Weekly: Bitget hack worth hundreds of millions, Binance troubles, new AI releases, and market calm

Bitcoin Key Highlights

On September 21, Bitcoin showed a solid impulse, breaking through $85,000. During this surge, short sellers traditionally got "shaved": $746M was liquidated in futures, with $647M coming specifically from short positions. The Fear and Greed Index spiked to 70 ("Greed"), but after that, the price calmed down a bit and moved sideways.

At the time of writing, BTC is trading around $85,018.

What Analysts and Experts Are Saying

• Levels and Demand: BTC broke above its 1-year moving average ($80,061) and is targeting $88,761. However, CryptoQuant points out that the Coinbase Premium remains "in the red." This means the US spot market isn't aggressively pushing this move yet.
• FOMO and Leverage: Santiment recorded the strongest surge of FOMO since the beginning of the year when the price touched $87,000. Open interest rose to $156B — traders, having barely shed tears over their liquidated shorts, immediately ran to open new leveraged positions.
• CryptoQuant CEO's Take: Ki Young Ju believes the bull cycle is just getting started. However, don't expect cosmic 10x gains — he forecasts a more modest 3–5x. The market has grown and institutional investors are entering, so we likely won't see wild parabolic runs or 80% crashes anymore.
• Capital Capital Flowing into BTC: Since mid-August, Bitcoin's market cap has grown by 36%. For comparison: the S&P 500 rose by just 0.8%, while gold actually dropped by 1.5%.

Whales Are Accumulating

While retail traders hesitate, "smart money" acts. Wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 BTC have bought nearly 114,000 more coins (+2.22%) since July. They now control over 5.24M BTC.

Are Quantum Computers Threatening Bitcoin?

EU financial regulators issued a warning: the development of quantum computing could eventually hack the cryptography behind blockchains. They advise EU countries to develop transition plans to post-quantum security by the end of 2026.

Altcoins and Tokenization

Ethereum is following in its big brother's footsteps. On September 21, ETH broke above $2,700 (a new high for the year). Traders lost $122M in futures liquidations specifically on Ethereum. Currently, the coin is trading near $2,719.

The rest of the altcoin market shows a mixed picture: Ripple (XRP), Solana, and Hyperliquid are slowly turning green (+5–10%), while others are treading water.

Ethereum Exchange Supply Is Melting

ETH reserves on exchanges have dropped to historical lows, while staking demand has surged 11-fold. Available coins on exchanges are shrinking as people prefer to hold and earn passive yield.

Whales Withdrawing ETH from Binance

The number of wallets with a balance >0 reached a record 207M. At the same time, over 90,000 ETH is being withdrawn from Binance monthly — the highest outflow rate since 2023.

Ecosystem News in Brief:

• ZetaChain Moving to Solana: The community almost unanimously (99.4%) supported shutting down its native L1 network and migrating the ZETA token to Solana. Awaiting the final vote.
• CRO Burn: Cronos creators plan to burn 228M CRO tokens from the community pool and use all profits from their products for monthly token buybacks and burns.
• Trueo Migrating to Ethereum: Prediction market Trueo is leaving Base for the ETH mainnet to achieve greater decentralization. Vitalik Buterin has already approved the idea.
• Stocks and ETFs on NEAR: Tokenized US stocks and ETF trading via Ondo have launched on near.com. Purchases can be made using crypto from 30+ different networks.
• Buterin on the Future of Blockchains: Vitalik stated that networks are shifting from duplicating calculations to zero-knowledge proofs (SNARK/STARK). This will speed up execution, boost anonymity, and AI will assist in writing code.
• Variational Airdrop: The project will distribute 32% of VAR tokens to point holders at TGE near the end of 2026 (100% unlocked immediately).
• Zcash as the New Ethereum? Bankless co-founder believes Zcash is currently where Ethereum was in 2021. In his view, if part of BTC's capital rotates into ZEC, the coin could rally hard.

The World of AI

Releases and the Model Race

• Musk's Grok 4.7: xAI rolled out an update. The model codes better and can handle multi-hour agentic tasks.
• Claude Opus 5.5: Anthropic released a new model — 30% faster and 40% cheaper than its predecessor. Due to its high capabilities in cybersecurity, extra safety guardrails were installed.
• GPT-6 Sol and Luna: OpenAI released lightweight and cheaper versions of GPT-6 for ChatGPT Work and Codex.

AI Agents and Crypto

BlackRock estimated that the mass adoption of autonomous AI agents will create huge demand for crypto and stablecoins (since AI agents need a way to settle transactions among themselves). Meanwhile, SharpLink claims that by 2035, AI agents will reallocate up to $4 trillion in financial sector revenues.

The Flip Side: Scammers and "Uncontrolled" AI

• Deepfakes Attack: Losses from scams involving deepfakes, KYC bypasses, and voice spoofing at the start of the year have already surpassed last year's total by 263%.
• OpenAI's AI Hacked a Website: During a routine web search, an OpenAI AI agent hit a roadblock and decided not to give up, autonomously hacking an Australian government health stats portal.
• Help for Ukraine: OpenAI will provide Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation access to the Daybreak tool to protect civil infrastructure from cyberattacks.

Failures, Hacks, and Crime

Major Hack of the Week: Bitget Down $351.6M

Bitget exchange confirmed a major breach of its wallet infrastructure. Withdrawals were temporarily paused. Private keys reportedly weren't compromised; hackers broke into the service infrastructure. The main suspects are North Korean hackers (Lazarus Group).

Scandals and Investigations

• US Investigates Binance: Federal prosecutors are looking into whether Binance helped evade sanctions against Iran.
• Binance Delists Hryvnia: Starting September 28, the exchange completely ceases Hryvnia operations via Fiat Trade and removes the USDT/UAH pair. Remaining UAH balances will be automatically converted into USDT by September 30 at a rate of 46.5 UAH.
• KelpDAO vs. LayerZero Drama: KelpDAO sued LayerZero following an April hack that cost $293M. Both sides are arguing over who is responsible for the misconfiguration in security settings.

A Nice Piece of News to End On

Ukraine ranked 7th in the global crypto adoption ranking (Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index 2026), moving up one spot. Strong metrics were recorded particularly in the P2P segment and on-chain transaction volumes.