Crypto news

Switzerland's financial regulator FINMA has approved the first Swiss-law spot Bitcoin ETF for retail investors. The Bitcoin Fund ETF (BBIT), managed by BIT Asset Management, is set to begin trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November and will hold Bitcoin directly. It is approved for public offering in Switzerland only. Unlike European Bitcoin ETPs, which are debt instruments carrying issuer risk, this fund is a Swiss collective investment scheme with assets ring-fenced for investors. FINMA noted it is the first fund approved to invest solely in Bitcoin, citing its trading history and volume, while warning of Bitcoin's high volatility.

Franklin Templeton plans to list two exchange-traded funds on Nasdaq that allocate 95% of assets to US stocks and 5% to Bitcoin. The funds, FBEQ and FIBT, track S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes respectively, with Bitcoin exposure gained through exchange-traded products, including its own spot Bitcoin ETF, EZBC. Instead of reinvesting dividends into more shares, these funds route payouts into Bitcoin. The Bitcoin allocation can drift above 5% between quarterly rebalances, when it is trimmed back to 4.5%, with a hard cap of 20%. Expense ratios are reported as low as 0.09%. A filing with the SEC on October 22, 2026, suggests a listing is close, with an effective date projected for October 27, 2026. EZBC has drawn about $335 million in net inflows.

Solana is set to activate the Alpenglow upgrade on October 21, 2026, at approximately 13:20 UTC, aiming to reduce network finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. The upgrade, tied to epoch 1064, replaces the TowerBFT consensus mechanism with a new protocol called Votor, which collects validator votes off-chain and uses BLS signatures to compress them. Block production time is expected to tighten to around 200 milliseconds, while the transaction execution layer and user interfaces remain unchanged. Testnet results showed median finality as low as 54 milliseconds, beating the mainnet target. Validators approved the underlying proposal, SIMD-0326, in September 2025 with 98.27% support. Participants must run Agave-based clients (version 4.3.2) and pay a 0.8 SOL per-epoch Validator Admission Ticket fee. The new design remains secure even if 20% of stake is malicious and another 20% is offline. Reported transactions per second may temporarily drop because vote transactions will no longer inflate throughput numbers. Validators gain a leaner consensus process but face client upgrade requirements and the VAT cost.

Zcash Foundation released Zebra 7.0.0 with NU7 mainnet support, requiring node operators to upgrade before block 3,543,405 around Nov. 5 to stay on the consensus chain. Older 6.4.x releases will stop operating around Nov. 2. NU7 introduces 25-second blocks, a Network Sustainability Mechanism, and fixes for five security advisories. The upgrade shortens block time from 75 seconds while preserving daily ZEC issuance by adjusting block rewards. A coinholder poll showed ~99.9% support for faster blocks. NU7 also redirects 60% of transaction fees to a reserve for future reissuance starting around Feb. 2031. Sprout funds must be moved before activation, as v4 transactions will be disabled.

Ethereum developers have postponed the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi testnet, originally scheduled for Oct. 26, after security researchers identified risks affecting existing smart contracts. ChainSecurity found 13 real-world examples of contracts that could be disrupted by proposed gas-accounting changes, potentially affecting DeFi operations. The Ethereum Foundation confirmed the cancellation on Oct. 22 following a core developers' meeting, with further investigation into EIP-8037 and its interactions with mainnet contracts. The setback threatens Ethereum's December rollout target for Glamsterdam, which had already missed its original first-half 2026 schedule. The postponement also suspends a planned gas limit increase to 200 million on Hoodi. ChainSecurity's findings highlight risks to applications handling withdrawals and batched transactions, where failed operations might be recorded as permanently unsuccessful, creating attack vectors. Developers had considered Dec. 1, Dec. 8, and Dec. 9 as possible mainnet activation dates, but the cancellation narrows the window, potentially complicating preparations for the next upgrade, Hegotá.

Solana validators activated Anza's Alpenglow consensus protocol on mainnet, replacing the original TowerBFT system and cutting transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. The upgrade, deployed at approximately 14:00 UTC on Wednesday, condenses the previous two-step confirmation process into one step for exchanges and merchants. Anza CEO Brennan Watt called it the largest blockchain upgrade since 'The Merge,' noting it went from white paper to mainnet in under 18 months. Anza outlined future changes including Rotor for block data movement and geographically aware leader rotations, plus Quantumglow to add post-quantum security. Separately, Jump Crypto's Firedancer team proposed removing Solana's compute-unit block limit to allow capacity to scale with validator hardware.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal has requested information from Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino after a Wall Street Journal report revealed a $6.3 million deal between the stablecoin issuer and Nxum, a marketing firm co-founded by former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is seeking records related to contracts, payments, and lobbying, with Blumenthal citing concerns over "self-enrichment and self-dealings" within the Trump administration. Hines, who left his White House role in August 2025 to join Tether, allegedly coordinated lobbying on the GENIUS Act through encrypted messages, with Ardoino reportedly demanding Nxum "obliterate" opponents of the legislation. Blumenthal said the relationship raises "alarming ethical and legal concerns." Tether has not yet responded to requests for comment. The investigation comes amid broader scrutiny of Trump and his associates' financial ties to crypto, with the president disclosing $1.4 billion in crypto-related earnings in 2025. Blumenthal's authority is limited as a ranking Democrat, but the 2026 midterm elections could shift congressional control, with prediction markets favoring Democrats to regain majorities.

Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun has surpassed decentralized exchange Hyperliquid in daily protocol revenue, generating $1.98 million compared to Hyperliquid's $1.96 million in the past 24 hours. This reflects heightened activity in the memecoin sector, though Hyperliquid remains ahead in the seven-day comparison. The revenue shift has coincided with a decline in market confidence for Hyperliquid's price predictions, with the probability of its token reaching $100 by year-end dropping to 27.5%, down from 36% a day earlier. The competition underscores the dynamic nature of decentralized finance, where user engagement and platform innovations can swiftly alter market perceptions.

Switzerland's financial regulator FINMA has approved the country's first spot Bitcoin ETF for retail investors, waiving its usual diversification rules to accommodate the single-asset fund. Zurich-based BIT Asset Management plans to list the ETF on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticker BBIT in November. FINMA justified the exemption by citing Bitcoin's long trading history and high volume, but warned that investments in Bitcoin remain highly risky. The approval follows FINMA's 2021 decision to allow a crypto basket fund for qualified investors only.

A Solana wallet used about $12,000 in capital to generate $1.4 billion in suspected wash trades on Raydium's concentrated-liquidity pools, accounting for 22.7% of the platform's volume between Sept. 21 and Oct. 20, according to Bitquery. The operation involved 108,871 swaps across 438 pools, many with tokens imitating established cryptocurrencies like XRP, Litecoin, and Monero. Bitquery identified 22,685 round trips where tokens were bought and sold back, with one transaction producing $22,200 in volume at a cost of just $1.13. Ten linked pools displayed $5.93 billion in combined liquidity on DEXScreener despite holding only $10,238 in USDC reserves, raising concerns about misleading market valuations. One pool using Lisk's ticker showed $579 million in liquidity backed by just $19 in USDC. Bitquery also found 12 helper wallets executing 1.25 million swaps, and only four outside wallets traded the pools the previous week. The operator remains unknown, and the findings do not establish investor losses or Raydium's involvement.