Kategorie: Ethereum News

Ethereum news about the ETH blockchain and its crypto ecosystem.

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Kraken expands regulated derivatives in Europe with Bitcoin and Ethereum collateral

  • The feature applies to more than 150 perpetual futures markets available to European users.
  • The exchange operates under MiCA and MiFID II regulations, with oversight from Ireland and Cyprus.
  • Kraken’s third-quarter revenue rose by 50% to $648 million following its acquisition of NinjaTrader.

Kraken has expanded its regulated derivatives offering in the European Union, allowing traders to use Bitcoin, Ethereum, and approved stablecoins as collateral for perpetual futures on Kraken Pro.

Announced on 3 November, the move makes Kraken one of the first licensed exchanges in Europe to support crypto-collateralised derivatives under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.

The feature strengthens Kraken’s position in Europe’s digital asset market by combining capital efficiency with regulatory compliance.

By allowing clients to post crypto assets instead of converting them into fiat, the exchange provides faster access to liquidity while remaining under strict oversight from European regulators.

Crypto as margin on Kraken Pro

European traders can now use Bitcoin, Ethereum, or select stablecoins as margin across more than 150 perpetual futures markets.

Collateral is converted to USD for liquidation and margin calculations, standardising risk management while maintaining crypto exposure.

Kraken’s operations are covered by its MiCA licence from the Central Bank of Ireland and supervision by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission.

The exchange uses volatility-based margin haircuts to manage exposure to price swings. All custody arrangements comply with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), ensuring full investor protection under European law.

The feature allows traders to access up to 10x leverage using crypto collateral. It reflects Kraken’s ongoing strategy to align its trading products with Europe’s unified digital asset rules ahead of MiCA’s full rollout in 2025.

A shift in EU derivatives

Kraken’s expansion comes at a time when Europe is tightening oversight of crypto products while promoting innovation through consistent regulation.

By offering crypto-collateralised futures under direct supervision, the exchange positions itself at the forefront of compliant derivatives trading in the EU.

The integration benefits institutional and retail traders seeking efficient and legally sound ways to trade leveraged crypto products.

Hedge funds and corporate treasuries can now operate within clear regulatory limits, signalling the increasing maturity of Europe’s digital derivatives market.

This move also strengthens the region’s financial infrastructure. Transparent liquidation procedures and regulated custody standards align digital assets with traditional financial norms, helping reduce risk and improve trust.

As other licensed exchanges follow Kraken’s lead, the EU could become a global hub for compliant digital asset trading.

Growth supports expansion

The announcement follows a strong financial quarter for Kraken. The exchange reported revenue of $648 million in the third quarter, a 50% rise from the previous quarter.

The increase was driven by higher trading volumes and new product integrations following the acquisition of NinjaTrader, a futures and forex trading platform.

This momentum underlines Kraken’s ability to grow while maintaining regulatory standards. By embedding compliance into its strategy, the company is building credibility and scale in an increasingly regulated environment.

As MiCA rules continue to take effect, exchanges that prioritise both innovation and compliance are expected to capture greater institutional interest.

Kraken’s integration of crypto collateral into a regulated derivatives framework demonstrates how digital assets can function securely within Europe’s financial system.

The development marks a shift from speculative trading to a more structured market, where transparency and protection guide participation.

For the European Union, this represents progress toward establishing a regulated, sustainable, and globally competitive digital asset economy.

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BitMine doubles down on Ethereum as ETH holdings hit 3.4 million

  • BitMine buys 82,353 Ethereum tokens as holdings reach 3.4 million.
  • Crypto and cash treasury stands at $13.7 billion.
  • BitMine hits 2.8% of the targeted 5% of the Ethereum supply.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a leader in cryptocurrency mining and advanced cooling solutions, has significantly bolstered its position in the digital asset space.

The company has revealed a substantial increase in its Ethereum (ETH) reserves.

BitMine ETH holdings hit 3.4 million

BitMine’s increasing commitment to Ethereum is again evident following another buy-the-dip move.

Despite price declines, the publicly-listed company has bumped up its holdings to become the world’s second-largest corporate treasury strategy.

Thomas Lee of Fundstrat, and chairman of BitMine, noted:

“We increased our cash holdings to $389 million (from $305 million) and acquired 82,353 ETH tokens over the past week pushing our ETH holdings to 3.4 million, or 2.8% of the supply of ETH. We are now more than halfway towards our initial pursuit of the ‘alchemy of 5%’ of ETH.”

BitMine now owns 2.8% of the ETH supply, a milestone that sees the company surpass the halfway mark of the targeted 5%.

BitMine has amassed its ETH holdings strategically over the past several months, capitalising on ETH’s low price and growing ecosystem.

When combined with its Bitcoin reserves of 192 BTC valued at $62 million, and cash of $389 million, BitMine’s overall crypto and cash holdings have surged to $13.7 billion.

Interest in ETH is growing

BitMine is among a growing number of publicly listed firms shifting away from their traditional operations, including cryptocurrency mining, as they diversify in response to broader digital asset adoption.

Wall Street has seen a marked increase in such pivots, with several companies aiming to emulate the approach that established Strategy as the world’s leading corporate crypto treasury.

Analysts note that BitMine’s move, along with similar strategies by peers, reflects rising institutional interest in the sector.

The approval of Ethereum exchange-traded funds in 2024 has drawn billions of dollars into the asset, while corporate treasury strategies — particularly those involving staking in tokens like ETH and SOL — have emerged as the next phase in the digital asset expansion.

BitMine’s milestone reinforces Ethereum’s enduring appeal, potentially setting a benchmark for peer firms eyeing similar diversification.

And Lee says the recent price dip offered a reset that could prove key for the Ethereum price.

“Crypto suffered its largest ever liquidation event on October 10th, and open interest on ETH (per coinalyze.net fell -45% in the past 8 weeks (the largest ever decline in the history of ETH). This reset is healthy and sets the stage for price and fundamentals to eventually converge,” Lee stated.

Ethereum’s price hovered at $3,622 on November 3, 2025, down 6% in the past 24 hours and 14% in the past week.

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Balancer’s $70 million breach exposes DeFi’s fragile foundation

  • The moved assets included StakeWise Staked Ether (OSETH), Wrapped Ether (WETH), and Lido wstETH (wSTETH).
  • In September 2023, Balancer suffered a phishing attack that resulted in a loss of about $238,000.
  • A separate August exploit drained nearly $1 million after a vulnerability was found in Balancer’s liquidity pools.

A suspected exploit involving nearly $70 million worth of digital assets has once again placed Balancer, one of Ethereum’s leading decentralised exchanges, under scrutiny.

The incident has reignited debate over the security of decentralised finance (DeFi), where transparency and automation often coexist with deep structural vulnerabilities.

It also shows how core DeFi features such as permissionless access, open-source code, and composable smart contracts can quickly turn into liabilities when targeted by skilled attackers.

For Balancer, the breach adds to a growing record of cyber incidents that are reshaping risk perceptions across digital finance and prompting calls for stronger, coordinated defences across the DeFi ecosystem.

$70 million in Ether-linked assets transferred to new wallet

Blockchain records on Etherscan show that $70.9 million in assets were moved from Balancer liquidity pools to a newly created wallet via three transactions.

Data from analytics firm Nansen identified the transferred assets as 6,850 StakeWise Staked Ether (OSETH), 6,590 Wrapped Ether (WETH), and 4,260 Lido wstETH (wSTETH).

On-chain analysts began tracking the wallet’s behaviour, observing similarities to previous DeFi drain patterns.

Blockchain security firm Cyvers reported that up to $84 million in suspicious transactions across multiple chains may be linked to Balancer.

The firm is currently analysing whether the transfers were coordinated through smart-contract vulnerabilities or facilitated by an external exploit exploiting inter-protocol liquidity flows.

History of attacks at Balancer

In September 2023, the protocol’s website was compromised through a domain name system (DNS) hijack that redirected users to a phishing interface.

Hackers executed malicious smart contracts designed to capture private keys and drain funds, resulting in losses of approximately $238,000, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

Just a month earlier, in August, Balancer reported a stablecoin exploit that cost liquidity providers nearly $1 million.

That incident occurred shortly after the team disclosed a “critical vulnerability” affecting certain liquidity pools, which had been partially mitigated but remained exploitable in specific configurations.

The recurrence of incidents within such a short timeframe suggests that DeFi’s open-source nature, while fostering innovation, also provides attackers with an evolving blueprint to target protocol weaknesses.

These breaches demonstrate that security audits alone are insufficient without continuous on-chain monitoring and real-time risk mitigation systems.

DeFi’s security paradox

The Balancer case illustrates a paradox at the heart of decentralised finance.

By removing intermediaries, protocols achieve transparency and autonomy, while also eliminating the possibility of intervention when funds are misappropriated.

Unlike centralised exchanges that can freeze or reverse transactions, DeFi protocols operate on immutable smart contracts.

Once exploited, losses are permanent and typically unrecoverable.

This structural rigidity has drawn criticism from institutional investors who view such vulnerabilities as barriers to large-scale adoption.

In response, some DeFi projects have introduced layered defences such as decentralised insurance pools, advanced audit frameworks, and formal verification of contract code.

However, these measures remain inconsistent across the ecosystem.

Balancer’s repeated security issues may therefore serve as a case study in how liquidity incentives and composability can amplify systemic exposure.

As DeFi protocols become more interconnected through shared token standards and cross-chain bridges, a single compromised smart contract can trigger cascading financial risks across multiple platforms.

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Cronos (CRO) rolls out “Smarturn” upgrade for advanced EVM features

  • Cronos EVM v1.5.0 has officially debuted today, October 30.
  • The upgrade introduces new EVM opcodes, smart accounts, and enhanced interoperability.
  • Smarturn targets a more flexible, faster, and developer-friendly blockchain.

The Cronos blockchain has announced the launch of its anticipated Smarturn upgrade, welcoming a new era in its network evolution.

The update brings significant improvements across Cronos’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including increased interoperability, enhanced ecosystem performance, and smooth wallet functionality.

According to the announcement:

This mainnet upgrade marks a major leap in Cronos’ evolution – unlocking smart accounts, new EVM features, and improved performance for developers and users alike.

The blockchain temporarily paused operations for roughly 60 minutes to integrate the new components.

Meanwhile, services are resuming gradually as the Cronos ecosystem undergoes a key milestone.

Smarturn aims to revolutionize Cronos through speed and compatibility using its unique innovations.

Smarter accounts arrive on Cronos

The high-end EIP-7702 smart account support is at the core of Cronos’ latest upgrade. With this feature, regular user wallets (Externally Owned Account (EOA) can perform like smart contract wallets.

That helps unlock capabilities previously possible via different accounts. According to the official blog:

EIP-7702 bridges this gap by letting EOAs act like smart contracts. The assigned contract code remains valid until the account issues a new authorization, which can apply to one chain or to multiple chains simultaneously.

Individuals can now perform different activities without changing account types, including using flexible gas payment methods, personalizing permissions, batching many transactions, and programming wallet behavior.

With EIP-7702, Cronos joins the few EVM-compatible platforms boasting such a level of account abstraction, merging automated control with simplicity.

The functionality will advance DeFi platforms and decentralized applications (dApps) on the Cronos blockchain through efficiency and user-friendliness.

Performance sees a massive boost

Furthermore, Cronos upgraded its EVM’s VM to operate on go-Ethereum v1.15.11, aligning with Ethereum’s Prague and Cancun upgrades.

The update aims to make contract execution and transacting cheaper and faster.

Also, it brings comprehensive client improvements and new EVM opcodes on Cronos to enhance efficiency, developer experience, and debugging. The team added:

These opcodes collectively make contract execution more efficient for complex DeFi, gaming contracts that handle multiple operations per transaction, and other computation-heavy applications.

Together, these upgrades make the Cronos EVM runtime faster, lighter, and more developer-centric.

Enhanced interoperability and tools

Smarturn also improves infrastructure for cross-chain builders and developers.

For instance, a new RPC endpoint enables the fetching of full block data in a single query.

That’s a win for dApp backends, analytics dashboards, and blockchain explorers.

Moreover, the mempool now allows users to cancel or speed up pending transactions.

That improves responsiveness amid massive network load.

Also, Cronos has adopted IBC v2 through ibc-go v10.1.1 to bolster cross-chain communication.

CRO price outlook

The alt hovered at $0.1470 after dropping roughly 1.5% the past 24 hours.

Its daily trading volume has collapsed by more than 60%, signaling faded enthusiasm.

Nonetheless, CRO reflects the broader sentiments.

Bitcoin trades below the key $110,000 after shedding nearly 3% of its value over the previous 24 hours.

Markets lost momentum after Powell’s cautious remarks concerning a rate cut in December.

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Ethereum Foundation launches institutional portal to boost enterprise adoption

  • “Ethereum for Institutions” helps businesses integrate with the Ether ecosystem.
  • The new platform showcases Ethereum’s role in DeFi, L2 scaling, and RWAs.
  • ETH eyes rebounds as whales accumulate.

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new website, Ethereum for Institutions, designed to guide businesses on how to operate on-chain.

Unveiled today, October 29, the site aims to supercharge Ethereum adoption among top companies.

The official announcement reads:

Ethereum is the neutral, secure base layer where the world’s financial value is coming on-chain. Today, we’re launching a new site for the builders, leaders, and institutions advancing this global movement.

The foundations Enterprise Acceleration team created the new website to present a clear framework for firms interested in building and investing in the second-largest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum for Institutions offers case studies, resources, and access to industry leaders shaping the next phase of DeFi.

Scaling Ethereum for enterprise utility

Scalability has been among the primary challenges in Ethereum’s push for institutional-grade adoption.

Meanwhile, its L2 ecosystem, comprising projects like Arbitrum, zkSync, Base, and Optimism, is addressing that.

The foundation revealed that Layer2s secure more than $50 billion in value. The team said:

With $50B+ in total value secured, L2s provide the high-throughput, low-cost execution needed for global-scale applications – from payments to tokenization.

These platforms have gained traction for offering low costs and high throughput essential for enterprise-level utility, including real-world assets tokenization, trading, and payments.

Notably, the new website features a comprehensive L2 segment showcasing how these solutions are enabling cheaper and faster transactions while leveraging Ethereum’s robust security.

Layer 2 platforms offer the infrastructure for businesses navigating decentralized finance, stablecoins, or tokenization.

Ethereum transforms the on-chain economy

Ethereum’s new institutional website is beyond a documentation hub. It welcomes the next phase of digital finance.

It lowers entry barriers for traditional institutional navigating on-chain finance by organizing data around key sectors like DeFi, staking, restaking networks, RWAs, and DeFi.

It builds on the Ethereum vision, serving as a neutral, composable, and public infrastructure that supports financial innovation.

The blockchain continues to merge TradFi and DeFi, leveraging an ecosystem of thriving developers, high-end privacy tools, and scalability through L2 platforms.

With more institutions embracing blockchain through ETFs and digital assets strategies, Ethereum’s institutional portal offers a lucrative entry point.

The website connects global businesses with the foundation blocks of the digital economy.

ETH price outlook: whales are buying

The largest altcoin by market value is trading at $3,971 following an over 3% decline in the past 24 hours.

Its bearish trajectory mirrors the broader sector.

CoinMarketcap data shows the value of all digital currencies declined by 3% the previous 24 hours to $3.76 trillion.

Nevertheless, Lookonchain data shows large-scale investors are buying the dip.

Bitime’s new wallets have received 33,948 ETH tokens, worth approximately $135 million, from Falcon X today.

That reveals conviction in Ethereum’s possible rebounds in the coming sessions.

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