roughly 75.4% growth in eight days and adds another signal that activity is returning to the network. New-address creation measures the number of addresses appearing onchain for the first time rather than the number of unique people using Ethereum. A single user or automated system can control multiple addresses, so the metric is...

A crypto trading bot is a chain of dependencies. It reads a position, prices it, decides, places an order, and confirms settlement. Every one of those steps is an API call, and a failure at any single step stops the strategy. The provider choice shapes what a bot can actually do more than the strategy logic does. The common mistake is searching for one API that covers everything. No such API exists in 2026. Market data providers do not route...

Polymarket and Kalshi helped turn prediction markets into a mainstream trading category, but neither platform fits every trader. Access varies by country, market selection can lean heavily toward certain topics, and the tools available for entering, managing, and automating positions differ sharply across platforms. The strongest alternatives are not identical copies. Some emerging prediction markets platforms focus on professional order controls, some concentrate on fast crypto and financial markets, and others use onchain infrastructure or play-money forecasting. Users unfamiliar with...

A funded crypto trading account gives a trader access to more notional capital after they prove they can follow a firm’s risk rules. The usual route starts with a paid crypto prop firm challenge that requires a profit target without breaching daily or overall loss limits. Passing is not only about making money. Drawdown control, minimum trading days and rule compliance determine whether the account survives. The evaluation fee can be lost, and crypto prop firms use different account models,...

Tokenized stock perps allow traders to take long or short exposure to companies, ETFs and equity indexes through crypto-native derivatives markets. Positions can use stablecoin collateral, remain open without an expiry date and continue trading when the main stock exchange is closed. The trader receives price exposure, not ownership of the referenced shares. The interface often looks identical to a crypto perpetual futures market. The risk does not. A stock-linked contract can remain active overnight, through weekends and during holidays...

Binance has invested $100 million in Circle Internet Group while signing a new five-year commercial agreement that expands USDC distribution across the exchange's products and global user base. Circle issued and sold Binance 1,237,011 Class A shares on September 17 at $80.84 per share, putting the private placement at approximately $100 million. Binance is subject to a two-year restriction on transferring the shares, with specified exceptions, while retaining the voting rights attached to the stock. The equity purchase gives Binance...

FomoPeek, an iPhone app marketed for tracking whale wallets across Solana, Ethereum and TRON, contained malicious code capable of escaping iOS security restrictions and extracting cryptocurrency wallet credentials from affected devices. SlowMist issued an asset-theft warning on September 19 after investigating multiple cases of stolen crypto with OKX's security team. The affected users had installed or used FomoPeek versions 1.1 or 1.2 before their assets were taken. The disclosure comes amid several unrelated crypto security incidents this weekend. Blink temporarily...

A North Korea-linked hacking operation infected at least 30,000 computers across more than 100 countries and compromised funds or credentials from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets through fake recruitment campaigns targeting developers and IT professionals. The campaign, tracked as WaterPlum and widely known as Contagious Interview, stole at least 1.7 billion Japanese yen, or $10.71 million, in cryptocurrency between December 2025 and July 2026. The joint September 18 advisory involved Japan's National Police Agency and National Cybersecurity Office, the FBI, the...

Deutsche Bank is preparing to launch a regulated digital asset custody service for institutional and corporate clients in Europe, with its first customers expected to go live this year once the applicable regulatory process is completed. The service will initially support Bitcoin, Ether and selected stablecoins, including USDC, EURC and EURAU. Deutsche Bank also plans to add tokenized financial instruments as the product develops. Clients will be able to hold and transfer digital assets through the bank, with Deutsche Bank...