Crypto Pulse—Bitcoin

Overview The prefix on a Bitcoin address tells you which generation of the technology it belongs to and how much extra or less you will pay in fees for using it. Four common formats coexist on mainnet today: legacy addresses starting with 1, nested SegWit addresses starting with 3, native SegWit addresses starting with bc1q, and Taproot addresses starting with bc1p. Only three differences matter between them: how much block space the same transfer occupies, which wallets and platforms can send t

Overview Hashrate and mining difficulty are the two most direct indicators of Bitcoin network condition, yet they are frequently misread as separate things. They are in fact two expressions of the same thing: difficulty is set by past block speed, and block speed is set by hashrate. As of October 23, 2026, per CoinWarz data, mining difficulty stands at 140.58T at block height 972,740, having risen 5.92% from 132.72T on October 16. On hashrate, per pickaxe's October 15 figure the network ran near

Overview The CME gap is one of the most widely repeated technical claims in bitcoin trading, and its central assertion is that a gap eventually gets filled, making it usable as a price target. That claim can now be tested properly, for two reasons. The first is that CME Group moved its crypto futures and options to around-the-clock trading on May 29, 2026, so weekend gaps no longer form and the phenomenon constitutes a closed, complete dataset. The second is that a statistical study covering 427

Overview On-chain realized profit reached roughly $1.03 billion in a single day on October 8, the second-highest daily figure of 2026 and only narrowly below the year's $1.04 billion peak. According to DailyCoin, citing Santiment data, that burst of selling landed after bitcoin pushed to about $87,000, and the price promptly slid back toward $81,000 for a weekly loss of 5%, alongside roughly $520 million in long liquidations and more than $702 million in US spot bitcoin ETF outflows. Fortune's p

Overview Sending bitcoin on-chain and sending it over the Lightning Network are two different cost structures, not two speeds of the same thing. On-chain fees are charged by transaction size in bytes and are indifferent to the amount being moved, so sending $50 costs roughly what sending $500,000 costs. Lightning fees are charged as a proportion of the amount and are indifferent to byte size, so small payments cost almost nothing while large ones run into routing limits. Grasping that single asy

Overview Two wallets each hold 0.1 BTC. At the same moment, at the same fee rate, sending the same payment, one of them can pay more than five times what the other pays. The difference is not the amount. It is whether that 0.1 BTC sits in a single unspent output or is scattered across dozens of small ones. The question is worth examining now because the network is in a cheap window. According to ChainQuery's fee pressure report, as of mid-October the fastest tier sits at 2 sat/vB while the half-

Overview Bitcoin fell from roughly $84,200 to $81,382 on October 12. The Block, citing CoinGlass data, reported $771 million in market-wide liquidations over 24 hours, of which $685.6 million came from long positions. The same report noted US spot bitcoin ETFs saw $681.1 million in net outflows the prior week, their worst since late June. Prices recovered the next day, with Analytics Insight citing CoinGecko putting BTC at $83,749.87 on the morning of October 13 after an intraday dip toward $81,

Overview A mainstream 270 TH/s mining rig currently grosses about $10.5 a day. That figure comes straight off the live dashboard at Luxor's Hashrate Index, where hashprice sits at $39.05 per PH/s per day, network hashrate runs near 1,014 EH/s and projected difficulty stands at 132.72 T. Bitcoin itself traded around $83,750 on October 13 according to CoinGecko data, after dipping toward $81,000 intraday. Price is not far off its highs. Miner revenue per unit of hashrate is close to its lows. The

Overview As of roughly 07:00 UTC on October 13, with the chain at block 971,119, moving bitcoin on-chain costs almost nothing. The recommended fee endpoint at mempool.space puts the next-block tier at 6 sat/vB, the half-hour tier at 5, the hour tier at 4, the economy tier at 2 and the floor at 1. A standard single-input, two-output native SegWit payment occupies about 140.75 vB, so the fastest tier works out to roughly 844 satoshis, or under $0.70 with BTC near $83,368. The number that misleads

Overview The options market is currently pricing bitcoin volatility in the high thirties. According to the CF Benchmarks index page for BVX, the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index stood at 38.01 at 10:40 GMT on October 9. The same day, per CryptoTimes' coverage of that session's options settlement, Deribit's DVOL index read 36.26, at-the-money implied volatility was 32.0%, and bitcoin traded near $82,465. What matters is not the level but its relationship to volatility that has already occurred. CF