Coin Corner

An investor who bought Ethereum nine years ago at $14 has started taking profits. So far, 6,369 ETH worth $16 million have been transferred to Kraken. Over that period, the value of the investor’s ETH holdings has increased approximately 179-fold.

Tom Lee’s BitMine to Stop Buying ETH Soon After Reaching 5% of Total Supply Speaking at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, BitMine chairman Tom Lee confirmed that the company will soon stop buying Ethereum. He showed a slide clearly highlighting a “hard cap” of 5% of the total ETH supply. The slide stated that this limit would help “optimize shareholder value.” ▪️ Following its latest purchase, BitMine holds 6,016,414 ETH, or approximately 4.9% of Ethereum’s total supply. The company has already reached 99% of its target limit and has 5,067,309 ETH staked. ▪️ Since 2025, BitMine has regularly purchased ETH every week, even amid billions of dollars in unrealized losses based on its average purchase price ($3,326, according to Dropstab). ▪️ Lee also cited another goal: “maintaining the largest possible ETH position in the current bull market.” ⬜️ BitMine remains the largest Ethereum holder and the second-largest corporate cryptocurrency holder after Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

The new cover of The Economist, October 10–16.

Polygon decided to joke about shutting itself down — but the announcement was so convincing that users actually started to panic. In the end, the project’s co-founder had to apologize and clarify the situation: the network is alive, and the team simply wanted to poke fun at those who have been “burying” Polygon for years.

$IBIT Today is one of those days for him... 5th place in total ETF trading volume alongside his "best frenemy forever" (Best Frenemy Forever) $GLD in 9th place (usually GLD ranks higher, probably due to the more significant rise in BTC price today).

Justin Sun launches a self-named Nobel Prize equivalent in mathematics Tron founder Justin Sun announced the creation of the Justin Sun Prize, which he compares to the Nobel Prize. Awards will be given for solving mathematical problems and formalizing proofs for machine verification. The scheme works as follows: Sun adds a problem to a registry and assigns a prize for it. After the mathematical community recognizes the solution, the author's name is recorded in the registry, but the funds remain locked until someone converts the proof into a machine-readable format. After successful verification, the prize is awarded to the proof's author and its formalizer. There will be no age restrictions or annual ceremonies. The initial prize fund is already on a public blockchain address, and all payouts will be verifiable on the network.

Bitcoin dropped from $77,000 to $76,000 immediately after the release of US inflation data. In August, consumer prices rose by 0.4% month-over-month and 3.4% year-over-year. Core inflation was 0.3% month-over-month and 2.4% year-over-year.

On-Chain Mind: Global M2 has been above its 200-day average for 570 consecutive days — this is the longest period in history. This is not just a phase of expansion. It is the longest period of expansionist policy ever recorded. We know what usually follows this.

Note that in 2026, outflows have consistently dominated: more than 42,000 BTC have been withdrawn from ETFs since the beginning of the year. However, it can be observed that the short-term dynamics are improving.

Tom Lee's BitMine buys another 28,000 ETH, reaching 4.9% of Ethereum supply Tom Lee's BitMine Immersion Technologies announced that its reserves have reached 5,929,198 ETH. This is 4.9% of the total Ethereum supply. The company remains the largest public holder of ETH and the second-largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency after Michael Saylor's Strategy. Over the past week, BitMine acquired an additional 28,086 ETH ($69 million). The company has been buying Ethereum every week since launching its accumulation strategy in June 2025. "ETH remains the most profitable macro asset of the quarter, outperforming the S&P 500 by 5,430 basis points as of last Friday. Since June 30, the top three most profitable assets have been ETH, BTC, and SOL. We believe that this outperformance of other macro assets may encourage institutional investors to increase their investments in cryptocurrencies," Lee stated in a press release. Among the market drivers for the rest of the year, Lee cited the vote on the CLARITY Act, the resumption of cryptocurrency purchases by South Korean investors, and interest in tokenization and agentic AI. In his assessment, the four-year market cycle may hit its bottom in the coming weeks. He expects the ETH/BTC ratio to rise in the new bull cycle.

Spot BTC ETF inflows are picking up fast — SoSoValue data.

AI helped crypto exchange Bybit save $700 million from thefts The platform reported that in the first half of the year, AI rejected more than 30,000 suspicious withdrawal requests, protecting approximately 20,000 accounts. The average duration of request checks was 4.7 minutes. Bybit states that AI is primarily used to increase the speed of threat detection, while responsibility for making complex decisions still lies with security specialists.

“The cybersecurity arms race has entered an era of minutes. Using AI to enhance our security and risk management capabilities, as well as ensuring the security of the AI systems themselves, is our top priority, while human judgment remains at the center of critical security decision-making,” said Bybit representative David Zong.

The crypto exchange also identified $212 million in cryptocurrency potentially linked to fraud and blacklisted more than 10,000 malicious addresses. To do this, it used behavioral analysis on the blockchain and AI-powered monitoring to identify new fraud patterns. The company notes that artificial intelligence shortens the cycle of defensive operations. Bybit’s AI-based security audit identified vulnerabilities 3–5 times faster than manual checks. Some operations are now executed in hours, whereas previously people spent weeks on them.

🇰🇷 South Korea's Largest Crypto Exchanges Lose 50% of Revenue Upbit and Bithumb reported a significant decline in revenue and profit for the first half of 2026. This is attributed to slowing activity in the local cryptocurrency market and a shift of capital into the AI sector. Dunamu's (Upbit's parent company) operating revenue for the six-month period fell by 49.1% to $289 million. Net profit decreased by 74.1% to approximately $77 million. Bithumb's revenue dropped by 48.7% to $233 million. For the half-year, the platform recorded a net loss of $77 million. Dunamu noted that the decline in metrics is linked to reduced liquidity in the global digital asset market, which led to worsening investor sentiment. Additionally, investment capital in South Korea has significantly shifted from cryptocurrencies to the stock market, specifically into shares of companies operating in the artificial intelligence sector. In total, across the five South Korean exchanges Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, the total trading volume in the second quarter decreased by 49.5% to $146.43 billion.

Bitcoin Outperformed S&P 500 Gains on Only a Third of Trading Days in Six Months In recent days, Bitcoin has shown positive dynamics, outperforming the stock market in terms of percentage gains. However, Glassnode analysts noted that this is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence—over the past three months, BTC outperformed the key US index, the S&P 500, on only a third of trading days. Glassnode stated that "this is the longest period in the last six years" where Bitcoin has lagged behind the stock market. In 2023 and early 2024, Bitcoin outperformed the S&P 500 in approximately 50–60% of trading sessions. However, in 2025, the figure increasingly dropped below 50%, and by 2026, the trend had worsened, reaching the current 37.8%. Notably, current levels are comparable to early 2022, just before the start of a prolonged bear market. That period was marked by the collapse of FTX—one of the largest crypto exchanges of that era—and the bankruptcy of dozens of other major crypto companies.

Negative sentiment toward XRP on social media surged to a three-month high over the past day after the token fell below the key psychological level of $1. The number of active addresses has also risen sharply. Santiment experts believe that this sharp shift in sentiment is setting the stage for a potential contrarian signal.

🇰🇷 South Korea will begin verifying transfers to Bybit, HTX, and other crypto exchanges and wallets South Korea is tightening control over transfers to foreign crypto platforms. The review of rules followed the removal of apps from nearly 30 crypto exchanges, including OKX, Bybit, CoinEx, and HTX, from the local Google Play Store. Under the new rules, exchanges registered in South Korea may require customers to provide proof of ownership of the recipient's account, information on the purpose of the transaction, and the source of funds when transferring funds to foreign platforms. They may also delay or reject transfers if the provided information is insufficient. Transfers of 10 million Korean won ($7,000) or more to foreign exchanges or non-custodial wallets will be subject to enhanced scrutiny for suspicious transactions. South Korea has one of the largest and most active crypto markets in the world. By the end of 2025, the number of accounts on local crypto exchanges reached 11.1 million in a population of about 50 million, but local traders continue to trade on global exchanges due to the limited number of crypto instruments available in the country.

Bitcoin's price has risen to $64,600, but the demand indicator has remained negative for five consecutive months.

DEXs now account for a record 24% of CEX spot trading volume—the highest share since tracking began in 2019. As recently as 2024, the figure was below 10%. Today, decentralized exchanges have captured nearly a quarter of the spot trading market.

10x Research is highlighting Bitcoin's monthly RSI and does not rule out the possibility that the market's cyclical bottom could be established as early as this month.