A spot Bitcoin ETF and buying Bitcoin direct track the same price but leave you holding different things. Here is how the two compare on what you own, custody, fees, account access and tax, and the risk each one carries.
Riot Platforms earned $4 million in the third quarter, down from $104.5 million a year earlier, as it sold most of its mined bitcoin to help fund a new $28 billion AI data center lease at its Corsicana campus in Texas.
The midterm result hands Democrats control of the committees that write crypto rules. The industry-backed CLARITY Act, already stalled in the Senate, now looks far harder to pass.
The USDC issuer reported $865 million in total revenue and reserve income for the third quarter, up 17%, then disclosed a roughly 5% cut to its workforce. Its main income stream, interest on USDC reserves, fell 8% as rates dropped.
Ethereum's biggest layer 2 networks are rollups, and they come in two kinds. One assumes transactions are honest and checks later. The other proves every batch up front. Here is how optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups differ, and why the gap decides how fast you get your money out.
The payments firm behind Cash App has reached an agreement in principle with the US Justice Department over weak money-laundering controls. Its bitcoin business shrank in the same quarter.
Lisk closed its Ethereum layer-2 chain on 2 November 2026 after close to a decade, moved the LSK token fully onto Ethereum, and reinvented itself as a payments platform for businesses. Coins left on the old chain face a manual claims process no earlier than January 2027.
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Read from the Bitcoin network itself, from companies’ own SEC filings and from the US Treasury’s sanctions list. No price here and no forecasts: the live price is on our bitcoin price page. Free to quote with credit.
Nov 3–6, 2026
Mumbai, India
Ethereum Foundation’s developer conference
Nov 15–17, 2026
London, United Kingdom
Dec 7–8, 2026
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Apr 21–22, 2027
Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE
May 4–6, 2027
Miami, USA
Jul 15–17, 2027
Nashville, USA
Riot is turning from a struggling bitcoin miner into a large-scale AI infrastructure company, with about $38 billion in contracted data center revenue.
Our read: The Corsicana lease is signed and real, but its headline value spans 15 years and depends on capacity that does not come online until 2027 and 2028. Riot still needs about $5.5 billion to build it, has not named the tenant, and earned just $4 million in the quarter while selling most of its mined bitcoin to fund the work.
Analysts and prediction markets say the Democratic midterm win kills the crypto industry's CLARITY Act.
Our read: The bill already failed a Senate vote 49 to 50 in September, and Democrats will chair the House committees that handle it. But bettors still give it a 15 percent chance by mid-2027, agencies can write rules without it, and backers plan to redraft, so calling it dead overstates a bill that is more stalled than buried.
Circle framed the quarter as fresh proof that institutions keep adopting USDC, with record onchain volume and profit growth.
Our read: Onchain volume did rise 49% to $13.9 trillion and net income rose 5%. But reserve income, the core earner, fell 8% to $658 million, and a one-time $182 million ARC token presale lifted the top line. A 5% job cut sits oddly beside a proof-of-growth message.
Block has resolved its long-running money-laundering problem by agreeing to pay $764 million, putting the investigation behind it.
Our read: The deal is agreed only in principle, not signed, and Block itself warns a final agreement is not assured and that losses could top the amount set aside. A deferred prosecution runs three years, so the compliance fixes still have to hold up, and the underlying failures, including unreviewed alerts and bitcoin transfers that reached terrorism-linked wallets, are documented in a 2025 New York order.
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BTCPay Server, the free bitcoin payment tool, told operators to switch off their servers on November 1 after reports that attackers swept funds from internet-connected hot wallets. The project says only older versions were hit, and has not named a loss figure.
The reward for mining a block is cut in half every 210,000 blocks. It has happened four times, the subsidy is 3.125 bitcoin today, and the next cut is about 76,800 blocks away.
A powerful enough quantum computer could forge Bitcoin signatures in theory. No such machine exists, and the distance between today's 105-qubit chips and the millions an attack would need is still vast. Here is what is real, what is years away, and what Bitcoin is already doing about it.
Riot Platforms earned $4 million in the third quarter, down from $104.5 million a year earlier, as it sold most of its mined bitcoin to help fund a new $28 billion AI data center lease at its Corsicana campus in Texas.
The USDC issuer reported $865 million in total revenue and reserve income for the third quarter, up 17%, then disclosed a roughly 5% cut to its workforce. Its main income stream, interest on USDC reserves, fell 8% as rates dropped.
The payments firm behind Cash App has reached an agreement in principle with the US Justice Department over weak money-laundering controls. Its bitcoin business shrank in the same quarter.
Lisk closed its Ethereum layer-2 chain on 2 November 2026 after close to a decade, moved the LSK token fully onto Ethereum, and reinvented itself as a payments platform for businesses. Coins left on the old chain face a manual claims process no earlier than January 2027.
The Liquid Federation says LBTC is backed one to one by bitcoin again, nearly two months after a software bug let an attacker drain about 4,000 BTC. It has not said who covered the roughly 600 BTC the attacker kept.
A flaw in the XRP Ledger let an account allowed only to burn tokens mint new ones instead. A fix backed by 33 of 35 validators can activate no earlier than November 4. There is no public sign the flaw was ever used.
A spot Bitcoin ETF and buying Bitcoin direct track the same price but leave you holding different things. Here is how the two compare on what you own, custody, fees, account access and tax, and the risk each one carries.
Bitcoin traded near $76,456 at 06:40 UTC on 3 November 2026 as traders cut risk before the US midterm vote. Spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $398.6 million the day before, and options markets priced in a sharper swing around the election.
Market cap counts the tokens trading now. Fully diluted valuation prices in the whole supply, locked tokens included. The gap between the two numbers is where a lot of buyers get the risk wrong.