Chain News by Thebittimes.Com

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Sunday that bans state public officials from launching memecoins. In addition to the ban on state officials, California Assembly Bill 2409 also prohibits crypto service providers from offering California residents the sale of any memecoin launched in association with federal, state or local public officials. That second stipulation applies to memecoins issued on or after January 1, 2027. Newsom, considered a prominent potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, targeted President Donald Trump in a press release announcing the bill’s signature. “While the scam that is Donald Trump continues to hurt American families, California is fighting to make our economy work for people, not the powerful. No official should profit off their office — and we’re putting stronger protections in place to ensure it doesn’t happen in our state.” Trump controversially launched the “Official Trump” memecoi...

Cryptocurrency prediction markets are signaling a bullish XRP outlook for October 1, 2026, with traders expecting the token to hold near current levels but still below the $2 mark.  This comes after XRP staged a strong rebound to trade at $1.49 as of press time, up about 8% in the last 24 hours.  XRP price prediction. Source: Polymarket Regarding the cryptocurrency’s price outlook, data from Polymarket’s October 1 market shows participants expect XRP to remain above $1.20, with a 56% probability assigned to that outcome. The next most likely scenario is XRP staying above $1.80, which carries a 17% chance. The market has assigned a 6% probability to XRP reaching at least $2 by October 1. More aggressive upside targets carry significantly lower odds, with a move to $2.20 assigned a 2% probability and higher levels attracting minimal market support. On the downside, traders see limited risk of a major sell-off over the coming days. To this end, con...

Back in June, proof-of-reserves for Justin Sun-owned HTX revealed a roughly-700 million drop in the quantity of TRX held at the exchange. At today’s prices, these 700 million tokens are worth about $238 million. A substantial portion of these assets ended up flowing into an address that supports Sun-owned Poloniex’s Super Representative, while some went to Binance. Large drop in HTX TRX in June PoR . Since then, HTX has been sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, making the location of HTX funds extraordinarily important. Additionally, in the same proof-of-reserves where it disclosed the drop in TRX, it also reduced its disclosure for over $1 billion worth of other assets, now pointing towards an undisclosed “ThirdParty” custodian. Protos was previously able to track a large portion of HTX’s Ethereum reserves to Poloniex. Is Justin Sun mixing HTX’s res...

As the AI hype train rumbles on, venture capitalists and private equity are pouring more and more money into sillier and sillier ideas. Recently, Starcloud, a data centers-in-space company, has received nearly half a billion dollars in funding and over a $2 billion valuation for an idea that already seems almost impossible to execute — and it just made it even stupider. Starcloud has decided to begin mining BTC in space. Whether you like Bitcoin or hate it, this is crazy. One of the most important aspects of BTC mining has been, and always will be, the ability to obtain the cheapest energy for running miners. Sometimes this means that mining companies will completely abandon previously profitable locations for new locations, sometimes it will mean replacing every miner they’re currently running, and occasionally it means completely altering the type of energy being utilized (instead of solar, resorting to coal or natural gas, using hydro or wind instead of c...

After months of decline, August offered a glimpse that the cryptocurrency bear market might be at its end, as rising digital asset prices led to a large increase in the number of addresses holding more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC). Specifically, data compiled by Finbold and retrieved from BitInfoCharts , as well as from the same source using the Wayback Machine , shows that, in late July, there was a total of 111,846 addresses with more than $1 million worth of BTC. At press time on August 31, there are 123,482 such wallets, meaning there has been a 10.4% increase – 11,636 new Bitcoin millionaires. This increase was also visible among the larger whales. Late last month, the number of addresses with more than $10 million worth of the cryptocurrency stood at 14,009 and, at the tail end of August, it is at 15,584. Under the circumstances, the number of such Bitcoin multi-millionaires rose by 1,575 – a 11.24% increase.  Bitcoin millionair...

Strategy, Michael Saylor’s BTC holding company, has been under a lot of pressure, with shares plummeting 73% since July of last year. However, more importantly, one of Strategy’s dividend instruments, STRC, which pays twice-monthly dividends on $100/share of par value, fell from parity on May 15 and has never returned. That’s almost 100 days without being able to bring the preferred shares back to parity — and it’s a problem. Trying to dig itself out of a hole Despite Saylor, Strategy’s founder and executive chairman, making vague promises that no BTC would be sold (which he later clarified was in relation to his personal stash, not the BTC owned by Strategy), the company has sold almost 7,000 BTC worth nearly half a billion US dollars since June. These sales have been used to prop up Strategy’s dollar reserves so they can ensure dividends to its preferred share holders. Strategy has sold nearly 7,000 BTC in 2026 Read more: Strive b...