Bitcoin Starts the Week Flat, But Chainlink Is Flying—Here's Why

In briefBottomline, a top-three SWIFT services provider that processes more than $16 trillion in payments annually, announced a deal with Chainlink to connect its 600-plus bank customers to blockchain settlement.LINK touched $13.64 on September 7, its highest price since January 18, and outpaced every other top-10 cryptocurrency by market cap over the past 24 hours while Bitcoin stayed capped below $80,000.Chainlinks CCIP will move tokenized value across blockchains and its CRE will orchestrate the payment workflow, letting banks keep sending standard messages instead of building new infrastructure.  Bitcoin is back under $80,000 today, down about 1%, after a stellar August rally brought investors gains of over 20% in the last 30 days.  But as trading action on the crypto majors cools, there‘s at least one altcoin climbing up the charts: the native token of the decentralized oracle network Chainlink, up a whopping 6.8% in the last 24 hours. Can it keep crypto’s hot summer going a little longer?  Myriad: Bitcoin next price move? Click to make your prediction.  Bitcoin got rejected from $82,000 twice over the past two weeks and opened this one pinned below $80,000, still under the 50-week moving average near $81,000 it lost back in May.  The coin is also in a

09-07Industry

XRP lending model leaves depositors with 90% of a bad loans loss despite reserves twice its size

The value backing depositors shares in a modeled XRP Ledger loan book falls by 90,000 tokens when one loan defaults, compared with 4,500 when the same 100,000 tokens of bad debt sits in ten smaller loans. Both books start with 1 million tokens of debt, a 200,000-token reserve and identical protection settings.  Related Asset XRP #5 XRP · $1.38 24-hour change: down 2.08% 24H Down 2.08% 7D Up 0.30% 30D Up 32.44%  The 20-fold gap comes from how the documented lending rules release that reserve. Each default gets a separate cover calculation. Loan size therefore changes how much loss reaches depositors, even when the total unpaid debt and the capital available to absorb it stay the same at the outset.  XRPLs lending design pools assets in a vault and extends fixed-term, uncollateralized loans through a broker responsible for underwriting. Depositors hold shares in the vault, whose value falls when the assets backing them suffer losses. The pooled asset can be XRP, a trust-line token or a Multi-Purpose Token (MPT).  CryptoSlates comparison models that immediate write-down using documented rules and matching 3.3.0 release code, announced Aug. 6. The figures are hypothetical. Mainnet activation was unconfirmed in the official amendment registry checked Sept. 6, which listed

09-07Industry

Solanas “million-payments-a-second” AI system can leave sellers unpaid even after they deliver

A customer using a Solana payment channel can stop buying AI services before the channel has finished paying for them. If the operator goes silent in between, the customer needs a way to recover the remaining deposit, while the merchant needs its last bill to reach the blockchain before the recovery window closes.  Related Asset Solana #7 SOL · $103.35 24-hour change: down 2.43% 24H Down 2.43% 7D Up 0.07% 30D Up 35.45%  That division of risk sits behind Solana Foundations Sept. 3 payment-channel announcement, which reported more than one million payments per second through a proxy using 100,000 unique wallets. The system lets agents spend against a prepaid ceiling through signed messages, reducing the need for a separate blockchain transaction for every delivery.  The customer funds the channel, the merchant supplies the service, and the operator runs the payment process. Each finances a different part of the interval between authorization and collection: customer deposits, operator advances of SOL for fees and refundable account rent, and merchant service awaiting on-chain payment.  A warning in the Foundation-linked benchmark template makes that interval consequential: restarting its default in-memory store can forfeit vouchers accepted but not yet settled.  The benchmark template reports about 1.09 million verified vouchers per

09-07Industry

Solana triples transaction capacity with v1 upgrade

Solana is targeting September 9 for Transaction v1, a new format that raises the maximum serialized transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes.  SummarySolana plans to raise maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes Wednesday mainnet.Transaction v1 remains optional, while legacy and v0 formats continue operating under existing size limits.Applications reading blocks must support version one or risk errors when encountering the new format.V1 removes address lookup tables and stores resource limits directly within each transactions configuration metadata.Solanas official roadmap labels mainnet activation pending, making the September 9 schedule potentially changeable still.  The increase gives developers about 3.3 times more transaction space. Solanas official roadmap says the additional capacity can accommodate zero-knowledge proofs, large multisignature operations, batches and some onchain signature schemes.  Large operations previously had to be divided into several transactions when their instructions, signatures and account information exceeded the 1,232-byte ceiling. That process added complexity because one transaction could succeed while another step failed.  Transaction v1 could let developers combine more of those instructions into one atomic operation. Either every instruction succeeds or the entire transaction fails. The model could benefit trading routes, confidential transfers, cross-chain operations and applications processing complex cryptographic proofs.  The upgrade does not raise Solanas limit

09-07Industry

Irish crime gangs are storing crypto seed phrases in rented vaults: report

Organized crime groups in Ireland have been storing cryptocurrency private keys and seed phrases in rented vaults alongside cash and luxury goods as criminals spread their assets across different forms, according to the head of the countrys Criminal Assets Bureau.  The Sunday Independent reported that Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins, who heads the Criminal Assets Bureau, said investigators had encountered the practice during their own cases and had raised the issue with Irelands Anti-Money Laundering Steering Committee.  Gubbins said rented vaults can contain access credentials for cryptocurrency wallets alongside assets traditionally associated with criminal proceeds.  “Could be cryptocurrency keys or cash or watches or could even be passports,” he said. “Again, its from our experience, what we would have seen around those matters.”  Private keys allow users to authorize transactions from crypto wallets, while a seed phrase can be used to restore access to a wallet. Losing either can permanently prevent an owner from accessing funds, while someone who obtains them may be able to take control of the associated cryptocurrency.  Irish crime gangs are spreading assets across crypto and cash  Gubbins said criminal groups have turned to cryptocurrency partly to spread the risk of having their assets seized and because they believe digital assets provide

09-07Industry

Malone Lam set to plead guilty in $240 million Bitcoin theft case

Malone Lam, the alleged ringleader of a group accused of stealing more than $240 million in Bitcoin from a Washington, D.C., investor, has been set for a plea agreement hearing after 10 other defendants admitted guilt in the sprawling crypto theft case.  SummaryMalone Lam is set for a plea agreement hearing over the theft of more than 4,100 Bitcoin worth over $240 million from a Washington investor.Prosecutors said Lam and his associates used social engineering to obtain account access and security codes before moving the stolen crypto through multiple platforms.The group spent millions on luxury cars, private jets, mansions, watches and nightclubs before FBI arrests began in September 2024.Eighteen defendants have been charged in the case, with Lam set to become the 11th to plead guilty and potentially facing at least 14 years in prison.  The Associated Press reported that the 22-year-old Singaporean is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday, nearly two years after prosecutors accused him and his associates of using social engineering to steal more than 4,100 Bitcoin from a longtime crypto investor in August 2024.  Eighteen defendants have been charged in the case, with Lam set to become the 11th to plead guilty. A prosecutor estimated during his first court

09-07Industry

Ethereum may have a simpler way to ease the computing burden of its growing rollup ecosystem

An Ethereum prototype that divides blob-recovery duties among nodes reported an 11–18× reduction in estimated reconstruction computing work across 1,000-node simulations. The results suggest operators could reduce duplicated work through a smaller change than the full RowDAS networking proposal.  Related Asset Ethereum #2 ETH · $2,470.34 24-hour change: down 0.36% 24H Down 0.36% 7D Up 0.03% 30D Up 28.52%  Researcher Csaba Kiralys Sept. 3 report describes the reduced design as a possible first step toward RowDAS. It assigns recovery duties without introducing the new row-networking channels in the full proposal.  Blobs carry data used by layer-2 rollups. PeerDAS, Ethereums system for checking that blob data is available, lets nodes download only part of it. High-custody nodes hold at least 64 of the 128 data columns, enough to rebuild missing blob data; supernodes hold all 128.  Many high-custody nodes can repeat the same reconstruction. The reduced design assigns particular blobs to them first, allowing others to receive the recovered data instead of immediately rebuilding it themselves.  What the Ethereum blob-recovery simulations show  In one configuration with four blobs, 10% supernodes and no columns withheld, the estimated network-wide reconstruction cost fell from 48.6 CPU-seconds under the PeerDAS model to 2.75 CPU-seconds under the reduced design. At a 20%

09-07Industry

Is the Bitcoin Bottom In? 2 Analysts Say Yes From Separate Charts

Two independent analysts have concluded that the Bitcoin (BTC) bottom is in, and neither used the others data. Charles Edwards tracks stablecoin liquidity, while the analyst known as Root tracks cycle structure.  Both calls arrived within days of each other in early September. Neither analyst predicted a bull run, however. Both argued something narrower, that the conditions defining a bear market have stopped being present.  Sponsored  Sponsored  Caprioles Hedge Ratio Hit Its Bullish Threshold  Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, published his signal on Sept. 4. His Market Hedge Ratio measures the USDT/BTC market cap ratio over a rolling 30 days.  The reading fell to -20.42%, touching the -20.78% threshold marked on his chart. A falling ratio indicates capital rotating out of stablecoins and into Bitcoin.  Capriole Market Hedge Ratio weekly chart showing the Bitcoin bottom signal Source: Capriole  His chart marks roughly nine comparable signals since January 2020. Most preceded rallies, though one signal in October 2021 landed close to a cycle top.  “It‘s very hard for bad things to happen to Bitcoin when Capriole’s Market Hedge Ratio is this green. Downside is basically capped in last 5 years until it flips red. Typically this reading means we have week(s) of upside to run.”  Sponsored  Sponsored  Edwards set an explicit invalidation, however.

09-07Industry

Tokens created out of thin air may explain how $320 million in Bitcoin left the Liquid sidechain

Researchers examining the roughly $320 million Liquid Network incident have identified an alleged failure in the softwares transaction-validation cache, offering a more specific explanation for how unbacked tokens could be redeemed for real Bitcoin.  Related Company Blockstream Blockchain technology company  Accounts also raise a deployment question. Mononaut said the exploited bug had entered Elements‘ master development branch the previous week but had never appeared in a tagged release. Liquid’s federation functionaries apparently ran that code, he said, while other nodes rejected the invalid transactions.  That deployment account remains unconfirmed by Blockstream in the available statements. If established, it would put the software rollout at the center of an incident in which valid signing credentials authorized the release of Bitcoin against allegedly bug-created L-BTC.  Liquid is a Bitcoin sidechain whose L-BTC tokens are intended to be backed one-for-one by BTC held by its federation. As CryptoSlate previously reported, SideSwap said a customer submitted 4,000 L-BTC through its peg-out service on Sept. 6, prompting the release of approximately 3,996 BTC.  Liquid said neither SideSwaps peg-out authorization key nor other federation keys had been compromised.  The emerging technical accounts focus on how the tokens reached that withdrawal process.  Calle described a flaw involving range proofs, which let nodes check that

09-07Industry

Zcash hits highest price since 2016 as market cap tops $20B

Zcash (ZEC) climbed to its highest price since 2016, extending a rally that has pushed the privacy-focused cryptocurrencys market capitalization above $20 billion.  ZEC reached $1,249.28 before retreating to about $1,195 on Monday, according to CoinGecko data. The token gained about 45% over the past week and 138% over 30 days.  The rally leaves Zcash below its launch-era record. CoinGecko lists an all-time high of $3,191.93 on Oct. 28, 2016, when only a small supply of tokens was available.  Zcash allows users to choose between public and “shielded” transactions. The latter uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify payments without revealing the sender, recipient or transaction amount.  “For users that prioritize privacy, this could become a ‘must have’ feature,” Grayscales head of research, Zach Pandl, said in an Aug. 31 analysis.  Pandl said that AI could increase demand for financial privacy by making it easier to link public blockchain transactions to users identities.  Zcash has been on a tear since Grayscale converted its existing Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded fund. The product, trading under the ticker ZCSH, began trading on NYSE ARCA on Aug. 25, giving investors exposure to ZEC through brokerage accounts.  The ETF closed Friday at $83.77 a share, with $463.2 million in assets under management, according

09-07Industry
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