How to Get a Funded Crypto Trading Account in 2026 Step by Step

Strategy has returned to Bitcoin buying after more than two months without a disclosed acquisition, purchasing 4,603 BTC for approximately $370 million during the week ending August 30. The company acquired the coins at an average price near $80,380 and increased its holdings to 845,050 BTC, reversing part of the decline in its treasury caused by Bitcoin sales during June, July and August. Strategy entered the latest week with 840,447 BTC after making no purchases or sales between August 17...

Afghanistan’s Taliban-era prohibition on cryptocurrency trading remains in force, with the country’s central bank continuing to classify unauthorized online exchange activity as illegal and subject to enforcement. The nationwide crackdown began in August 2022, when authorities ordered money changers, individuals and businesses to stop trading cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin. Police subsequently arrested traders who defied the order and closed physical crypto businesses, dismantling a market that had expanded after the Taliban takeover disrupted Afghanistan’s access to the international banking system. Herat...

StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy has executed what the company calls the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on mainnet, demonstrating a way to protect certain BTC transfers from a future quantum attacker without changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules. The mainnet transaction used Levy’s Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, construction to move coins into an output protected by hash-based security rather than relying entirely on elliptic-curve cryptography. StarkWare engineer Tomer Giladi helped bring the April research into a working transaction. The method does not make...

Coinbase and Better Mortgage have expanded access to a home-financing product that lets eligible U.S. borrowers pledge Bitcoin instead of selling it to raise cash for a down payment. The product moved into general availability for Coinbase One members after an earlier rollout that produced the first Fannie Mae-backed U.S. mortgage using Bitcoin collateral. Better originates and services the loans, while Coinbase provides the infrastructure used to move pledged BTC into custody. The structure gives crypto holders a route into...

Ledger has patched a vulnerability in its Ethereum hardware-wallet app that could allow a malicious dApp to replace a transaction during the approval process while the device continued showing users the transaction they originally reviewed. Security firm TestMachine disclosed the signature-substitution flaw on August 21 after reproducing it on Ledger hardware. Ledger had already shipped Ethereum app version 1.22.2 on August 12, with its release history listing security fixes for the update. Malicious dApp Could Change the Transaction Before Signing...

Base creator Jesse Pollak has pushed back against criticism that Coinbase is selling ETH while benefiting from Ethereum, pointing to the exchange’s roughly 150,000 ETH corporate position and years of investment across the network. Pollak argued that Coinbase has held about 150,000 ETH through multiple market cycles, while describing the company as the largest ETH holder outside dedicated digital asset treasury companies by a wide margin. Coinbase’s latest regulatory filing backs up the scale of that position. The company held...

A crypto user lost 1,010 ETH after following an old Tornado Cash bookmark into a phishing frontend that captured the private withdrawal credentials needed to access the deposited funds. The victim deposited the ETH into legitimate Tornado Cash contracts, but the malicious interface obtained the private note generated during the process. The attacker then used those credentials to withdraw the assets within roughly 12 hours without compromising the underlying Tornado Cash smart contracts. Phishing Frontend Targeted Private Withdrawal Notes Tornado...

Ethereum’s network-growth metric has accelerated sharply in August, with new daily ETH addresses climbing from 121,210 on August 8 to 212,560 on August 16. The increase represents roughly 75.4% growth in eight days and adds another signal that activity is returning to the network. New-address creation measures the number of addresses appearing onchain for the first time rather than the number of unique people using Ethereum. A single user or automated system can control multiple addresses, so the metric is...

A crypto trading bot is a chain of dependencies. It reads a position, prices it, decides, places an order, and confirms settlement. Every one of those steps is an API call, and a failure at any single step stops the strategy. The provider choice shapes what a bot can actually do more than the strategy logic does. The common mistake is searching for one API that covers everything. No such API exists in 2026. Market data providers do not route...

Polymarket and Kalshi helped turn prediction markets into a mainstream trading category, but neither platform fits every trader. Access varies by country, market selection can lean heavily toward certain topics, and the tools available for entering, managing, and automating positions differ sharply across platforms. The strongest alternatives are not identical copies. Some emerging prediction markets platforms focus on professional order controls, some concentrate on fast crypto and financial markets, and others use onchain infrastructure or play-money forecasting. Users unfamiliar with...

A funded crypto trading account gives a trader access to more notional capital after they prove they can follow a firm’s risk rules. The usual route starts with a paid crypto prop firm challenge that requires a profit target without breaching daily or overall loss limits. Passing is not only about making money. Drawdown control, minimum trading days and rule compliance determine whether the account survives. The evaluation fee can be lost, and crypto prop firms use different account models,...

Tokenized stock perps allow traders to take long or short exposure to companies, ETFs and equity indexes through crypto-native derivatives markets. Positions can use stablecoin collateral, remain open without an expiry date and continue trading when the main stock exchange is closed. The trader receives price exposure, not ownership of the referenced shares. The interface often looks identical to a crypto perpetual futures market. The risk does not. A stock-linked contract can remain active overnight, through weekends and during holidays...

Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding was sentenced to nearly one year in federal prison on September 1 for stealing confidential technology used to build and operate the company’s artificial intelligence supercomputers. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria imposed 12 months minus one day, followed by two years of supervised release. Ding must also pay more than $198,000 in restitution to Google and a $2,500 fine. The sentence exceeded the federal guideline range of zero to six months. Chhabria characterized Ding’s...

The London Stock Exchange and Kraken parent Payward have partnered to bring the 100 largest London-listed companies onchain through xStocks, expanding the tokenized-equity platform beyond its existing international markets. The 100 largest London-listed companies are expected to become available as xStocks in the coming weeks. Each token will be backed 1:1 by its underlying security and can move between supported exchanges, self-custody wallets and onchain applications. Top London Stocks Expand xStocks Beyond U.S. Equities The London rollout will give eligible...

BitGo has acquired NYDIG’s institutional trading business and related assets, expanding its derivatives, financing and capital-markets capabilities as NYDIG concentrates resources on Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing infrastructure. The completed acquisition brings NYDIG’s institutional client trading relationships and roughly 30 employees into BitGo. Financial terms were not disclosed. NYDIG’s trading operation serves asset managers, hedge funds, corporations, family offices and other institutional clients through derivatives, structured products, financing and customized trading strategies. BitGo Adds Trading and Financing to Institutional Stack...

X is preparing to add trade buttons for crypto assets, moving the social platform closer to letting users go from discovering a token to trading it without leaving the app. Nikita Bier said trade buttons are “coming soon” alongside X's existing Cashtags infrastructure, which can display Solana and Ethereum charts inside posts and recognize contract addresses for newly launched tokens. A launch date, supported token list and execution partner have not been disclosed. Trade Buttons Build on X Cashtags X...