Fogo, a $20 million chain, carried most of the board's 20.6% rise

A spy chip hidden in resold Ledger wallets dominated the week, while bitcoin briefly slipped under $80,000. On-chain, the board’s daily transaction total rose 20.6%, and one small chain did most of the lifting. The week’s question: how much of a big number is activity, and how much is the way it gets counted?

Things that mattered

A spy chip in resold Ledger wallets

Ledger said a chip inside devices sold by reseller CryptoBilis transmitted wallet keys over a mobile network, and MediaMarkt Saturn stopped selling its devices (CoinDesk). Ledger then asked resellers to halt sales in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong while investigators establish where the tampering occurred (Cointelegraph).

Why it matters: scrutiny has moved to the middlemen who handle a wallet before it reaches its buyer, authorized sellers included.

Quantum moves up the agenda

Google said its Willow chip can prepare the quantum states needed for advanced calculations with about 40 times fewer errors, easing one bottleneck behind any future attempt to crack bitcoin wallets (CoinDesk). Nine crypto companies launched a Quantum Alliance, though they disagree on when the threat arrives and whether vulnerable BTC should be frozen (CoinDesk).

Why it matters: the argument is shifting from whether to prepare to who decides what happens to vulnerable coins.

Bitcoin dips under $80,000, then bounces

A hot September CPI report sent bitcoin sharply lower (CoinDesk), and nearly $1 billion in crypto bets were liquidated, with ether accounting for nearly 60% of the forced closures (CoinDesk). Buyers pulled bitcoin back to $82,500 within two hours of the dip (CoinDesk).

Why it matters: bitcoin spent the week trading in step with inflation prints and Seoul’s chipmakers.

Narrative vs Network

Not every headline was about risk. The XRP Ledger collected a run of business news: Ripple brought Stripe-owned Privy wallets to the ledger (The Block), and DriveWealth said it will use RLUSD on it for stablecoin settlement (The Block). On-chain, transactions rose 7.9% to 2.40 million a day, winning back part of the previous week’s 25.7% fall. The headlines were louder; the network, for once, agreed with them.

The scoreboard

The XRP Ledger held ninth, while the top of the board kept climbing. Solana led at a provisional 429.4 million transactions a day, up 9.7%. Lighter rose 23.9% to 133.8 million in third, behind a second place that gets its own section below. Injective, after last week’s 510.3% jump, fell back out of the top ten and now sits below IOTA’s 2.08 million a day; IOTA took tenth on a 4.2% rise. MegaETH also dropped out.

The reality check

Second place is where last week’s other open question sits. Fogo’s provisional count had quadrupled to 135.2 million transactions a day, and the test was whether it would fall back toward 32.2 million. It went the other way: Fogo recorded 230.6 million a day this week, up another 70.5%, roughly seven times its level two weeks ago. Its gain alone, about 95 million a day, makes up nearly two-thirds of the whole board’s net rise, so the week’s headline growth is largely one chain’s story. The market values Fogo at about $20.1 million; Lighter, recording fewer transactions in third, carries a $756 million market cap. A rise that holds for two weeks starts to look like a pattern. A seven-fold one earns a third look.

Bitcoin pulse

Bitcoin’s network was calmer than its price. Hashrate is estimated at 943.2 EH/s, up 1% on the week. Difficulty adjusted up 5.92% on October 16, with the next change currently estimated at -1.36%. Fees stayed near the floor at 1 sat/vB, the same as the week before.

One number

4.9%. That is how far Stellar’s daily count fell this week, to 3.69 million, making it the only top-ten chain to record a decline. Every one of its nine neighbours rose.

Keep an eye on

Back to the counting question. Solana has set October 21 for its Alpenglow upgrade, which will remove vote transactions from blocks and could sharply change headline transaction counts even if activity stays flat (CoinDesk). Starknet’s seven-day vote on researching an independent post-quantum layer 1, opened on Thursday, closes in the coming days (The Block).

Next Sunday, the leader of the board gets measured with a new ruler, and the gap between first and second could look very different.

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