Company advised users not to visit or interact with the link in question and said it will share any further verified updates.

Bitcoin-only hardware wallet Coldcard said a phishing link appeared Sunday on its official X account, for which it has used offline two-factor authentication and tightly restricted access since 2017.

The company said it was investigating how the post, which has since been deleted, was published from its account.

It advised users not to visit or interact with the link in question, adding that Coldcard’s only official website is https://coldcard.com.&

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Ledger said the incident appeared to be isolated to a single reseller and its Southeast Asian market.

Hardware wallet maker Ledger, which has been investigating reports of crypto losses involving its devices purchased from a Southeast Asian reseller, confirmed that one of the affected users’ devices contained an unauthorized hardware implant.

Ledger said in a Saturday post on X that it was contacting users as part of its ongoing investigation into the losses, which investigator Specter estimated may exceed $86 million across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron.

Ledger asked that individuals who have information regarding the investigation to contact its bounty program at bounty@ledger.fr.

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The two measures attempt to set the stage for a potential US Supreme Court battle over federal and state jurisdiction.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued two proposals, one that would define event contracts as “swaps” under federal law and another that excludes traditional casino gambling from that definition.

Several states have sued prediction-market operators, including Kalshi and Polymarket, alleging illegal gambling, and the CFTC has countersued to defend its federal jurisdiction over event contracts, which it claims are beyond the purview of state regulators.

The first proposal clarifies the definition of “swap” to include event contracts, including those tied to sports, politics, cultural events and weather.

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“We’re ready to bring quantum resistance to mainnet at any time,” Sun said in a post on X.

Justin Sun, founder of the Tron network, said that the company’s post-quantum cryptography was now live on testnet.

“We’re closely tracking progress in quantum computing and AI, and we’re ready to bring quantum resistance to mainnet at any time, Sun said in a post on X on Saturday.

He added, “We’re committed to keeping user assets secure, and TRON is set to be one of the few major blockchains that is quantum-resistant before Q-Day,” or the day when quantum computing becomes capable of breaking current security standards.

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Recent incidents at OpenAI ‌and Anthropic stoke global concerns and fears that rogue AI agents may venture beyond human control.

While recent incidents at OpenAI ‌and Anthropic fuel fears that rogue AI agents may venture beyond human control, the European Union’s tech chief said the bloc’s rule on AI use are more than capable of dealing with the challenges.

“We see that the safety and security of very capable models is a very hot ​topic internationally and we in Europe are well equipped for that,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told Reuters in an interview published on Friday.

She dismissed critics who claim the bloc’s AI rules are outdated. While the EU’s AI Act, which regulates based on the level of risk, is among the world’s strictest AI regulations, it was adopted two years ago.

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The round follows increased international demand for Meanwhile’s Bitcoin life insurance policies amid broader macro instability.

Meanwhile, a life insurer licensed to operate completely in Bitcoin, announced $37.5 million in new funding from existing investors.

Bermuda-based Meanwhile, whose backers include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has now raised more than $180 million.

Bain Capital Crypto led the new round, alongside Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Morgan Creek Digital, it said in a statement.

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The Treasury Department has announced several digital asset seizures related to sanctions on Iran as part of US sanctions.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the country was “probably gonna seize a billion dollars of crypto this week” as part of its crackdowns on Iran.

Speaking at the Newsmax Policy Summit on Thursday, Bessent said the planned cryptocurrency seizure was part of the US sanctions on Iran amid the country’s most recent military conflict, which started in February.& He did not clarify whether the digital assets targeted specific exchanges or resulted from intervention by stablecoin issuers.

“We know where it is, and we are isolating them,” said Bessent to Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren. He added the move was part of a strategy of economically cutting off Iran.

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The agreement resolves a 2023 civil fraud lawsuit against the Celsius founder and permanently bars him from the cryptocurrency, securities and commodities industries.

Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky has been permanently barred from the cryptocurrency, securities and commodities industries under a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James that includes up to $35 million in conditional payments.

The New York agreement, announced Friday, settles a 2023 civil lawsuit accusing Mashinsky of misleading hundreds of thousands of investors about the safety of Celsius before its collapse in 2022.

Under the settlement,& Mashinsky must pay New York $25 million if he fails to forfeit an additional $10 million in ill-gotten gains to the federal government beyond assets already forfeited, and another $10 million if he does not serve his full prison sentence.

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Chad Barraford, technical co-founder of the network, said that the funds were frozen and then unfrozen without explanation.

THORChain technical co-founder Chad Barraford accused stablecoin issuer Tether of blacklisting the network’s USDt (USDT) vaults without explanation, then unfreezing them hours later.&

In a Friday X post, Barraford said that Tether had blacklisted THORChain vault addresses, freezing about a combined 1.45 million USDT in the network’s funds across four wallets. He reported about two hours later than trading would resume after the company unfroze all the addresses.

“We don’t know why this choice was made and have had no comms with USDT before this action and are actively reaching out to have a conversation,” said Barraford before the addresses were unfrozen. “We hope that this was made in error / misunderstanding.”

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The technical trial showed how AI agents could discover services and make micropayments using HSBC’s tokenized deposits, with real-time settlement and risk checks.

British banking giant HSBC and Ant Digital Technologies have tested a system that lets AI agents access digital services and make micropayments using tokenized bank deposits, with transactions settled in real time on a blockchain testnet.

According to Friday’s announcement, the test combined HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service with Ant Digital’s Anvita Flow network, which enables AI agents to find and use services, and Jovay Testnet, a layer-2 blockchain testing environment.

HSBC provided settlement capabilities and real-time risk checks, while Ant Digital’s network coordinated service access and payments. The demonstration showed an AI agent selecting a digital service and completing a payment. The companies described the transactions as micropayments, typically defined as less than $2.

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Hardware wallet maker Ledger probes losses tied to reseller CryptoBilis, as researchers separately estimate more than $72 million to $86 million in suspected crypto thefts.

Hardware wallet maker Ledger is investigating reports of cryptocurrency losses involving devices purchased from a Southeast Asian reseller, warning affected customers to consider moving their assets to new wallets while the investigation continues.

In a statement posted on X, Ledger said it had asked reseller CryptoBilis to suspend sales and shipments of its devices as a precaution. Customers who purchased devices from the reseller within the past 90 days were advised not to set them up, while those who had already done so were advised to consider transferring their assets to a new Ledger signer with a newly generated recovery phrase.

CryptoBilis is listed as an authorized Ledger reseller in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

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The crypto company has reportedly applied for two licenses with the US commodities regulatory as the courts weigh prediction markets cases.

Blockchain.com has reportedly applied to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for approval of prediction market offerings and crypto derivatives.&

CNBC reported Friday that the exchange filed for two licenses with the CFTC for event contracts and crypto derivatives offerings for US-based retail and institutional investors. The licenses, as a designated contract market (DCM) and futures commission merchant (FCM), would allow Blockchain.com to operate as a futures exchange for event contracts and a broker for derivatives contracts, respectively.

Blockchain.com announced in July that it planned to partner with Polymarket as part of a& prediction markets integration on the company’s app. However, if approved, the CFTC license would allow the exchange to offer its own marketplace with event contracts.

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Wealthy investors are embracing crypto faster than their advisers, while OKX attracts new funding and Strategy shifts more capital toward preferred stock buybacks.

Affluent investors appear increasingly comfortable with crypto, even if their financial advisers aren’t keeping pace. A new CoinShares survey found that a majority of wealthy investors across seven major economies already own digital assets, with many planning to increase their exposure this year.

The findings come as capital continues to move into crypto in other ways, even against a tougher market backdrop. Bitcoin is trying to build on its best quarter since 2017 while Treasury yields remain above 5%, and OKX has raised additional funding at a $25 billion valuation.

Meanwhile, Strategy is putting more capital into its preferred stock. The company spent more than six times as much buying back STRC shares last week as it did buying Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin and crypto markets eyed a recovery from Thursday’s drop despite concerns of another hardware wallet exploit.

Bitcoin (BTC) sought to avoid fresh losses on Friday as crypto markets digested reports of an exploit affecting Ledger hardware wallets.

Key points:

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Dragonfly’s Qureshi argued that asset migration is not a real solution in case of AI models breaking cryptographic signatures, and urged blockchains to adopt proactive measures.

Dragonfly’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, called Ethereum researcher Justin Drake’s “bunker mode” warning “cryptographic doomerism,” and said migrating tokens to fresh addresses was not a real solution against the threat of artificial intelligence breaking cryptographic signatures.

“Bunker mode” would only protect investors’ coins as long as they weren’t moved from the fresh address, wrote Qureshi in a Thursday X post, adding that these coins would be “worthless if all of the other coins are being hacked and mass-sold.”&

Instead, Qureshi urged blockchain networks to adopt proactive measures to protect users against the event of AI breaking cryptographic signatures. He proposed a “Cryptographic Recovery Mode,” a hash-based backup signature plan that users could map to their addresses, enabling validators to force recovery if cryptographic signatures were broken.

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French authorities recorded 90 crypto-related cases involving kidnapping, extortion, threats and violent theft in seven months. What makes France such a hotspot?

French authorities have recorded 90 cases involving kidnapping, abduction, extortion, threats, and violent theft related to cryptocurrencies in just over seven months.

The figures, provided to Cointelegraph by the French Interior Ministry, are from Jan. 1 to mid-August 2026. Authorities also recorded 223 arrests, and 126 people were imprisoned from January to July.

The figures equate to a new case every two and a half days, although there is no official year-on-year comparison to understand if the problem has become suddenly worse: “We do not have the statistics on these items for 2025, as the recording of events began on Jan. 1, 2026,” the ministry says.

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ESMA is seeking industry feedback on the legal, liquidity and operational risks of tokenized collateral before deciding whether additional EU regulatory measures are necessary.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) wants evidence that clearinghouses can access tokenized collateral and turn it into cash if markets come under stress.

ESMA published a call for evidence Friday to seek industry feedback on the implications of tokenized collateral.

“We must create the conditions for tokenized markets to operate safely and at scale across borders, with legal certainty, interoperable infrastructures and appropriate supervision,” ESMA Chair Verena Ross said.

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The UK sanctioned crypto exchanges and payment processors, some of which were tied to thousands of Russian entities and the sanctioned HTX exchange.

The UK government has sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms suspected of helping Russian entities circumvent financial sanctions.

Three of the service providers were linked to Kyrgyzstan, while two of them facilitated transactions with the Kremlin-backed A7 network, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) announced Thursday.

Cutting off these platforms makes it harder for sanctioned entities to move and access funds, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that the A7 financial network claimed to have moved more than $90 billion last year, or nearly half of Russia’s annual military expenditure.

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France’s Finance Committee backed taxes on stablecoin swaps, as well as unrealized crypto gains when households with more than 800,000 euros move abroad.

France’s National Assembly Finance Committee approved proposals this week to tax swaps into fiat-pegged stablecoins and extend the country’s exit tax to crypto investors.

Amendment I-CF1826, submitted by French MP Nicolas Sansu and adopted Wednesday, would make crypto conversions into fiat-pegged stablecoins taxable events from Jan. 1, 2027.

The explanatory text describes the current tax treatment as a “loophole in the legislation,” according to a machine translation.

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Bitcoin dipped below $81,000, sparking mass crypto liquidations as traders sent BTC to exchanges at a loss.

A Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins sell-off triggered more than $1 billion in liquidations over 24 hours as short-term holders sent tens of thousands of BTC to exchanges at a loss.

Key points:

Data from CoinGlass put total crypto liquidations at $1.09 billion for the 24 hours to 10 am UTC on Friday.

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Bitcoin ETFs lost $244 million on Thursday, while Ether funds extended their outflow streak to eight sessions, shedding $641 million.

US spot Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded nearly $1 billion in combined net outflows so far in October.

According to Farside Investors, Bitcoin ETFs recorded $244.1 million in net outflows on Thursday, following $484.9 million in withdrawals on Wednesday, the largest daily outflow since June 25.

Ether ETFs posted $72.5 million in net outflows on Thursday, extending their losing streak to eight consecutive trading sessions. The funds have shed about $641.3 million in net outflows over the streak, which began Sept. 29.

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Anthropic’s new opt-in service promises vulnerability reports from its strongest AI models, including Claude Mythos.

Ethereum client developer Nethermind and Bitcoin and Lightning wallet ZEUS are among several crypto companies to apply for a newly launched Anthropic program that gives open-source projects access to security reports from its most powerful AI models.&

The projects submitted enrollment requests on Friday for OSS Scanner, which Anthropic launched on Thursday with the aim of helping open-source developers find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.

“These reports will be generated by our strongest models (including Claude Mythos) to give open-source projects the largest defensive advantage,” Anthropic said in its announcement.

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The White House outlined a $215 million quantum computing competition and $2.4 billion in AI industry commitments as concerns grow over quantum threats to cryptocurrency security.

The Trump administration has announced over $6 billion in science initiatives, including a $215 million quantum computing competition and $2.4 billion in industry commitments for artificial intelligence tools and computing resources.&

On Thursday, the Department of Energy identified eight scientific applications to guide its Quantum Genesis Q Competition, which offers up to $215 million in planned funding to companies developing fault-tolerant quantum computers.

First announced in September, the funding includes milestone-based awards and incentive prizes for companies that demonstrate increasingly powerful quantum systems. The research priorities span chemistry, materials science, subatomic physics and applied mathematics.

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The rules are set to take effect next week, allowing crypto ETFs to trade exclusively on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

Update (Oct. 9 at 1:10 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from Binance Thailand CEO Nirun Fuwattananukul.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday finalized rules allowing crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to list on Thailand’s main stock exchange, limited initially to Bitcoin and Ether.

The regulator said the rules will take effect on Oct. 16, 2026. Crypto ETFs must be listed for trading exclusively on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Products linked to foreign crypto ETFs, such as depositary receipts, will not be permitted initially, while Thai brokers will remain barred from facilitating investments in overseas crypto ETFs for retail investors outside institutions and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

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The letter follows a report by the Democratic investigators last month alleging Tether’s USDT has become a key tool for Iran’s shadow banking network.

US investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald is facing scrutiny from a Senate Democrat over its ties to Tether, with Senator Richard Blumenthal demanding records on the firm’s partnership with the stablecoin issuer and how much Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s family has made from the arrangement.&

In a letter on Thursday, Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, asked Cantor chairman Brandon Lutnick to explain how it monitors Tether’s compliance with banking and sanctions laws, along with all communications involving Howard Lutnick about Tether, including after he left Cantor.

“Disturbingly, Cantor Fitzgerald’s lucrative business arrangements with Tether come at the expense of America’s national security,” Blumenthal wrote.&

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Despite ongoing bans, China has seen a big surge in peer-to-peer stablecoin use. New figures show South Korea’s $450B crypto economy is the largest in East Asia.

The number of unique wallets sending peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin transactions in China grew 43-fold between the first quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2026, according to Chainalysis.

The blockchain analytics company recorded $104.1 billion across 18.1 million transfers involving China’s self-custodied stablecoin holdings during the 2026 reporting period, which ran from July 2025 to June 2026.

Stablecoin holdings turned over 33.2 times per year, more than three times the global average of 9.3, a pattern Chainalysis said was consistent with users treating stablecoins as working capital.

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Securitize’s new offering gives eligible investors access to tokenized shares of 12 US companies, with dividend and voting rights and plans for round-the-clock trading.

Securitize shares climbed about 10% Thursday as the company launched tokenized versions of major US stocks on Solana, offering eligible investors exposure to equities backed by underlying shares with dividend and voting rights.

The new offering, called Securitize Stocks, includes tokenized shares of Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla and eight other US-listed companies. The tokens are backed one-for-one by underlying shares and will initially trade during extended market hours through Securitize’s registered broker-dealer platform, according to Thursday’s announcement.

Securitize (SECZ) stock. Source: Yahoo Finance

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According to the league, Kalshi and other prediction markets “threaten game integrity” because many event contracts are “highly susceptible to manipulation.”

The National Football League (NFL) largely sided with New Jersey officials in their petition for the Supreme Court to consider a case on sports bets through prediction markets platforms&

In an amicus brief filed with the US Supreme Court on Wednesday, the NFL called on the justices to grant a petition for a writ of certiorari from New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and gaming enforcement interim director Mary Jo Flaherty. The filing came in response to New Jersey officials petitioning the court to consider its case against Kalshi, potentially resolving whether the jurisdiction of prediction market companies falls under state authorities or federal agencies.

The football league supported many of the New Jersey authorities’ arguments, including that the case addresses potential issues with labeling sporting-event contracts on prediction market platforms as “swaps” and that it should be reviewed to “preserve game integrity” and “protect customers.” The group cited data showing that on the first Sunday of the football season, “more than half of all prediction-markets’ trading volume,” about $1.8 billion of $3.3 billion, related to the NFL.

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Sam Bankman-Fried remains in federal prison following his 2023 conviction, while Caroline Ellison was released in January.

Video streaming platform Netflix released a trailer for its eight-episode series about the lead-up to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, centered on former CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried and his colleague and girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who headed the company’s sister arm, Alameda Research.

In a Thursday X post, Netflix showed footage from the upcoming series to be released on Nov. 19 “about the love scorned prodigies behind the FTX scandal.” The series, starring Anthony Boyle as Bankman-Fried and Julia Garner as Ellison, seemed to focus on the idea that “going all-in every time is the mathematically optimal strategy,” likely referring to the crypto exchange’s high-risk investments using user funds.

“Lying isn’t bad for a good cause,” said Garner as Ellison in the trailer. The line echoes Ellison’s testimony at Bankman-Fried’s 2023 criminal trial, when she said he believed rules against lying and stealing did not necessarily apply to effective altruism. The philosophy emphasizes doing the most good possible, including through “earning to give,” the practice of accumulating wealth to donate to charitable causes.

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The global financial institution found tokenized equity markets less liquid and more volatile than traditional markets, despite growing demand for 24/7 trading.

Tokenization could reshape financial markets by making trading and settlement more efficient, but& legal uncertainty and risks to financial stability could hinder wider adoption, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a Thursday& analysis, the IMF said tokenized financial markets are growing rapidly but& remain small compared with traditional markets, with poor interoperability and a lack of widely accepted settlement assets among the key obstacles to expansion.

The gap between tokenization’s potential and its current scale is evident in trading activity.& Tokenized repurchase agreements, or repos,& dominate tokenized trading activity, averaging $300 billion to $350 billion in daily transaction volume, compared with roughly $13 trillion traded daily in the broader US repo market.

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Bitcoin dipped below $81,000 and oil prices gained after reports that military confrontation between the US and Iran could return.

Bitcoin (BTC) risked losing key support at $82,500 after Thursday’s Wall Street open as oil prices gained over concerns of US-Iran military action.

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Blockchain analysts identified the US government wallet tied to the recovery of funds from the Bitfinex hack.

The US government completed another major transaction involving seized cryptocurrency hours after moving a significant amount of Bitcoin to a Coinbase Prime wallet.

Blockchain data from Wednesday showed that a wallet associated with crypto seized by the US government had transferred more than 12,267 Bitcoin (BTC), worth more than $1 billion at the time of publication. The move came just hours after similar transfers from the government totaling $770 million in BTC to a Coinbase Prime wallet.

Arkham Research linked the wallet moving the Bitcoin to the recovery of funds from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, in which hackers stole 119,756 BTC. The identity of the owner of the recipient address was unknown at the time of publication.

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Tokenization offers structural advantages to financial institutions and helps asset managers reach new markets, according to Fidelity’s head of digital asset strategists.

Financial institutions are increasingly moving toward an onchain future with tokenization initiatives which provide access to new markets and offer structural advantages compared to traditional investment products, according to Matthew Horne, head of digital asset strategists at Fidelity Investments.

“In the last 18 months, if you look at the push by true institutions to move toward an onchain future, it’s really no going back,” said Horne during a panel discussion at Longitude Singapore on Thursday.&

US asset managers are particularly incentivized to move assets onchain as tokenization provides better investor access and helps them “reach new markets,” explained Horne.

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Crypto lending has risen by 55% since July, but now has to deal with the dangers of AI assisted hacks, and risks cascading through interlinked protocols. Here’s how to stay safe.

As the charts flip from red to green, crypto lending has seen a resurgence of interest after a particularly dismal second quarter.

Figures from Galaxy show that $11.33 billion left the sector in Q2 — partly due to the crisis of confidence in lenders caused by the Kelp DAO hack in April that left users of the most trusted protocol, Aave, unable to access their ETH.

Since the beginning of July, however, total lending value locked has gained more than 55% to sit around $56 billion today.

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MEPs also called for stronger asset recovery, while the Commission plans to adopt its first anti-corruption strategy by the end of this year.

Lawmakers are urging the European Commission to address corruption risks linked to crypto assets, opaque ownership structures and digital tools in its upcoming anti-corruption strategy.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Thursday also called for stronger efforts to trace, freeze, confiscate and recover criminal proceeds.

Parliament adopted a nonbinding resolution Thursday outlining its priorities for the EC’s anti-corruption strategy.

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Hashi has more than $500M in commitments ahead of mainnet launch, while Anchorage offers institutions settlement and self-custody.

Mysten Labs’ Hashi Bitcoin finance network will begin a phased rollout in October with more than $500 million in capital commitments from its launch partners.

Hashi uses Bitcoin (BTC) as collateral in Sui applications by minting hBTC on Sui against deposited Bitcoin, the Sui Foundation announced Thursday. Applications could include lending, borrowing, credit, vaults and structured products.

When users exit, hBTC is burned and the underlying BTC is returned to the Bitcoin network.&

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The US government moved 9,261 Bitcoin to Coinbase Prime, including 2,456 BTC in newly discovered funds pointing to federal law enforcement seizures.

The US government moved 9,261 Bitcoin worth $770 million to Coinbase Prime, stemming from asset seizures tied to previous cryptocurrency exploits.

Of the 9,261 Bitcoin (BTC) transferred over the past two days, half was recovered from the Bitfinex hackers, while another portion stemmed from known Binance seizures, wrote Galaxy Research in a Thursday X post.

An additional 2,456 BTC originated from previously unknown holdings and was sent to the US government’s seizure address on Coinbase Prime and may represent new law enforcement seizures, according to Galaxy.

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Bitcoin’s realized cap rise in the 30 days to Oct. 5 came mostly from existing holders, not fresh capital, Glassnode data showed.

Bitcoin (BTC) price gains do not yet reflect enough new capital entering the market, analysis warns.

Key points:

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ESMA said EU crypto firms should halt services involving non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins, giving regulators three months to address existing exposures.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said in guidance issued as an opinion to regulators in European Union member states that crypto firms should stop providing services involving stablecoins that aren’t compliant with the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework, including holding them for customers.

ESMA said Thursday that national regulators should require companies to address remaining exposures to non-compliant stablecoins as soon as possible and no later than Jan. 8, 2027, setting a three-month deadline to address existing exposures.&

ESMA’s January 2025 guidance said custody and transfers of non-compliant stablecoins could remain available. The new opinion extends its supervisory expectations to those services, allowing them only temporarily to help customers exit existing positions.

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Eligible US Galaxy will be able to send USDC to crypto wallets and transfer funds to bank accounts in more than 60 countries.

Samsung plans to introduce USDC transfers to the Samsung Wallet payment app for eligible US Galaxy users in the last week of October.

The company announced that the feature will let users send USDC to compatible crypto wallets internationally and transfer money to eligible bank accounts in more than 60 countries, where recipients can receive funds in their local currency.&

Samsung said the feature will be available on 82 million compatible Galaxy devices in the US, but users must complete identity verification to access the service.

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NEAR climbed into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, as NEAR Intents surpassed $31 billion in cumulative transaction volume.

NEAR Protocol’s native token entered the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization on Thursday after rising $138% in the last 30 days, according to CoinGecko.&

At the time of writing, NEAR traded around $5.51, up about 7% over 24 hours, with a market cap of about $7.2 billion and 24-hour trading volume reaching roughly $1.2 billion. NEAR ranks ahead of Stellar (XLM), which has a market cap of nearly $7 billion.&

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain trading protocol, has handled over $31 billion in cumulative transaction volume, according to the NEAR Intents Explorer.&

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Standard Chartered plans custody for cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized assets for institutional and eligible corporate clients in Singapore.

Standard Chartered announced plans to launch digital asset custody services for institutional clients in Singapore.

The London-headquartered multinational bank plans to offer custody services for select cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets to institutional clients and corporate clients qualifying as accredited investors, subject to applicable regulatory requirements, according to a Thursday press release.

Cointelegraph asked Standard Chartered which cryptocurrencies its custody service will support but did not receive an immediate response.

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Greece’s draft bill proposes a 10% tax on crypto capital gains, with exemptions for annual gains of up to 500 euros and crypto-to-crypto swaps.

Greece’s Ministry of National Economy and Finance published a draft bill on Wednesday proposing a 10% tax on individuals’ crypto capital gains, with an exemption for annual gains of up to 500 euros ($559.95).

The proposal would allow voluntary declaration of previously realized crypto gains without penalties, within 12 months of the law’s publication. It would exempt crypto-to-crypto swaps from capital gains tax and introduce a flat 10% tax on returns from staking, lending or liquidity provision.

The draft bill would fill a legislative gap in Greece’s treatment of crypto taxation, according to the ministry.

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Bitcoin ETFs erased October’s net inflows with $485 million in withdrawals, while Ether funds logged a seventh straight outflow session.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $484.9 million in net outflows on Wednesday, reversing Tuesday’s $118.8 million net inflow.

The withdrawals were the largest since June 25, when the funds lost $691.7 million, according to Farside Investors.

Wednesday’s outflows wiped out the $321.6 million in net inflows recorded over October’s first four trading sessions, leaving Bitcoin ETFs with approximately $163 million in net outflows for the month.&

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Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urged the crypto industry to balance its support for Democrats and Republicans if they want federal crypto legislation passed.

The crypto industry’s heavy backing of US Republicans has alienated Democrats whose support is needed to pass federal crypto legislation, says former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Speaking in a panel with OKX CEO Star Xu at Token2049 on Tuesday, Cuomo said the industry “believed in investing heavily in the Republican Party” as a way to get the CLARITY Act passed.&

Crypto-focused political action committees tracked by Tech Influence Watch have spent $54.3 million supporting Republicans in the 2026 election cycle, compared with $26.2 million supporting Democrats. Another $23.2 million has been spent opposing Democrats, according to the tracker’s latest figures checked on Thursday.& &

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Canton CEO Yuval Rooz compared blockchain adoption to Uber and Airbnb, arguing that widespread adoption could help insulate it from potential policy reversals.

Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz said the crypto industry should use the current regulatory environment to accelerate institutional adoption, arguing that widespread use of blockchain could make it harder for future administrations to reverse the industry’s progress.

Speaking at Token2049 in Singapore, Rooz said the industry should make blockchain so widely used that whatever happens in 2028, “there is no going back.” The next US presidential election, which could bring a change in administration and regulatory priorities, is scheduled for Nov. 7, 2028.&

He compared the opportunity to Uber and Airbnb, where he argued both services became entrenched before policymakers could effectively restrict them. “By the time people got their act together and decided, OK, we wanna legislate against those companies, it was too late,” Rooz said.&

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The Ethereum researcher said crypto users should consider moving funds to fresh addresses, warning AI could threaten private-key security before quantum computers do.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has urged the industry to prepare for “bunker mode,” recommending users gradually move assets to fresh addresses amid concerns that advances in artificial intelligence could undermine the cryptography used in today’s blockchains.

In an X post on Wednesday, Drake said recent advances in AI, particularly OpenAI’s release of mathematical breakthroughs, suggest AI could eventually make it possible to break the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) used to secure cryptocurrency wallets.

“It is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA breaks before qday, in the worst case in months not years,” said Drake.&

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Ethereum researchers say crypto users should consider an orderly migration of funds to fresh addresses, warning AI could threaten private-key security before quantum computers do.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has backed a new warning that advances in artificial intelligence could undermine the cryptography used in today’s blockchains before quantum computers do.&

Buterin was responding to a post from Ethereum researcher Justin Drake on Wednesday urging the industry to prepare for “bunker mode,” as AI could eventually make it possible to break the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) used to secure cryptocurrency wallets. Drake said users should begin a gradual migration of funds to fresh wallets where their public key is not exposed.

“I don’t recommend anyone scramble to move their funds to new wallets today,” Buterin wrote. “But we should take the risks to cryptography from AI-accelerated math seriously.”

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The partnership with SAP-backed Tereina will let businesses send and receive Circle’s stablecoins from within the financial software they already use.

Circle is bringing its USDC and EURC stablecoins into enterprise payment workflows through a partnership with Tereina, a financial services company backed by German enterprise software giant SAP.

The integration will allow businesses using SAP’s financial software to send and receive USDC and EURC within the applications they already use to manage payments. USDC will be the preferred stablecoin for dollar-denominated transactions, while EURC will be available for euro-denominated payments.

Source: Circle

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“Trump’s coin was max extraction, and I wanted to troll every grift like it,“ said Hunter Biden in a breakdown of the memecoin launch and fallout.

Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, released a full accounting of the memecoin he helped launch last month based on the reports of his infamous laptop.

In a series of X posts on Wednesday, Biden provided blockchain data confirming that 300 million tokens in wallets associated with the founders of the $LAPTOP memecoin “haven’t moved since launch.”

Biden added that charts tracking the price of the memecoin “looked like every celebrity rug ever” shortly after launch on Sept. 9, and the ones to benefit most were unnamed market makers — referred to as “two professional trading firms” hired by the project — that pulled their funds seconds after the peak price of about $317.

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The layer-1 blockchain said its programmable offchain tunnels reached the milestone during a live stress test designed to simulate high-frequency activity between AI agents.

Sui’s programmable offchain tunnels reached 40.6 million transactions per second in a live test designed to simulate high-frequency activity between AI agents.

Sui said its programmable offchain tunnels processed more than 40 million transactions per second during a live stress test, surpassing a previous record set in July. The test, conducted Wednesday at Sui Basecamp in Singapore, peaked at 40,614,180 TPS, up from about 6.1 million TPS in a similar test in July.

The transactions were processed offchain through Sui tunnels, programmable channels that settle to the Sui blockchain when closed. More than 10,000 tunnels were opened on Sui mainnet during the test, with activity spanning payments, games and chat applications.

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The agreement will explore a tenge-backed stablecoin pilot and a framework for tokenizing real-world assets as Kazakhstan expands its digital asset industry.

Tether has signed an agreement with Kazakhstan’s central bank and the Alatau City Authority to explore a tenge-pegged stablecoin and the tokenization of real-world assets.

Under the memorandum of understanding, the parties will study international stablecoin issuance models, identify potential use cases and develop a proposal for a tenge-backed stablecoin pilot, according to Tether.

The agreement also calls for the development of an asset tokenization framework, including identifying assets for potential tokenization and launching a pilot project in Alatau that could use Tether’s Hadron platform.

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Representative French Hill hopes lawmakers could pass a cryptocurrency market structure bill before the next session of Congress in 2027 as SEC and CFTC actions weren’t sufficient.

Representative French Hill, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said that though US financial regulators were moving forward with addressing digital assets, their actions lacked the long-term stability of legislation from Congress.&

In a Wednesday Fox Business interview, the Arkansas lawmaker said the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had taken steps to address crypto regulations after the US Senate failed to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act last month. Both financial agencies have proposed rulemaking to handle different aspects of overseeing and enforcing crypto regulations, but Hill said their response following the failed CLARITY vote “[fell] short” of legislative solutions.

“I still have hope [...] that we can get [CLARITY] passed in the lame duck session of Congress,” said Hill. “We need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology.”

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US institutions will gain access to Deribit’s options and perpetual futures through Coinbase, with US retail options expected later this year.

Coinbase has completed its integration of derivatives exchange Deribit, opening a regulated route for eligible US customers to global crypto derivatives markets that have historically operated beyond their reach.

The exchange announced Wednesday that the integration combines its international derivatives business with Deribit while allowing eligible US customers to access that liquidity through Coinbase Financial Markets, its derivatives unit regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Coinbase International Exchange balances and positions were migrated to Deribit on Oct. 1.

Crypto derivatives account for roughly 80% of global crypto trading volume, according to Coinbase, but US traders have historically lacked a regulated path to the deeper options and perpetual futures markets available offshore. This began to change in May, when the CFTC issued guidance allowing Coinbase Financial Markets to connect US clients to global derivatives markets.

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Bitcoin fell below $83,000 to reach month-to-date lows as stocks reversed after all-time highs and bond yields spiked higher.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell further at Wednesday’s Wall Street open as oil prices gained on US-Iran war headlines and stocks came off all-time highs.

Key points:

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Some traders are looking for more predictable prediction market opportunities, rather than playing “hot potato” with the next 100x gem, according to Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan.

Cryptocurrency trading is becoming a game of “irrational exuberance” as traders race to be among the earliest investors to find the next 100x token, according to Shayne Coplan, the CEO of prediction market platform Polymarket.

“People think they’re buying something, it’s worthless, but they’re buying it. If it can go to 100X, they want to sell it before it goes back to zero,” said Coplan during a fireside chat at Token2049 Singapore on Wednesday.&

Coplan said that some traders can generate significant wealth through this strategy, but added that it is a “game of irrational exuberance and hot potato” where asset prices that rise must eventually come down.

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Crypto card demand can be stronger where access is harder, Tangem says, as it expands its Visa payment offering, allowing users to spend from its self-custodial wallet.

More than 40% of Tangem Pay payments come from Latin America and over 30% from the US, while physical card availability remains restricted in some markets, the Swiss crypto wallet provider told Cointelegraph.

“It is not simply a question of where people want crypto cards,” Andrey Ilinskiy, head of Tangem Pay, told Cointelegraph, adding: “It is where demand, regulation, banking infrastructure and card-issuing requirements happen to line up — and today, those maps do not always overlap.”

On Wednesday, Tangem announced its first physical Visa card for in-store and online purchases and ATM withdrawals, with an initial release limited to 5,000 cards.

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World Liberty Financial outlined plans to bring USD1 to major online platforms as Mesh announced a payments partnership scheduled to roll out this quarter.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) executives unveiled plans to bring USD1 stablecoin payments to major online businesses during a panel discussion at Token2049 in Singapore on Wednesday.

WLFI CEO Zach Witkoff and co-founder Zak Folkman took part in a stablecoin-focused panel discussion at the industry conference alongside Mesh co-founder and CEO Bam Azizi.

Azizi unveiled a partnership with WLFI that would enable USD1 holders to spend the stablecoin across the payment infrastructure provider’s merchant network. The rollout is planned for this quarter.

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Early Wall Street wealth-creation opportunities remain inaccessible to retail participants, but Hyperliquid’s perpetual contracts aim to democratize access, according to its CEO.

Wall Street’s traditional wealth-creation opportunities, such as company stocks, remain largely inaccessible to the investing public until they list on exchanges, meaning that retail participants miss the most significant pre-listing gains, according to Hyperliquid co-founder and CEO Jeff Yan.

“Some assets are only tradable by a few people for many orders of magnitude of its growth, and then ultimately tradable by the public only after all of the growth has been realized by a select few people with privilege,” said Yan during a Tuesday fireside chat at Token2049 Singapore.&

While he saw this dynamic as a byproduct of the broader economy, Yan added that this wealth-creation model is not “sustainable.”&

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BingX strategy chief Kevin Lee says wealthy investors are taking a longer-term approach to Bitcoin, though family-office crypto exposure remains limited.

BingX chief strategy officer Kevin Lee says wealthy “old money” investors are taking a longer-term approach to Bitcoin (BTC) than many crypto-native traders.

In a Token2049 fireside chat with Cointelegraph head of multimedia Ciaran Lyons, Lee said he deals with “a lot of old money” seeking alternative investments.

“They have stronger diamond hands than any of us,” Lee said.

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Bitcoin fell 2.3% in two hours amid suspicion over the appearance of leveraged BTC short positions on Hyperliquid.

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $84,000 on Wednesday as flash downside liquidated over $500 million in crypto long positions.

Key points:

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Bitcoin ETFs returned to net inflows with $119 million on Tuesday despite falling prices, while Ether funds reached a six-session outflow streak totaling $408 million.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) returned to net inflows on Tuesday as Ether ETFs extended their outflow streak to six trading sessions.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $119 million in net inflows on Tuesday, reversing Monday’s $90 million loss, according to SoSoValue data.

Bitcoin fell from above $86,600 on Tuesday to below $84,000. At publishing time, BTC traded at $83,971, down 2.1% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

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Tom Lee said Bitmine will not accumulate Ether past 5% of the supply, turning the company’s target into a ceiling.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies will cap its Ether holdings at 5% of the cryptocurrency’s supply, according to Chairman Tom Lee.

Speaking during a keynote at Token2049 in Singapore on Wednesday, Lee said Bitmine is nearing the threshold after accumulating roughly 6 million Ether, equivalent to about 4.9% of the supply. He said the company needs about 100,000 ETH more to reach its target.

“That’s a hard cap. We’re not gonna be accumulating past 5%,” Lee said. “We’re not gonna own more than 5% of Ethereum.”

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Russia registered its first crypto exchanges and custodians, including its largest bank, Sberbank, which plans to launch crypto products on Dec. 1.

Russia has registered its first cryptocurrency exchange operators and digital custodians under new crypto regulations that took effect on Sept. 1.

The Bank of Russia on Tuesday published its first registers of authorized crypto operators, listing four exchange operators and five custodians.

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, was added to the custodian list, alongside Atomyze, Voltari and Cloud Infrastructure. T-Invest Lab, Zefir and Sistema-Crypto are on the crypto exchange operator list. VTB Bank appears on both lists.

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Prosecutors say a recent Bitcoin Fog appeals court ruling supports their argument that Tornado Cash activity in Manhattan was enough to establish venue for parts of Roman Storm’s case in New York.

Federal prosecutors cited a recent appeals court ruling involving cryptocurrency mixer Bitcoin Fog as supplemental authority for their opposition to Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s acquittal.

In a Monday filing, prosecutors cited a Sept. 25 appeals court ruling that affirmed the convictions and sentence of Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov.

The D.C. Circuit held that venue in Washington, D.C., was proper for all four counts. For the money-laundering counts, it relied on evidence that an undercover agent conducted Bitcoin Fog transactions from his D.C. office. For the unlicensed money-transmission counts, it found sufficient evidence that Bitcoin Fog had served customers in the district.

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Gold recorded 542 million contracts and an estimated $5 million in fees in September, surpassing Ether’s 318 million contracts and $2.6 million, though Bitcoin remained far ahead.

Kalshi’s 15-minute gold markets generated nearly twice the estimated trading fees of equivalent Ether markets in September, just weeks after their August launch.&

The gold contracts, which let traders take positions on whether gold will rise or fall over 15-minute intervals, generated about $5 million in estimated fees during the month, compared with $2.6 million for Ether contracts, according to Predict Charts. Bitcoin remained the dominant market, generating $60.4 million in estimated fees.

The growth in short-duration gold markets comes as Kalshi’s broader commodities business has been expanding. The company said in September that commodities trading volume had reached $400 million within seven months, more than four times the volume its crypto markets had generated at the same stage.&

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Trading on the platform has largely been suspended since June as its operator awaited MiCA authorization, with the company now looking to regulated partners to restart services.

Bitcoin Group SE says it is seeking an alternative operating model for its bitcoin.de platform after the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) refused its subsidiary futurum bank AG’s application for authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).

In an Oct. 6 announcement, the company said the BaFin decision was a setback, but it had prepared for the possibility of a refusal. It said it is now reviewing the decision and has the opportunity to lodge an objection or submit a new application in the future.

The group said it is also working on ways to resume trading through regulated partners “as quickly as possible.”

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Igloo CEO Luca Netz said the company funded Abstract for 18 months but still failed to find product-market fit despite attracting major brands and a community of millions.

Abstract, a consumer-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built by Pudgy Penguins’ parent company Igloo Inc., said Tuesday it will shut down this year after struggling to scale and find product-market fit.

In an X post, Abstract said its focus on “consumer crypto” ultimately proved to be an unsustainable business model. Abstract launched its mainnet in January 2025 with the aim of driving consumer crypto adoption by targeting mainstream entertainment. For users, it aimed to strip away many of the complexities that traditional blockchains require.

“Unknown to most, Igloo, Inc. had been funding Abstract over the last 18 months,” said Luca Netz, CEO of Igloo Inc. “After losing tens of millions of dollars over two years, building consumer products, assembling an all-star team, onboarding some of the biggest brands in the world, and building a community of millions, we still had not found product-market fit.”

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The lawsuit alleged that Tether froze USDt funds in a Conduit wallet tied to an investigation launched by Brazilian authorities in 2024.

Cross-border payments platform Conduit Technology alleged that stablecoin issuer Tether froze $2.76 million in USDt (USDT) without explanation in September 2025.

In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, Conduit said that Tether froze funds belonging to the company to which it had “no legal entitlement” and “no claim.” The company said it began holding USDt as part of its digital treasury wallet in May 2025, alleging that Tether froze all $2.76 million of the stablecoin in September with “no justification” — an action Conduit claimed “materially impacted its business.”

“The funds are unequivocally Conduit’s, but Tether has taken them and is denying Conduit access to them,” alleged Conduit in the complaint, adding: “Tether is not allowed to take money from businesses just because they chose to store that money in Tether’s currency.”

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The proposed fund would hold ZEC directly, with Gemini Trust serving as custodian and Winklevoss Capital affiliates eyeing up to a $100 million investment.

A Winklevoss-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF) seeking to track Zcash’s price has filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The proposed Winklevoss Zcash ETF would hold ZEC directly and seek to list on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker WINK, according to the filing.

Winklevoss Asset Services would sponsor the fund, while its affiliate Gemini Trust Company would custody the ETF’s ZEC holdings. The fund would charge an annual sponsor fee of 0.25% and would not use leverage or derivatives to achieve its investment objective.

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The DIGIT pilot will test distributed ledger technology and onchain settlement for UK sovereign debt, with issuance expected by the first quarter of 2027.

The UK government has appointed six major banks to lead the issuance of its first digitally native government bond, with the pilot expected by the first quarter of 2027.

Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and RBC Capital Markets were named joint lead managers for the Digital Gilt Instrument (DIGIT) following a competitive procurement process.& Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby announced the appointments Tuesday during a keynote at UK Digital Assets Week.&

The banks will provide underwriting, investor engagement and distribution services for the pilot issuance.

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The digital ruble’s early uptake comes as BRICS nations explore linking their digital currencies for cross-border trade and payments.

Early adoption of Russia’s central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, has vastly exceeded forecasts, with more than 220,000 accounts opened in its first month, offering an early test of whether CBDCs can move beyond pilot programs and gain real-world adoption.

As Reuters reported Tuesday, Russian central bank Deputy Governor Zulfiya Kakhrumanova said the figure far exceeded the roughly 60,000 accounts officials had expected following the CBDC’s Sept. 1 launch.

The rollout comes as BRICS, the bloc of major emerging economies that includes Russia, China and India, explores ways to link members’ CBDCs for cross-border payments. As Reuters reported, Russia accelerated development of the digital ruble after Western sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine cut the country off from parts of the global financial system and complicated payments with major trading partners, including China and India.

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The No Betting on Your Own Race Act will not be addressed before the 2026 US midterms as Congress is on recess until after the election.

A North Carolina lawmaker has introduced legislation aimed at blocking politicians from using prediction market platforms to potentially profit on their own elections.

On Monday, Representative Don Davis introduced the No Betting on Your Own Race Act, prohibiting federal candidates, their campaigns, their spouses and children from “buying, selling, acquiring, disposing of, or holding contracts” related to their elections. Davis said that the legislation was designed to prevent market interference, insider trading and lawmakers from “cashing in” on elections, with a proposed $10,000 civil penalty for each violation or three times any potential financial windfall.

Although the text of the bill did not explicitly mention prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, it referred to “political event contracts,” signaling that the legislation targeted activities through such companies. Republican House of Representatives candidate Laurie Buckhout received a three-year suspension and a $2,590 penalty from Kalshi in August over trading event contracts related to her race, but did not face civil or criminal charges.

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Most affluent investors across seven countries own and are increasing their crypto holdings despite financial advisers who remain overly cautious about digital assets.

A majority of affluent investors across seven of the biggest economies hold digital assets, with crypto accounting for around 10% of their portfolios on average, according to a new CoinShares survey.

The survey covered 2,230 investors with at least $500,000 in investable assets across the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. Digital asset ownership ranged from 54% in Sweden to about 70% in the US, UK, Germany and Switzerland.

At least 85% of current digital asset investors in five of the seven countries said they planned to increase their exposure in 2026, with as much as 91% in the US, UK and Germany.

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Bitcoin price action was kept in check by overhead ask liquidity while US stocks broke out to new all-time highs.

Bitcoin (BTC) continued to circle $86,000 on Tuesday as US stock markets hit fresh all-time highs.

Key points:

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The LG CNS partnership gives Securitize a foothold as the Seoul prepares new rules for tokenized stocks, bonds and funds beginning in February 2027.

Shares of tokenization platform Securitize rallied sharply on Tuesday after the company announced a partnership with South Korean technology company LG CNS as the country prepares to introduce a new framework for tokenized securities.

Securitize (SECZ) rose nearly 8% in early Tuesday trading to around $12.60, outperforming most major crypto-linked stocks, before pulling back later in the morning. The company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in July after completing its merger with special purpose acquisition company Cantor Equity Partners II.

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A ECB executive board member said the potential introduction of a digital euro would not ”take over the role of banks,” but ensure they have a role in the EU’s monetary system.

A member of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) executive board has warned that other entities could provide alternatives without the central bank’s introduction of a digital euro, potentially weakening Europe’s “resilience and monetary sovereignty.”

ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone said on a Tuesday MNI Connect Webcast that without a “pan-European digital payment solution that caters to every type of day-to-day transaction,” the potential for fragmentation could increase across tokenization platforms. He said that the central bank’s goal should be to create a digital euro exchangeable across banks for day-to-day transactions.

“Our objective is not to take over the role of banks,” said Cipollone. “On the contrary, the digital euro would equip banks with the infrastructure they need to compete in the digital age and help them expand the reach and use cases of their own solutions.”

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Ripple Prime will provide prime brokerage, clearing and financing services to funds managed by the $35 billion alternative investment manager.

Ripple Prime will provide multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing services to funds managed by Brevan Howard, a global investment manager with about $35 billion in assets.

Under the expanded agreement, Brevan Howard will gain access to Ripple Prime’s services across traditional and digital asset markets, according to a Tuesday announcement.

The deal builds on an existing relationship between the firms. Brevan Howard-affiliated funds participated in a $500 million investment in Ripple in 2025 that valued the company at $40 billion.

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Sepolia marks one of the final major rehearsals before the final activation of Glamsterdam, aimed at bringing more efficiency and scalability to the Ethereum mainnet.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade has gone live on the Sepolia testnet, in one of the final major rehearsals before its mainnet activation.

Glamsterdam went live on Sepolia on Tuesday at 1:53 pm UTC, Ethereum community contributor Pooja Ranjan announced in an X post.&

The upgrade aims to advance Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling roadmap with enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and changes to gas pricing that better reflect the cost of execution, the Ethereum Foundation announced in a Sept. 28 blog post.

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OKX raised an undisclosed amount at a $25 billion valuation as an extension to March’s investment round led by the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX raised an undisclosed sum at a $25 billion valuation from its existing partners and investors.

The round saw participation from Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures investment arm, Qube Research & Technologies, Ripple and stablecoin issuer Circle, OKX announced in a Tuesday press announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

OKX declined to disclose the size of the investment round.

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Real Vision founder Raoul Pal says a pause in the AI stock rally could help crypto attract capital, while AI agents are likely to boost Ethereum and Solana adoption.

A weakening US dollar could give crypto the “green light” and help extend the industry’s rally, says Real Vision founder Raoul Pal.

He tells Cointelegraph on the latest episode of Trade Secrets that higher bond yields and the strong dollar are keeping liquidity from flowing freely.

“If they can engineer the dollar lower, then we get a green light for further movement in crypto,” he says. “I don’t want to get overly excited, so I haven’t got a full green light on everything.”

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Paxos’ USDG stablecoin is now live on Arbitrum as the network proposes 100 million ARB in incentives to support adoption and liquidity.

Paxos-issued stablecoin Global Dollar (USDG) has launched on Arbitrum as the blockchain joins the Global Dollar Network.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, USDG is natively issued on Arbitrum One, with integrations across decentralized finance protocols including Fluid, Morpho, GMX and Maple.& Kraken will support deposits and withdrawals, while Stargate will enable transfers between Arbitrum and other blockchains.

A proposal submitted to the ArbitrumDAO would make USDG growth a strategic objective and add 100 million ARB to an incentive program to increase adoption. The proposal also calls for deploying Arbitrum treasury assets to support USDG liquidity, while businesses integrating the stablecoin can apply for support from the Arbitrum Foundation.

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US crypto rules could be vulnerable to political change after the midterms. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo argues Congress needs to pass durable, bipartisan legislation.

Opinion by Andrew M. Cuomo, former governor of New York

The digital asset revolution is here, and it’s already transforming our financial system.

We’re no longer questioning if it will continue to develop. It will. The issue is whether the United States will establish clear, durable rules for it to develop here.

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Polymarket begins its Protocol V2 rollout ahead of a planned November transition for new prediction markets, while existing positions remain on the current system.

Prediction market platform Polymarket is rebuilding its smart contract infrastructure, laying the groundwork for new market features and potential expansion beyond Polygon.

Polymarket began rolling out Protocol V2 on Monday, introducing a new smart contract system designed to support different market types through a single exchange, ​​according to an X post by Rajath Alex, the company’s head of protocol.

The platform is testing the system on a limited number of live markets through Oct. 30, with a tentative Nov. 2 target for switching new markets to V2.

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Hong Kong regulators plan to establish a licensing regime for four categories, including digital asset trading, custody, advisory and management services.

The Hong Kong government reaffirmed its plans to submit an amendment bill before the end of 2026 to establish licensing regimes for digital asset trading, custody, advisory and management services as part of its broader crypto licensing bill.

Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of Hong Kong, Christopher Hui, told a Monday policy briefing that the government will submit an amendment bill “within this year” to establish a broader framework for digital asset activities, according to a statement released by the Hong Kong government.

The secretary said the amendment bill covering the four categories will come in response to the “innovative developments” in financial technology.&

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Binance BTC reserves fell by nearly 40,000 coins since Sept. 20 as whales returned stablecoin capital to their exchange wallets.

Bitcoin (BTC) outflows from largest crypto exchange Binance set multiyear records in late September, new analysis reveals.

Key points:

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Ondo’s tokenized notes will give eligible investors exposure to private companies, with the first tied to an unnamed pre-IPO AI company.

Real-world asset tokenization platform Ondo Finance is expanding into private markets with tokenized exposures to an unnamed pre-IPO artificial intelligence company.

The platform introduced Ondo Private Markets, offering tokenized notes whose payouts are linked to the value realized per common share of the referenced company at a qualifying liquidity event. The note provides economic exposure without direct ownership of the company’s shares.

Eligible investors will be able to hold the notes in self-custody wallets or trade them on secondary markets around the clock. Ondo said the first notes are expected to start trading this week, with products tied to companies in robotics, cybersecurity, biotech, infrastructure and other sectors planned to follow.

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Solana DvP offers financial institutions an open-source settlement program designed to complete asset transfers and payments in seconds.

The Solana Foundation announced Tuesday the launch of Solana DvP, an open-source settlement program for financial institutions that aims to cut settlement times.

Solana DvP offers an open-source application programming interface for delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement on Solana.

The program aims to cut securities settlement from one to two days to seconds by transferring assets and payment in a single transaction that either completes in full or does not take effect, the Solana Foundation said in a press release. It is designed to offer institutions a reusable alternative to custom smart contracts.

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US spot Bitcoin ETFs reversed two days of inflows as Bitcoin slipped below $86,000, trading roughly 32% below its October 2025 all-time high.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) shed $89.9 million on Monday, reversing two days of inflows as Bitcoin slipped below $86,000.

Bitcoin ETFs attracted around $293 million over the previous two October trading sessions before Monday’s reversal, with total trading volume reaching $2.18 billion, according to SoSoValue data.

The pullback came a day before the first anniversary of Bitcoin’s $126,080 all-time high on Oct. 6, 2025, with BTC trading at $85,559 at the time of publication, or roughly 32% below its record, according to CoinGecko.

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An EEZ contributor shared a 0.001 ETH cross-chain test as the project develops a framework to connect Ethereum mainnet and its rollups.

The Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) has tested an atomic transaction between Ethereum mainnet and a layer-2 network, according to a project contributor.

On Tuesday, EEZ contributor Eduardo Antuña Díez shared the transaction and called it the “first atomic cross-chain” L1-to-L2 transaction. The transaction’s logs record a cross-chain call carrying 0.001 Ether (ETH) and a state update for a rollup.

In an atomic transaction, linked actions across networks either all succeed or are all reversed if any part fails.

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Better Markets said the CFTC’s proposed framework to bring certain cryptocurrency transactions and exchanges under its oversight will leave investors less protected than under the SEC.

Better Markets says the US derivatives regulator’s push to develop rules for certain retail crypto transactions could leave investors with weaker safeguards, arguing the agency is ill-equipped to oversee the market.&

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday sought public comment on a potential framework for margined, leveraged or financed retail crypto transactions under its existing authority. Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, a nonprofit financial reform advocacy group, argued that CFTC oversight is less suited than the SEC to protecting retail investors.&

“Unlike the SEC, the CFTC lacks an investor protection mandate. Its mission is to regulate the commodity and derivatives markets, which historically have been dominated by large institutions with very little retail investor participation,” said Schiffrin.&

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Rain joins a growing queue of crypto firms seeking federal trust charters, while community banks have just asked a court to overturn the OCC rules underpinning them.

Stablecoin payments infrastructure provider Rain has filed an application to establish a national trust bank headquartered in New York, adding to a wave of crypto companies seeking bank charters over the last year.&

Rain said Monday it filed the application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Rain National Trust Bank. If approved, the bank would be able to provide fiduciary custody of digital assets and US dollars for institutional clients, provide reserve management for permitted stablecoin issuers and issue and redeem dollar-backed stablecoins in accordance with the GENIUS Act.&

Former Square Financial Services chief financial officer Brandon Soto will serve as president and CEO of the proposed national trust bank, subject to OCC review.&

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OKX Money lets users hold, send and spend dollar-backed stablecoins, with qualifying USDG balances earning up to 10% APY.

Crypto exchange OKX has launched OKX Money, a stablecoin savings and payments app, in parts of Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, that will pay some customers as much as 10% yield.

The app allows users to fund accounts using more than 50 supported currencies, with deposits converted into dollar-backed stablecoins, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Users can hold USDG, USDC or USDT, send funds and spend with virtual or physical cards. Qualifying customers can earn an annual percentage yield (APY) of up to 10% on eligible USDG balances without staking or a lockup.

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ZachXBT says he infiltrated the network by posing as a customer, gaining information that helped trace funds from the $1.5 billion Bybit hack.

A Chinese organized crime syndicate laundered more than $1 billion stolen in multiple crypto exploits for North Korea’s Lazarus Group, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT.&

In an Oct. 5 thread on X, pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT said he posed as a paying client to infiltrate the money laundering network in February 2025, just days after the Bybit hack. He put up $349,700 in stablecoins and took a 5% loss on each order to build trust with one of the network’s operators, known as “Jimmy Green.”

ZachXBT said the operations spanned Hong Kong and mainland China, and information supplied by the launderer helped him identify a cluster of more than $12 million in Bybit-linked funds, with Tether later freezing $442,000 in associated USDt (USDT).&

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Fairshake said it would financially back 32 House candidates who all voted in favor of the CLARITY market structure bill in 2025, as the legislation remains in limbo in the Senate.

Fairshake, the political action committee (PAC) backed by contributions from Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Andreessen Horowitz, announced that it would initially spend a combined $6 million on six House of Representatives candidates out of 32 people the group planned to back ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections.

On Monday, Fairshake said that it would support 19 Republican and 13 Democratic incumbents in US House races for 2026. The PAC is expected to spend more than $100 million on ads supporting House and Senate candidates in 2026, including at least $30 million in Ohio’s Senate race to back Republican Jon Husted over Democrat Sherrod Brown.&

“Fairshake has always been and always will be an issue-focused organization,” said Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter. “We back pro-crypto candidates who support American innovation in both parties.”

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The bureau under the US Treasury said it was withdrawing two proposed rules on unhosted wallets and crypto mixers ”as part of the Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda.”

The US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) withdrew two proposed rules affecting its enforcement of crypto companies, including one on “convertible virtual currency mixing.”&

According to a Monday notice, the agency will withdraw a December 2020 proposal that would have imposed “recordkeeping, verification, and reporting requirements” related to crypto transactions and unhosted wallets, as well as one affecting enforcement of crypto mixing services. FinCEN said that the mixer rule, initially proposed in October 2023, “could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity and place a large reporting burden on covered financial institutions.”

“FinCEN has considered the comments submitted in response to these proposals and is withdrawing them as part of the Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda and ongoing efforts to ensure digital asset regulations are fit-for-purpose,” the Monday notice said.

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The payments infrastructure company is seeking federal approval to offer stablecoin custody and related fiat services through a limited-purpose national trust bank.

Payments infrastructure company Modern Treasury has applied to establish a US national trust bank that would provide digital asset custody and related fiat services.

According to Monday’s announcement, the company submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Modern Treasury National Trust Bank, which would operate as a federally regulated, limited-purpose national trust bank.

If approved, the bank would allow Modern Treasury customers to custody and move stablecoins and fiat through an integrated service, but would not issue stablecoins or make loans.

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CCI CEO Ji Hun Kim said that the organization “remains confident“ in the OCC’s approval of charters for crypto companies, despite a recent lawsuit and pushback from some lawmakers.

The Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) has backed the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC’s) move to approve several charters for crypto companies, saying a lawsuit filed by the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) was an attempt to stifle innovation.&

On Monday, CCI CEO Ji Hun Kim said that the ICBA lawsuit was a “clear attempt to resist national trust charters, payments innovation, and competition in financial services.” The crypto advocacy organization supported the OCC’s approvals and conditional approvals of crypto companies for national trust charters, despite accusations from some lawmakers that exchanges “want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank.”

The ICBA legal action, filed on Friday in the US District ​Court for the District of Columbia, alleged that the OCC approved US bank charters for entities, including crypto companies, without sufficient safeguards or compliance with requirements normally used for banks.

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S&P Global’s new framework evaluates digital asset lending vaults across six risk categories as deposits in the sector climb to about $10 billion.

S&P Global Ratings has launched a risk assessment framework for digital asset lending vaults as the onchain investment products gain traction.

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CFTC Chair Michael Selig claimed that the agency was using its “existing statutory authorities“ to address crypto regulation after Congress failed to advance a market structure bill.

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig said that the agency will move forward on crypto regulation at the direction of President Donald Trump “with or without legislation” from Congress.&

Speaking at the Fordham Law Blockchain Regulatory Symposium on Monday, Selig announced proposals giving crypto companies the option to operate under the CFTC’s umbrella rather than dealing with the patchwork of regulations offered by individual US states.&

According to written remarks from the event, the CFTC chair said that it had issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemarking for companies “offering retail customers the ability to trade crypto assets on a margined, leveraged, or financed basis,” calling the regulation ‘CTX.’

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Weak US jobs data has narrowed expectations for another Fed hike in October, offering Bitcoin some relief as investors continue to embrace the debasement trade.

Bitcoin (BTC) is coming off its best third quarter since 2017, but extending the rally may prove more difficult as Treasury yields above 5% offer investors an increasingly attractive alternative to risk assets, according to Delphi Digital.&

In its latest weekly newsletter, Delphi highlighted Bitcoin’s 43% gain in the third quarter, followed by a third straight weekly advance last week. However, “the grind higher is happening against real resistance,” Delphi wrote, pointing to the Federal Reserve’s September rate hike and surging Treasury yields, which have reached multi-decade highs.

“When a government bond pays over 5% risk-free, every risky asset has to work harder to deserve the money,” Delphi wrote.

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Bitcoin’s highest weekly close in eight months formed low-timeframe resistance at the start of Monday’s US trading session.

Bitcoin (BTC) fluctuated around $86,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as US bond yields continued to rise.

Key points:

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Metaplanet revealed a revised capital allocation framework proposing to allocate as much as 15% of total assets to strategic investments to fund its Bitcoin accumulation.

Japanese investment and Bitcoin treasury company Metaplanet introduced a net interest income strategy on Monday, seeking to invest capital in income-generating assets and use the net interest to fuel its Bitcoin accumulation and dividend payments.

The move is part of the company’s revised capital allocation policy under which 10% to 15% of assets can move into strategic investments, including mergers and acquisitions and interest-generating assets.

Bitcoin (BTC) remains the company’s core treasury reserve asset, accounting for 85% to 90% of total assets, Metaplanet revealed in a Monday notice. The decision aims to enhance the Japanese company’s financing capacity and credit quality to grow its BTC holdings per share through additional acquisitions.

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Strategy bought 334 Bitcoin for $28.7 million last week while spending $176.3 million to repurchase about 1.77 million shares of STRC.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy last week spent more than six times its weekly Bitcoin buying budget on its repurchases of one of its preferred stocks.

Strategy bought 334 Bitcoin (BTC) for $28.7 million between Monday and Sunday, bringing its holdings to exactly 848,000 BTC, according to a Monday 8-K form filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Over the same period, Strategy repurchased about 1.77 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $176.3 million.

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Unique wallets sending P2P stablecoin transactions in China grew 43-fold between Q1 2024 and Q2 2026 as crypto activity increasingly shifted toward direct wallet-to-wallet transfers.

[Updated Oct. 6, 2026, 7:00 am UTC: Added comments from Chainalysis Policy Advisory Lead Jordan Wain]

The number of unique wallets sending peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin transactions in China grew 43-fold between the first quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2026, according to Chainalysis.

The blockchain analytics company recorded $104.1 billion across 18.1 million transfers involving China’s self-custodied stablecoin holdings during the 2026 reporting period, which ran from July 2025 to June 2026.

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Calls to slow down development of the most powerful AI models are colliding with an $800 billion investment boom. Could an AI slowdown tank the US economy?

The artificial intelligence industry in the United States has powerful forces pulling it in completely opposite directions.

Top AI industry leaders are jointly calling for a slowdown in the pace of development, while US President Donald Trump wants to go full steam ahead to beat China and has announced a so-called “Super Intelligence Force,” headed up by former SEC boss Jay Clayton.

Meanwhile, the five major US based AI hyperscalers are expected to tip $800 billion into the AI buildout this year according to Goldman Sachs.

With the US stock market and GPD growth increasingly dependent on the health of the AI industry, could a slowdown in the pace of AI development tank the economy?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to “pace the frontier,” slowing advances in the most powerful AI models so that safety research can catch up. His September proposal combines independent evaluators inside labs, shared safety standards and limits on developers in democratic countries, and eventual international coordination, with countries including China.

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The Ohio Republican candidate holds a stake in a digital asset manager and received donations from many in the industry, but has avoided making crypto a central campaign issue.

Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy couldn’t stop praising the virtues of cryptocurrency.

Running to be the 2024 Republican nominee in the race for the White House, Ramaswamy sprinkled his stump speeches with praise for Bitcoin (BTC) and token mining operations while strongly standing against central bank digital currencies.

Now, presidential candidate Ramaswamy is running to be the next governor of Ohio. And while he isn’t exactly distancing himself from positions on digital assets, he isn’t putting them at the forefront of his campaign despite substantial exposure to crypto investments and the Buckeye state’s interests.

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Bitcoin bulls renewed pressure on range highs with the 2026 yearly open forming the next key resistance to break through.

Bitcoin (BTC) is eyeing a key level as BTC/USD is on the cusp of turning the 2026 yearly candle green.

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The partnership will enable select institutions in Asia and the Gulf region to instantly settle US dollar transactions through the bank’s SGB Net

Kraken parent company Payward has partnered with Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) to enable 24/7 US dollar settlement for select institutional clients in Asia and the Gulf region.&

Payward has integrated SGB Net, the Bahrain-regulated bank’s real-time clearing network, allowing those clients to settle transactions instantly. The companies plan to expand the service to more clients and currencies, according to a Monday press release.

The bank will also access digital asset liquidity through Payward’s prime brokerage service, Kraken Prime, and use Payward’s markets to price customer trades in the coming months.

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Bitcoin ETF inflows reached a third straight week, while Ether ETFs swung to outflows and Zcash funds posted their first weekly outflow.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded a third consecutive week of net inflows as Ether ETFs flipped back to net outflows.

Bitcoin ETFs attracted $241.1 million last week, lifting cumulative net inflows to $57.8 billion, according to SoSoValue data.

The funds added $2.4 billion and $6.2 million the two preceding weeks, with year-to-date net inflows now at around $1.2 billion.

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Zcash’s NU7 upgrade is now live on testnet, giving developers several weeks to assess 25-second blocks and other protocol changes before a planned November mainnet activation.

Zcash has activated its NU7 network upgrade on testnet, moving the planned protocol changes into live testing about a month before its targeted mainnet rollout.

According to Zcash testnet block explorer ZecBlock, block 4,465,026 — NU7’s scheduled activation point — was mined on Oct. 4 at 18:21:45 UTC. Zcash confirmed the activation in a post on X, saying NU7 was live on testnet.

NU7 is Zcash’s next network upgrade and seeks to reduce the network’s target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. The upgrade also disables version 4 transactions and integrates a Network Sustainability Mechanism that redirects part of transaction fees into future block rewards.

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The stock trading platform seeks to offer tokenized shares in more than 60 US-listed companies under the SEC’s recently introduced innovation exemption.

An OKX joint venture has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a tokenized stock trading platform.

OKXICE LLC, a joint venture between cryptocurrency exchange operator OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc., has notified the SEC that it intends to launch a tokenized securities venue (TSV) under the SEC’s new innovation exemption.

The platform will include more than 60 companies listed on US stock exchanges, said OKXICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo.

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Greenfield Capital said it sought changes to Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board for months before turning to the Swiss regulator.

Update (Oct. 6 at 2:08 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from a Safe Ecosystem Foundation spokesperson.

Greenfield Capital, an investor in Safe, says it has filed a supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s foundation watchdog, seeking changes to Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board after months of engagement failed to resolve its governance concerns.

In an open letter to the Safe community on Sunday, Greenfield founding partner Jascha Samadi said the complaint to Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) comes after his firm became “increasingly concerned” about the state of Safe since early 2025, citing its performance relative to the broader market and a lack of independent voices on the foundation board.&

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The newly registered lobbying operation lists the CLARITY Act and two digital asset tax proposals among the issues it plans to lobby on in Washington.

A Zcash-focused advocacy group has filed to lobby in Washington, stepping up the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency ecosystem’s efforts to shape US policy on digital assets.

Pretty Good Policy for Zcash (PGPZ) filed a lobbying registration effective on Oct. 1, naming executive director Divij Pandya as its sole lobbyist. The registration lists the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and two digital asset tax proposals as among its current and anticipated lobbying issues.

PGPZ was launched in June this year, growing out of Pretty Good Policy for Crypto, which was launched in 2022 by Electric Coin Co. The initiative hosted Washington policy roundtables and organized a congressional briefing on encryption technologies in 2023.

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Roman Storm and the XRP army aren’t happy former SEC boss Jay Clayton is Trump’s new AI czar, Peter Brandt flips bullish and says Bitcoin may reach as high as $600K by 2029.

President Donald Trump has named Jay Clayton, US director of national intelligence, to lead the country’s new Super Intelligence Force, according to a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

“The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence,” Trump wrote in his post.

Clayton led the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term and launched a prosecution against Ripple for selling securities on his last day in office, and as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York led the criminal trial against Roman Storm for his involvement in Tornado Cash. Storm commented:

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President Donald Trump said US intel chief Clayton will lead the SIF, reporting to the president and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

President Donald Trump has named Jay Clayton, US director of national intelligence, to lead the country’s new Super Intelligence Force, according to a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

The announcement followed media reports on Friday of the appointment. Cointelegraph reported Sept. 20 that Trump planned to create an “AI Force” modeled after the Space Force and appoint an artificial intelligence czar.

“The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence,” Trump wrote in his post.

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Garantex was previously sanctioned by the US, the EU and other jurisdictions for helping Russian entities evade financial restrictions.

The Japanese government has added Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex to its expanded list of sanctions against Russia, citing the continuing war in Ukraine.

Officials added 33 organizations and nine individuals linked to Russia to its asset-freeze list that restricts payments and capital transactions with the targeted parties, according to a joint statement issued on Friday by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Garantex was previously sanctioned by the US, the EU and other jurisdictions for helping Russian entities evade financial restrictions.

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Efforts will continue to reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities and to strengthen crypto‑asset regulation and governance, the IMF said.

The International Monetary Fund approved the immediate disbursement of about $138 million to El Salvador under the country’s $1.4 billion financing program, despite some performance criteria being missed.

The IMF’s Executive Board completed the second and third reviews under El Salvador’s 40-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement on Thursday, it said in a press release.

While certain performance criteria were not met, including on the Bitcoin accumulation front, the IMF granted waivers “based on strong corrective measures and renewed commitments.”

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Work on the introduction of the digital ruble to the budget process is being carried out by the Bank of Russia together with the Ministry of Finance.

Russia’s Ministry of Finance said on Friday that some of its employees had received their wages in digital rubles for the first time.

Being paid in the central bank’s digital currency is available for citizens of Russia on a voluntary basis, and began on Oct. 1, according to a Ministry of Finance press release.

The ministry did not disclose how many employees were paid in digital currency or the total payroll amount.

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The exploiter returned the entire sum to NEAR Intents after being identified and given 48 hours to respond.

NEAR Intents said it has recovered about $3.8 million stolen during a Thursday security breach.

Cointelegraph reported on Friday that NEAR Intents had identified the individual behind the security breach and given them 48 hours to return the funds under “responsible disclosure.”

NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko announced the complete return of funds later on Friday.

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Community banking group’s lawsuit claims OCC has overstepped its mandate from Congress.

A community banks group sued a US bank regulator, claiming its decision to allow cryptocurrency companies to obtain limited national trust bank charters exceeds the authority Congress granted the agency.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) filed the suit Friday in the US District ​Court for the District of Columbia.&

The group claimed the Office ​of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted cryptocurrency firms the credibility of a US bank charter without sufficient safeguards or compliance with normal bank requirements.

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US intel chief Clayton may be asked to also oversee AI innovation and development along with “self policing” tech CEOs.

President Donald Trump is expected to appoint Jay Clayton, US director of national intelligence, as the new AI czar, CNN and other media reported Friday, citing unidentified sources.

Cointelegraph reported Sept. 20 that Trump planned to create an “AI Force” modeled after the Space Force and appoint an artificial intelligence czar. The president posted on Truth Social that his new project would manage the fast-growing AI sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation.

Trump’s actions followed several public warnings about the potential dangers of AI.

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US intel chief Clayton may be asked to also oversee AI innovation and development along with “self policing” tech CEOs.

President Donald Trump is expected to appoint Jay Clayton, US director of national intelligence, as the new AI czar, CNN and other media reported Friday, citing unidentified sources.

Cointelegraph reported Sept. 20 that Trump planned to create an “AI Force” modeled after the Space Force and appoint an artificial intelligence czar. The president posted on Truth Social that his new project would manage the fast-growing AI sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation.

Trump’s actions followed several public warnings about the potential dangers of AI.

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Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, Christian Trummer said MiCA has increased trust in regulated platforms and called for stricter enforcement against noncompliant firms.

European crypto users are placing more trust in regulated platforms following the implementation of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework (MiCA), according to Christian Trummer, co-CEO of Austria-based crypto exchange Bitpanda.

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, Trummer said most users have “more faith” in regulated market participants and trust those platforms following the rollout of MiCA.& &

He contrasted that with what he described as a “Crypto Twitter” bubble focused on self-custody, saying most users prefer regulated providers rather than managing their own private keys.& &

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The reported cuts come as Anchorage expands its institutional footprint, including stablecoin issuance and a $100 million investment from Tether.

Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered US digital asset bank valued at $4.2 billion earlier this year, has reportedly cut 17% of its workforce, suggesting that the prolonged crypto market downturn is weighing on the company even as it expands its institutional footprint.

Citing people familiar with the matter, The Information reported Friday that CEO Nathan McCauley informed employees of the cuts this week. Anchorage had about 400 employees globally as of February, according to McCauley’s congressional testimony at the time, meaning a 17% reduction would amount to roughly 68 jobs if its headcount remained around that level.

Cointelegraph reached out to a public relations contact representing Anchorage for confirmation but did not receive an immediate response.

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Once among Ethereum’s largest layer-2 networks by total value locked, Blast is urging users to move their assets to mainnet ahead of the shutdown.

Ethereum layer-2 network Blast is shutting down after its operating costs exceeded the revenue generated by the chain.

In a Friday post on X, Blast said it sees no “credible path” to making the network economically sustainable and asked users to withdraw their assets to Ethereum mainnet.

“We launched Blast with the goal of building a self-sustaining chain for users and developers,” the team said. “Unfortunately, the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense.”

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A Lloyds survey found that faster payments and settlement are the most significant perceived benefits of tokenization, as the UK builds infrastructure for tokenized finance.

Nearly three-quarters of major UK financial institutions expect tokenization to reshape financial services, as banks and asset managers increasingly explore blockchain-based infrastructure for payments, settlement and liquidity management.

The finding comes from an annual survey by& Lloyds Banking Group, the UK’s largest financial services provider, which polled 100 senior decision-makers across major UK banks, insurers, asset managers and financial sponsors.

Faster payments and settlement emerged as the biggest potential benefit, cited by 60% of respondents, while 41% pointed to improved collateral and liquidity management.

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Kalshi seeks a $40 billion valuation, while Blockchain.com targets an IPO and crypto treasury companies struggle to maintain their once-high valuations.

Crypto companies are raising billions again, but investors are no longer handing out premiums indiscriminately.

Kalshi is reportedly seeking $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation, nearly twice what it was worth in May. Meanwhile, Blockchain.com is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) at a potential $6 billion valuation, well below the $14 billion it commanded during the last crypto boom. The divide is even sharper among digital asset treasury companies, where just four of the 20 largest still trade above the value of their crypto holdings.

This week’s Crypto Biz looks at where investors are still willing to pay up, where the old crypto premium has disappeared and how Bitget is dealing with the fallout from a $388 million security breach.

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Bitcoin climbed after weaker-than-expected payrolls pushed Treasury yields lower, but order-book resistance kept BTC from reaching new macro highs.

Bitcoin (BTC) spiked past $87,000 on Friday as US jobs data missed expectations.

Key points:

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching $87,229 on Bitstamp, just shy of new eight-month highs.

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European issuers say Europe cannot ignore demand for dollar stablecoins as businesses seek USD liquidity for global payments and settlement.

European stablecoin issuers are making the case for regulated US dollar tokens, arguing that Europe’s push to strengthen the euro does not eliminate businesses’ need for dollar liquidity.

AllUnity, a German stablecoin issuer, launched its US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDAU on Wednesday, expanding its MiCA-regulated lineup beyond European currencies.

“In global trade and FX markets, the US dollar is the glue,” AllUnity CEO Alexander Höptner told Cointelegraph, adding: “For European corporates to make cross-border payments globally, offering only a euro stablecoin isn’t enough.”

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The furious debate over Bitget’s $387.7M of hacked funds comes down to whether ideals around “permissionless and decentralized” tech means never intervening — even if you could.

After Bitget got hacked on Sept. 24, $387.5 million of stolen funds quickly began moving across chains, with some headed to decentralized cross chain swaps platform THORChain.

Chief executive Gracy Chen publicly appealed to the platform to refuse service to attacker-linked addresses. “The industry is watching,” she said.

Yet THORChain refused. And that refusal has kicked off a furious debate between those who believe protocols have a moral obligation to block stolen funds, and those hold the cypherpunk ideals of decentralized, permissionless technology sacrosanct.

Having previously watched on as the Bybit hackers funneled $1.2 billion through the protocol, it’s pretty clear which side of the argument THORChain is on. Developer Boone Wheeler tells Magazine:

Critics argue that THORChain wasn’t quite so idealistic when validators voted to halt the chain in May after an automated system triggered when an attacker exploited a vulnerability and drained over $10 million from one of its vaults.

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Circle wants the EU to replace mandatory bank-deposit minimums with more flexible liquidity rules and preserve cross-border stablecoin issuance.

Stablecoin issuer Circle urged the European Commission to revise reserve requirements in its response to a consultation on reviewing the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).

In Thursday’s summary of its response, the USDC and EURC issuer said mandatory bank-deposit requirements expose stablecoin issuers to banking-sector credit and counterparty risks.

Circle faced those risks firsthand in March 2023, when USDC temporarily lost its dollar peg after the company disclosed that $3.3 billion of its reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank. The funds were subsequently made available after US authorities protected the bank’s depositors.

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Tokenized stocks and ETFs on BNB Chain reached $1.1 billion as the broader market climbed to $3.7 billion, putting the network’s share at roughly 30%.

BNB Chain has become the first blockchain to cross $1 billion in tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The market capitalization of the tokenized stocks and ETFs rose around 17% to $3.35 billion in September from $2.87 billion in August, according to Token Terminal data.

The sector’s market cap on BNB Chain stood at $1.1 billion at the time of publication, accounting for roughly 30% of the $3.7 billion market, followed by Ethereum at $828 million, or 22%, and Solana at $738 million, or 20%.

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Strategy’s scale and cash reserves give it an edge over treasury rivals, according to Saifedean Ammous, author of “The Bitcoin Standard.”

Bitcoin treasury companies built primarily around buying the cryptocurrency may struggle to compete with Michael Saylor’s Strategy, according to economist and “The Bitcoin Standard” author Saifedean Ammous.

“I don’t see a compelling case for going to another Bitcoin treasury company other than Michael Saylor’s Strategy,” Ammous said on the latest episode of Cointelegraph’s Proof of Thesis.

Strategy holds the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury, with 847,666 BTC acquired for $63.95 billion, according to its Monday 8-K filing. The company also reported a $5.02 billion US dollar reserve to cover preferred stock dividends and debt interest.

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Arthur Hayes said money printing could lift crypto prices, while CONNECT Seoul speakers examined Wall Street’s competitive edge onchain.

US policymakers could lift cryptocurrency prices by printing more money to support AI and finance government debt, according to Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom fund.

AI companies need trillions of dollars to finance data centers even as the prices of their services fall, Hayes said at a fireside chat at CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition, on Tuesday during Korea Blockchain Week.

“They’ve not really given themselves a lot of options other than print money and make it less bad,” he said.

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Bitcoin buyers broke through a wall of ask liquidity to reach new October BTC price highs near $87,800, with the area immediately above now a new resistance hurdle.

Bitcoin (BTC) neared $87,000 on Friday as BTC short liquidations topped $120 million over 24 hours.

Key points:

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching $86,857 on Bitstamp before pulling back below $86,000.

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Aave founder Stani Kulechov said Aave v3 was unaffected after an attacker exploited a third-party adapter to drain about $305,000 from two Safe multisig wallets.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov said Aave v3 was unaffected by an exploit that drained roughly $305,000 from two Safe multisig wallets through a third-party adapter built on top of the lending protocol.

“This is not Aave v3 contract, it’s third party external adapter built on top of Aave, zero effect on Aave v3,” Kulechov said on X.

Blockchain security firm SlowMist said the attack targeted a module used to open and close leveraged Aave v3 positions through Safe wallets. The attacker exploited an access-control flaw that allowed a fake Safe contract to pass the adapter’s authorization check.&

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Porsche is winding down its Web3 project and Pioneers Circle community as trading activity in its 911 NFT collection falls sharply from early levels.

Porsche is ending its Web3 project and Pioneers Circle community nearly four years after launching its 911 nonfungible token (NFT) collection.

“Today, we are announcing the conclusion of the Porsche Web3 project and Pioneers Circle,” the company said in a post on X. Porsche said the project had expanded beyond its initial technology focus to include community events and other online and offline activities.

The automaker said the Porsche 911 NFTs will remain with their holders and continue to exist onchain. Porsche will turn the community’s Discord server into a read-only archive and stop actively updating the project’s X account.

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Bitcoin ETFs returned to inflows with $103 million, while Ether funds recorded a third straight day of net outflows.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) flipped back to net inflows on the first trading day of October after their strongest quarter of 2026.

Bitcoin ETFs attracted $102.7 million in net inflows on Thursday, following Wednesday’s $148.7 million in net outflows, according to SoSoValue data. Their combined net assets rose to $109.3 billion, while cumulative net inflows reached $57.6 billion.

The positive start to the month followed $6.34 billion in third-quarter net inflows, including $2.65 billion in September. Bitcoin rose 42.71% over the quarter.

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South Korean crypto exchange operating profits fell 78% in the first half of 2026 as trading volumes, market capitalization and customer deposits declined.

South Korean crypto exchanges saw operating profits fall 78% in the first half of 2026 as trading activity, market valuations and customer deposits declined, according to new government data.&

On Thursday, the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) said average daily trading volume at domestic virtual asset exchanges fell 44% from the previous six months, while market capitalization dropped 33% and won-denominated deposits fell 35%. Exchange sales declined 41% over the same period, even as the number of accounts eligible to trade rose slightly by 0.4%.

KoFIU’s survey covered 26 registered virtual asset service providers, including 17 exchange operators and nine custody and wallet providers, and covered activity from Jan. 1 through June 30.

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South Korea’s financial regulator proposed detailed rules for tokenized securities, including capital requirements, OTC trading licenses and retail investment limits.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has proposed detailed regulations for issuing and trading tokenized securities as the country’s regulatory framework is set to take effect in February 2027.

The changes would allow stocks, bonds, funds and certain fractional investment securities to be issued and circulated in tokenized form.&

The proposal also introduces requirements for companies issuing and managing tokenized securities. Under the proposed changes, companies issuing tokenized securities while directly managing customer accounts would need at least 4 billion Korean won ($2.8 million) in equity capital and dedicated compliance and technology staff.&

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The unauthorized coins were indistinguishable from legitimate ZANO, leaving the team unable to remove them without rolling back the blockchain.

Update (Oct. 2 at 6:53 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from Zano head of marketing and growth, Quinten van Welzen.

Zano revealed that the attacker who exploited its Gateway Address vulnerability over the last month used it to create 36.9 million Zano (ZANO), along with 1.8 quadrillion Freedom Dollar (fUSD) tokens, before the decision was made to roll the blockchain back by a month.&

In a post-mortem published Thursday, Zano said the attacker first exploited the vulnerability on Aug. 29, creating approximately 18.4 million ZANO in a single transaction. The attacker repeated the exploit on Sept. 25, minting another 18.4 million ZANO, before using the same method to create approximately 1.8 quadrillion fUSD.

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Node operators running version 26.06.7 or earlier were told to upgrade immediately.

The team behind Core Lightning, an open-source node software for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, has urged operators running older versions to upgrade immediately after receiving reports of attackers targeting unpatched nodes.

“Urgent security update: If you’re running version 26.06.7 or earlier, please upgrade to the latest release as soon as possible,” the team said on Friday.

Core Lightning did not specify which vulnerabilities attackers were targeting or the potential impact. Cointelegraph reached out to Core Lightning for comment.

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Ethereum’s zkAPI is now live on mainnet, turning an earlier zero-knowledge API payment proposal into a working implementation for private, prepaid access.

The Ethereum Foundation announced on Thursday that zkAPI, a system built with the Open Anonymity Project to let users pay for AI and other API services without revealing their billing identities, has gone live on Ethereum mainnet.

Users deposit funds into an Ethereum vault, then use zero-knowledge proofs to prove they have enough credit to pay for API requests without revealing which deposits are theirs, according to a post from Vittorio Rivabella, AI coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team.

One of the immediate use cases of the system is paying for the use of AI without linking the payment to a user. zkAPI issues short-lived API keys with predefined spending limits. Prompts are sent directly to the AI provider, while usage is settled separately through the payment layer. The project has also released a local client and software development kit, along with a browser-based AI chat implementation.

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“We have identified you, sir,” NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko said on Friday after the protocol was hacked for $3.8 million.

NEAR Intents said it has identified the individual behind a security breach that resulted in the loss of $3.8 million in user funds on Thursday, giving them 48 hours to return the funds under “responsible disclosure.”

“We have identified you, sir,” NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko said in an X post on Friday, as he shared three different wallet addresses to receive Bitcoin, BNB and Solana.

On Thursday, NEAR Intents paused services after detecting a “bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interaction with NEAR Intents smart contract.”&

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Custody requirements have kept some investment advisers from offering certain crypto to clients, a regulatory hurdle the SEC’s proposal could remove.

The US securities regulator has proposed easing rules governing how investment advisers and funds hold crypto, potentially clearing a regulatory hurdle that has held some businesses back from offering clients digital asset investments.&

The proposal, published on Thursday, would let investment advisers hold clients’ crypto assets themselves when no eligible crypto custodian is available, with conditions. It would also allow state trust companies to serve as crypto custodians.&

“The crypto asset market has grown from a niche curiosity into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class to which investors actively seek exposure. Unfortunately, our rules and regulations have not kept pace,” US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins said in a statement.&

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Singapore’s crypto economy grows 55%, South Korea set to make crypto market makers legal, and Chinese spy ministry warns would-be foreign spies it’s watching the blockchain.

CHINA

China’s Ministry of State Security& has toughened its rhetoric on the risks of cryptocurrencies, highlighting their role in crime and stressing transactions are not really anonymous.

According to the South China Morning Post the spooks published an article on social media stating cryptocurrencies are used to facilitate money laundering and cyberattacks and serve as “accomplices” in espionage.

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Evernorth expects to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN after its SPAC merger closes, with an XRP treasury worth roughly $710 million at current prices.

Evernorth is set to become a publicly traded XRP treasury company after shareholders of blank-check firm Armada Acquisition Corp. II approved their proposed business combination.

The deal is expected to close on Oct. 7, with shares of the combined company set to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN the following day, subject to remaining closing conditions.

The vote clears a key hurdle after Evernorth filed its Form S-4 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in March. The registration statement was declared effective in August, leaving shareholder approval as one of the remaining steps before the Nasdaq listing.

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The president is scheduled to appear at his golf club in Washington, DC, at a Nov. 22 dinner for his top 185 memecoin holders, following similar events in May 2025 and April 2026.

The group behind US President Donald Trump’s memecoin announced that he will appear at a third event for his top tokenholders weeks after a report that investors in his crypto ventures had lost a combined $4.7 billion.

On Wednesday, the GetTrumpMemes website behind the promotion of the president’s memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), announced a Nov. 22 dinner for the “top 185” holders. The event will mark the third time Trump has gathered his memecoin fans for similar events, including a May 2025 dinner for 220 TRUMP holders at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC, and an April 2026 luncheon for 297 guests at the president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.

According to the GetTrumpMemes website, Trump will appear at his DC golf club on Nov. 22 alongside three unnamed guests. Attendance will be based on the top 185 memecoin holders, scored between Sept. 30 and Nov. 12.

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A 50,000-letter campaign is pressing Brussels to rethink stablecoin rewards as EU central banks seek broader changes to MiCA’s stablecoin rules.

More than 50,000 Europeans have urged the European Commission to loosen restrictions on stablecoin rewards as part of its review of the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, according to crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto EU.

The campaign came as the Commission closed its MiCA review consultation on Wednesday, with Stand With Crypto EU pushing for regulated stablecoin providers to be allowed to offer incentives including cashback, loyalty benefits and fee reductions.

The group said more than 50,000 supporters wrote to the Commission during the consultation, while more than 126,000 people have separately signed its petition calling for a more permissive EU approach to stablecoins.

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State officials agreed to delay the 0.2% crypto tax for six months after lawsuits and industry pushback claimed the bill was rushed through the legislature.

Crypto advocacy organizations behind a lawsuit opposing Illinois’ Digital Asset Tax reported that state officials agreed to delay implementation by six months.

In a Thursday filing in the circuit court of Sangamon County, Illinois, the crypto and blockchain advocacy group Digital Chamber said that Illinois would postpone a 0.2% tax on digital assets from Jan. 1 to July 1, 2027. The organization sued Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the Department of Revenue official David Harris in July, claiming the tax had been “slipped into the state’s budget” without debate or public feedback.

“The Parties stipulate that continuing the Tax’s effective date from January 1, 2027 until July 1, 2027 will permit orderly briefing and adjudication of the underlying legal questions without prejudicing any Party’s rights, claims, or defenses on the merits,” the filing said.

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The agreement will allow the two state regulators to share supervisory information, streamline licensing reviews and coordinate examinations and enforcement actions involving digital asset firms.

New York and Wyoming financial regulators have signed an agreement to coordinate oversight of crypto companies operating across both states, including licensing, examinations and potential enforcement actions.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), announced Thursday by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the Wyoming Division of Banking,& applies to firms already regulated& in either state and& those& seeking approval in both jurisdictions.

Under the agreement, the regulators will share analysis and historical examination data to streamline applications, coordinate examination schedules and work toward joint examinations of companies operating in both states.

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US bond yields fell sharply around Thursday’s Wall Street open as Bitcoin price action sought to preserve a local trend of higher lows.

Bitcoin (BTC) pushed above $84,000 around Thursday’s Wall Street open as US bond yields retreated after setting more multidecade highs.

Key points:

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD preserving a pattern of higher lows on hourly time frames, up 0.6% on the day.

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The platform said it will compensate users affected by the hack, which stemmed from a bug that affected deposits and withdrawals.

Cross-chain protocol NEAR Intents reported a security breach that resulted in the loss of $3.8 million in user funds.

In a Thursday X post, the protocol said that the incident was the result of a “bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interaction with NEAR Intents smart contract.” NEAR said that it would compensate users in full for the lost funds, and the “contract-side vulnerability has been patched” to prevent similar attacks.

“The incident has been reported to law enforcement, and we are working with security and blockchain analytics partners to trace the funds and pursue recovery,” said the platform. “A detailed report will be shared publicly in the following days.”

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Crypto security losses reached $1.26 billion in Q3 across 247 incidents, with September alone accounting for roughly $769 million.

Losses from crypto security incidents climbed to $1.26 billion in the third quarter of 2026, largely driven by the $387.5 million hack of crypto exchange Bitget.

Losses rose 53.9% from $819.4 million in Q2, while the number of security incidents increased about 13% from 219 to 247, according to data from blockchain security company CertiK.

The Bitget hack accounted for about 31% of Q3 losses, making it the quarter’s largest recorded incident under CertiK’s methodology. Liquid Network’s $319 million exploit on Sept. 6 ranked second, followed by Tectonic at $120 million and the $112.7 million Coldcard theft.

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Researchers in a Latin American stablecoin ecosystem report warned “fragility in the system is concentrated in its thinnest layer,” with just 16 of 494 companies focused primarily on wholesale liquidity, treasury and credit.

Latin America’s stablecoin payment ecosystem may depend on a small group of underlying liquidity providers, potentially disrupting customers’ ability to cash out into local currency if a key provider loses banking access, according to Verda Ventures partner Amit Chu.

In a newly published report from crypto venture companies Varys Capital and Verda Ventures, drawing on Verda’s Stablescape database, researchers analyzed 494 companies in the region, but found only 16 whose primary business is providing wholesale stablecoin-to-fiat liquidity, corporate treasury and credit, warning that “fragility in the system is concentrated in its thinnest layer.”

“There are many sellers of liquidity and very few specialists. What we can’t see from public data is how many of them warehouse the currency risk themselves and how many pass it to the same few desks and exchanges. Our view is that it’s the second, and that’s the fragility the report is pointing at,” Chu told Cointelegraph.&

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Highly liquid and settling 24/7, stablecoins can leave banks and countries at lightning speed. But whether stablecoins are a risk — or an opportunity — depends on your perspective.

Anyone who’s ever sent a bank transfer overseas is familiar with the painful process of waiting for things like working hours, correspondent banks and settlement times.

In many cases, it would be faster, cheaper and just more efficient to strap the physical cash to a homing pigeon, or slap it in an envelope and send it via DHL.

Stablecoins can move money across borders around the clock, without waiting for the legacy system to fire up its steam engines.

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Dune found that tokenized markets show different trading patterns from traditional markets, with RWA value reaching $34.5 billion.

Tokenized markets show different trading and investment patterns from traditional markets, according to a new Dune report comparing onchain and off-chain activity across equities, credit, commodities and cash-equivalent products.

Dune found the difference pronounced in equities, where single stocks accounted for 81% of tokenized equity spot supply while exchange-traded funds (ETFs) made up 19%.

Armand Khatri, head of ecosystem at Ondo Finance, said tokenization gives investors more control over asset selection by reducing their dependence on local intermediaries’ offerings.

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Bitcoin erased its post-PCE gains as analysts cautioned that methodology changes complicated the lower-than-expected inflation reading.

Bitcoin (BTC) held above $83,000 on Thursday after giving back gains following lower-than-expected US inflation data.

Key points:

Data from Coinbase showed BTC/USD flat on the day after a brief bout of volatility ahead of September’s monthly and third-quarter close.

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EU regulators are reportedly examining Binance’s use of a MiCA exemption to serve customers as ESMA seeks stronger enforcement powers.

European regulators are reportedly scrutinizing Binance’s use of a legal exemption to continue serving customers in the European Union without authorization under the bloc’s crypto rules.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and regulators in France, Germany and Greece are examining Binance’s use of reverse solicitation under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Binance withdrew its Greek MiCA application in June and said it would seek authorization in another EU member state.

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Chainalysis still faces an aiding-and-abetting claim over Celsius’ disputed $3.3 billion audit after a judge dismissed 15 other claims.

A US federal judge has dismissed most claims brought against Chainalysis by Celsius Network’s litigation administrator, but allowed one to proceed.

The surviving claim alleges Chainalysis helped Celsius insiders breach their fiduciary duties.

US District Judge Margaret Garnett denied Chainalysis’ bid to dismiss the aiding-and-abetting claim in a ruling issued Tuesday. She found that the complaint sufficiently alleged that Chainalysis knew a 2020 Celsius press release contained false statements and helped disseminate them.

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Bitcoin gained 42.71% in Q3, its best third-quarter performance since 2017, as US spot ETFs attracted $6.34 billion in net inflows.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded about $6.34 billion in net inflows in the third quarter, marking their strongest quarter of 2026 as Bitcoin rebounded from the first half.

The funds closed September with $2.65 billion in net inflows, down around 25% from $3.52 billion in August and following $172 million in July, according to SoSoValue data.

The quarterly flows reversed about $5 billion in net outflows recorded in the second quarter. Bitcoin gained 42.71% in the third quarter, its strongest quarterly gain since Q4 2024 and its best third-quarter performance since 2017, according to CoinGlass.

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A Bitcoin Policy Institute paper says MSCI’s proposed “non-operating company” rule could remove Strategy and Metaplanet from its indexes and may have roots in an earlier crypto treasury review.

A Bitcoin policy think tank has questioned how MSCI developed its latest proposal to tighten the rules governing its market indexes, after the benchmark provider identified companies including Strategy and Metaplanet for potential treatment as “non-operating businesses” and exclusion from its indexes.&

MSCI first proposed excluding digital asset treasury companies from its global indexes in 2025, but shelved the plan in January after pushback and said it would instead review “non-operating companies” more broadly. On Aug. 3, it returned with a wider proposal that could still remove Strategy and Metaplanet from its indexes.

In a research paper titled Wall Street’s Invisible Committee, BPI pointed to metadata showing that the source presentation behind MSCI’s consultation was stored in an internal folder for digital asset treasury companies. BPI said the finding “warrants asking whether its broader language carried forward” MSCI’s earlier effort to exclude digital asset treasury companies.&

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The $388 million Bitget breach and $320 million Liquid Network exploit accounted for most of September’s losses, though more than $270 million from the latter was later returned.

Crypto suffered its worst month of the year for hacks and exploits in September, with two blockchain security firms estimating losses at more than $766 million.

PeckShield counted 55 major incidents resulting in $766.5 million in stolen funds, while CertiK recorded 97 incidents and estimated losses at $768.4 million. Both firms showed the losses were a significant increase from August.

The month included the $388 million Bitget hack and a $320 million hack of the Liquid Network. More than $270 million was later returned, according to reports. The incidents rank among the largest crypto thefts of the year.

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The classification could assist the CFTC’s claim that it has exclusive federal jurisdiction over event contracts offered on regulated prediction markets.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is seeking to clarify the definition of a “swap” amid a jurisdictional fight with state gambling regulators over prediction markets.&

An Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs docket shows the agency has submitted a proposed rule to expand the definition of “swap” to include event contracts, along with an interim final rule that would exclude casino-style gambling products. Both are under review.&

The classification matters because the CFTC has argued that federal law gives it exclusive authority over swaps traded on its regulated exchanges, such as those offered by Polymarket and Kalshi. US state regulators have disputed that position, particularly for sports event contracts, arguing they are subject to state gambling laws.&

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MetaMask said it is investigating the threat internally and said it has found no immediate threat to its wallets.

MetaMask has announced it is responding to a security incident affecting part of its infrastructure and is exiting affected staking validators as a precaution.

In an update on Wednesday, MetaMask said it was addressing the ongoing threat internally and was working with external partners and security advisors. It did not share what the security issue was but said it has not identified any immediate threat to MetaMask wallets.

Source: MetaMask

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The bank also expects Ethena’s ENA token to rise roughly sevenfold to $2 by the end of 2028 as USDe scales and token buybacks increase.

British multinational bank Standard Chartered expects Ethena’s USDe stablecoin supply to grow eightfold to $40 billion by the end of 2028 as the protocol expands its sources of yield beyond crypto markets.

In a Wednesday research report shared with Cointelegraph, the bank initiated coverage of Ethena’s ENA token& with a year-end 2028 price target of $2, roughly seven times the $0.28 price cited in the report. Standard Chartered also expects USDe to slightly outpace overall stablecoin market growth over the period.

Its forecasts imply ENA would also outperform Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) through 2028. Standard Chartered sees BTC reaching $300,000 and ETH $18,000 by the end of the period.

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The organization’s endorsements in the House and Senate came as many polls showed Democrats favored to regain control of both chambers in 2027.

Update (Sept. 30, 10:55 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from Stand With Crypto.

Stand With Crypto, the industry-aligned organization Coinbase launched in 2023 to promote what it called “clear, common-sense regulations for the crypto industry,” has announced several picks for the next session of the US Congress.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg first reported that Stand With Crypto said it would be supporting candidates running for Senate seats in 2026, including Republican Jon Husted in Ohio, Republican Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Democrat Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Husted is defending his Senate seat against Democrat Sherrod Brown, who lost to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024 after outside groups spent more than $300 million in Ohio.

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Base’s Cobalt lets traders set transaction conditions while giving issuers tools for compliance checks, stock splits and forced token transfers.

Base activated its Cobalt upgrade Wednesday, adding conditional transactions and new issuer controls for tokenized assets as the Ethereum layer-2 network deepens its push into onchain finance.&

Cobalt, Base’s third major upgrade, expands its B20 token standard by allowing issuers to apply several compliance checks to the same asset. For example, an issuer could require recipients to pass identity checks, qualify as accredited investors and not appear on a sanctions list.

Issuers can also schedule adjustments for corporate actions such as stock splits. The update changes the number of shares displayed in wallets and apps without minting or burning tokens or altering the underlying balance.

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Bloomberg’s Allium-powered dashboard gives Terminal users hourly data on stablecoin supply, issuance, transfers and activity across blockchain networks.

Bloomberg has launched a stablecoin dashboard on its Terminal, giving financial professionals access to onchain data tracking stablecoin supply, issuance and transaction activity.

The dashboard, powered by blockchain data platform Allium, covers stablecoins with more than $100 million in circulation, representing over 98% of the market, according to a Wednesday announcement from Bloomberg.

Users can compare stablecoins by supply, mints, burns, transfer volume and velocity, and break down activity by blockchain network and peg type, including fiat currencies and commodities.

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Petrobras developed two Cardano-based applications to track sustainability claims tied to aviation fuel and renewable diesel as part of an ongoing research collaboration.

Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras has developed two blockchain applications using Cardano to track sustainability data for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and its Diesel R renewable fuel.

According to a Wednesday announcement from& the Cardano Foundation, the first application, developed with PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs, tokenizes environmental attributes associated with SAF into digital tokens designed to prevent the same claim from being used more than once.

The application uses a Book-and-Claim model, which allows the environmental benefit to be separated from the physical fuel and assigned to an airline, company or passenger even if the SAF is used elsewhere.

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Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said that a protection fund created by the company in 2022 “absorbed the financial impact of the incident“ that resulted in $388 million in user losses.

The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitget reported a gradual return to normal operations following a security breach that resulted in the loss of $388 million of user funds.

In a Wednesday X post, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said withdrawals for all tokens would resume on Friday, and the exchange has already restored access to users’ Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and USDt (USDT). As part of recovery efforts, Bitget’s ‘Protection Fund’ also reached $309 million.

The fund, initially set up by Bitget in January 2022 with 5,500 BTC, was intended to reimburse users’ potential losses that were “not a result of any misconduct from the user or the platform itself,” presumably including some security breaches. According to the company, funds were available “for instant deployment whenever the need arises.”

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THORChain will not — or can not — block addresses linked to the $387.5 million Bitget hack. Can the devs be prosecuted for money laundering? It’s complicated, says crypto lawyer Yuriy Brisov.

After suspected North Korean hackers exploited crypto exchange Bitget for $387.5 million last week, investigators were able to quickly flag and trace the recipient addresses.&

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen then controversially demanded that decentralized cross-chain swaps platform THORChain “refuse service to these addresses.”

THORChain responded:

The move was controversial, especially given the protocol was halted immediately in May when $10.7 million of its own funds were exploited. Complicating matters, THORChain has retired its admin key and doesn’t have an easy way to censor addresses, even if it wanted to.

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THORChain will not — or can not — block addresses linked to the $387.5 million Bitget hack. Can the devs be prosecuted for money laundering? It’s complicated, says crypto lawyer Yuriy Brisov.

After suspected North Korean hackers exploited crypto exchange Bitget for $387.5 million last week, investigators were able to quickly flag and trace the recipient addresses.&

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen then controversially demanded that decentralized cross-chain swaps platform THORChain “refuse service to these addresses.”

THORChain responded:

The move was controversial, especially given the protocol was halted immediately in May when $10.7 million of its own funds were exploited. Complicating matters, THORChain has retired its admin key and claims it doesn’t have an easy way to censor addresses, even if it wanted to.

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Singapore’s crypto economy grew 55.4% to $284 billion as institutional-platform activity surged 94%, while the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam stood out for small-value P2P transfers.

Singapore’s crypto activity rose 55.4% to $284 billion in the year ended June 2026, bucking a regional contraction and regaining its position as the largest crypto economy in Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania (CSAO), according to Chainalysis.

Much of the growth came from institutional platform activity, which increased 94% to $60 billion, concentrated among a small number of market makers, over-the-counter trading firms, and institutional brokerages. Chainalysis said the broader CSAO crypto economy contracted 6.8% over the same period.&

“The growth in Singapore’s institutional platform ecosystem was very concentrated and marked by mostly high-volume activity by existing platforms rather than the dynamic entry of new services,” Chainalysis told Cointelegraph.&

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Crypto businesses should apply by Feb. 28, 2027, while existing money laundering registrations will not convert into FCA authorization.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) opened applications Wednesday for crypto businesses seeking authorization under a regulatory regime due to take effect on Oct. 25, 2027.

Companies intending to continue operating in the UK should apply by the end of February 2027. The FCA expects to decide applications submitted during that window before the regime takes effect.

The framework expands the FCA’s oversight beyond anti-money laundering and financial promotion requirements. The regulator finalized its rules in June, including requirements covering stablecoin issuance, crypto trading platforms and market abuse.

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CryptoQuant flagged potential selling pressure as deposit transactions and depositing addresses hit their highest counts since October 2025.

Altcoin exchange deposits have reached their highest transaction count since October 2025, according to CryptoQuant, which warned that holders may be preparing to sell.

Key points:

In its latest weekly report released on Tuesday, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant flagged a surge in exchange deposits involving altcoins.

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As the European Commission’s MiCA review consultation closes, Europe must decide whether its crypto rulebook is protecting the market without making it too costly to build in.

When the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) came into force, it did something that had eluded the digital asset sector in Europe for years: it created a single, coherent rulebook.

For the first time, a crypto asset service provider (CASP) authorized in one Member State can passport its services across the European Union and European Economic Area, and clients across the bloc can choose among a growing field of licensed, supervised providers. That is a genuine achievement, and one the industry should not take for granted.

As the consultation on MiCA’s review closes, the focus should now be on calibration: keeping what works, and being honest about where the compliance burden has grown faster than the risks it is meant to address.

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Ether ETFs shed $3 million Tuesday after seven days of inflows, following an $8 million outflow from Zcash funds at the start of the week.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) extended their net inflow streak to nine trading days, while Ether and Zcash funds flipped to outflows.

Bitcoin ETFs attracted $66.2 million on Tuesday, bringing net inflows over their winning streak to roughly $3.1 billion, according to data from SoSoValue. The year-to-date net inflows rose to roughly $1 billion.

However, some altcoin funds saw a reversal. Spot Ether ETFs ended their seven-day streak by posting roughly $3 million in net outflows on Tuesday. The funds had attracted more than $851 million during the seven sessions, bringing cumulative net inflows to about $14 billion.

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From touchscreen and QR-code devices to NFC cards and Bitcoin-only models, this guide compares hardware wallets by security, connectivity, usability and recovery options to help users choose the right fit.

A hardware wallet is a device designed to protect the private keys used to approve cryptocurrency transactions. In plain terms, your crypto remains on the blockchain, while a hardware wallet holds the keys that let you access it.

The main differences between wallets are which coins they support, how they connect to your phone or computer, and how you check and approve a transaction. This guide explains those differences and what they mean when choosing a wallet.

Cointelegraph tested Trezor Safe 7, Ledger Stax, Flex, Nano Gen5, Nano X, Nano S Plus and Coinkite’s Opendime. Testing used smartphones and computers running both Linux and macOS operating systems, with both third-party and official software. The Opendime was used as cold storage; the others were used to test both simple transactions and decentralized application interactions. All the other models covered in the article were reviewed based on publicly available information alone.

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SlowMist identified malicious activity weeks before the Bitget theft, involving a zero-day vulnerability, two security products and a custom withdrawal tool.

SlowMist traced the earliest logged malicious activity linked to Bitget’s $388 million theft to Aug. 31, when an attacker exploited a zero-day vulnerability affecting a third-party security product.

Attackers stole the funds from Bitget’s hot wallets on Sept. 24 (UTC), transferring assets to addresses they controlled across several blockchains. SlowMist’s investigation identified malicious activity involving two third-party security products and a wallet application host.

According to a SlowMist progress report, the attacker used a hidden script to access the database of what SlowMist called “Product A,” after retrieving its password from an environment variable. Similar activity was later detected on two other nodes on Sept. 23 and Sept. 25. The dates and times in the report are in UTC+8.

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AllUnity is launching USDAU, its fourth fiat-backed stablecoin, expanding a MiCA-regulated lineup that already covers the euro, Swiss franc and Swedish krona.

AllUnity is launching a new stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, expanding its digital asset lineup as dollar-pegged tokens continue to dominate the global stablecoin market.

The new token, USDAU, will maintain a 1:1 peg to the US dollar through segregated reserves and debut on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Tempo, Arc and Polygon, AllUnity said in a Wednesday announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

AllUnity, regulated under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), already issues euro-backed EURAU, Swiss franc-backed CHFAU and Swedish krona-backed SEKAU stablecoins. CoinGecko measures EURAU’s market capitalization at roughly $400,000 and CHFAU’s at about $45 million.

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The prediction market was valued at $22 billion in a $1 billion funding round just four months ago, after doubling its valuation from December.

Prediction market platform Kalshi is reportedly now in “advanced talks” to raise approximately $1 billion in a new funding round at a valuation of $40 billion.

Existing investor Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management are in talks to lead the round, which could include Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

It comes after Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series F round in May at a $22 billion valuation, doubling its valuation from December.

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Illinois’ draft rules spell out how its 0.2% digital asset transaction tax would apply to stablecoins, DeFi platforms, crypto bridges and self-custody transfers.

Illinois tax officials have published draft rules detailing how the state’s already-enacted 0.2% digital asset transaction tax would apply to stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and other crypto activity.

The new draft rules provide implementation details for the law, including which transactions and digital assets would fall within its scope. Under the proposal, stablecoins would be treated as digital assets subject to tax, while nonfungible tokens would be excluded.&

DeFi transactions would generally be exempt unless users pay fees considered “valuable consideration,” such as protocol fees collected for operating or maintaining a platform. Network fees and swap fees paid solely to liquidity providers would not trigger the tax.

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In February, ai.com drew enough traffic to crash its website after a $15 million Super Bowl ad, but months later, users are still wondering what’s happened to their promised AI agent.

Crypto.com says its personal AI agent venture, pitched to perform a broad set of tasks from trading stocks to updating online dating profiles, is still under construction, months after a Super Bowl debut that got so much attention it crashed the website.

Ai.com, a business line of Crypto.com, promoted the launch of its AI platform in a $15 million ad during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl in February. The website crashed within minutes as curious users flocked to reserve a handle for their own personal AI agent.&

However, nearly eight months later, the website continues to display a message that AI agent generation is queued due to high demand.

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Binance Pay will let overseas users spend more than 100 cryptocurrencies at PayPay-supported merchants in Japan through HIVEX, while stores receive yen.

[Update, 07:00 UTC, Sept. 30: This article was updated after Binance clarified that users can pay with more than 100 supported cryptocurrencies, while USDT is used as the backend settlement layer.]

Binance Pay will allow eligible overseas users visiting Japan to spend more than 100 cryptocurrencies at the vast majority of PayPay-supported merchants starting Wednesday.

The service will run through HIVEX, a payment interoperability framework that connects overseas QR payment services to PayPay-supported merchants in Japan. Binance Pay uses Tether USDt (USDT) as its backend settlement layer, while HIVEX settles with PayPay and PayPay settles merchants in yen.

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Binance Pay will let overseas users spend USDT at most PayPay-supported merchants in Japan through HIVEX, while stores receive yen.

Binance Pay will allow eligible overseas users visiting Japan to spend Tether USDt (USDT) at the vast majority of PayPay-supported merchants starting Wednesday.

The service will run through HIVEX, a payment interoperability framework that connects overseas QR payment services to PayPay-supported merchants in Japan. Merchants will continue receiving settlement in yen.

Binance told Cointelegraph it is the first crypto payment service to access PayPay-supported merchants through HIVEX. Merchants will not need to opt in separately, it said.

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The voluntary accord puts much of the responsibility for managing frontier AI risks on developers.

US President Donald Trump and tech executives have signed a voluntary accord aimed at ensuring their AI models “behave as intended.”

The accord comes amid growing concerns over the safety of increasingly capable frontier AI systems. Trump has resisted a slowdown, citing competition with China. The agreement places much of the responsibility of managing AI risk on the companies developing the systems.&

The White House accord, named “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” calls for internal controls, independent external audits and board-level oversight “to ensure its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.” The accord also leaves open the possibility of turning those commitments into law or regulation, saying it may make sense to do so over time.

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Seven commissioner seats at the SEC and CFTC will be empty after Friday, leaving only a few leaders at financial regulators to oversee aspects of the $3 trillion crypto industry.

Update (Sept. 29, 8:45 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from the CFTC.

Two of the United States’ financial agencies tasked with overseeing and enforcing digital asset regulation will be down to just three commissioners after Friday, following the departure of a Republican member.

On Friday, Hester Peirce, who served as a commissioner with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for eight years, will leave the agency about two months before the end of the 18-month extension for her second term. The departure of Peirce, whom many in the industry knew as “Crypto Mom” for her views on digital assets, will mark only the second time in US history the agency has operated with two commissioners.

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OpenAI is reportedly seeking another $30 billion from investors as the ChatGPT developer pushes its long-awaited public market debut into 2027.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI is reportedly eyeing another $30 billion raise that could value it at $1.4 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable companies even before it goes public.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that OpenAI is in the early stages of discussions for the new funding round, with investor demand driving the talks.

The proposed valuation would be roughly 64% higher than OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation in March, when it raised $122 billion.

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Kakaopay Securities is working with Dinari and Ondo Finance to explore tokenizing Korean-listed equities and expanding their availability to investors in international markets.

South Korea’s Kakaopay Securities is partnering with tokenization firms Dinari and Ondo Finance to explore bringing Korean-listed stocks onchain and distributing them to investors in international markets.

Kakaopay announced separate agreements with Dinari and Ondo on Tuesday, covering the sourcing of underlying Korean shares, tokenization infrastructure and their potential distribution outside South Korea.

Under the Dinari partnership, the companies will run a proof of concept using Dinari’s dShares model, which is designed to preserve applicable shareholder rights, including dividends and voting.& Dinari offers 724 tokenized US stocks and ETFs through dShares, with the Kakaopay partnership exploring an extension of the model to Korean-listed equities.

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Bitwise’s NEAR ETF begins trading on NYSE Arca as the token rallies more than 160% over the past month and activity on NEAR Intents grows.

Crypto asset manager Bitwise has launched the first US spot exchange-traded product tracking NEAR, giving investors exposure to the token through a fund trading on NYSE Arca.

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Bitcoin failed to make another run at $85,000 as sellers held the line above current levels, while surging US bond yields weighed on stocks and precious metals.

Bitcoin (BTC) reversed its latest gains after Tuesday’s Wall Street open as US bond yields continued to set multidecade highs.

Key points:

Data from TradingView showed a local rally to $84,540 stalling as the US trading session began, with BTC/USD retreating below its daily opening level near $83,600.

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Gracy Chen said she saw the 2025 Bybit hack as a “good reference point” for Bitget’s security breach, noting that only a small percentage of funds had been frozen or recovered.

The CEO of crypto exchange Bitget isn’t sure that the company can fully freeze or recover all the assets compromised in a security breach last week that resulted in the loss of $388 million in crypto.

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction released Tuesday, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said she was looking at the February 2025 hack of crypto exchange Bybit as a “good reference point” for Thursday’s breach. Hackers stole about $1.5 billion worth of Ether (ETH) from Bybit, and the company reported only freezing and recovering a combined $80 million.

“I’m actually not very optimistic because after a year or so of Bybit’s hack, they’ve only [been able to freeze] about 3.5% of the total stolen funds,” said Chen. “That’s only the freezing. It’s not about recovery yet.”

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An October pullback could offer a buying opportunity before Bitcoin’s next cycle peak, which Brandt expects between $300,000 and $600,000. He’s not sold on “fool coin” XRP.

Veteran trader Peter Brandt called October 4 as the day Bitcoin’s bear market would end, but now he thinks the market beat him to it.

“There’s a good possibility we have seen the low and now are entering a new bull market cycle in Bitcoin,” Brandt tells Cointelegraph on the latest episode of Trade Secrets.

In July, Brandt warned that prices could fall into the high-$40,000 range. Bitcoin was trading near $64,000 when that interview was published and climbed to almost $85,000 by his latest appearance.&

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CoinShares says IBIT offers clues to institutional buying, but basis trades mean inflows are not necessarily bets on rising Bitcoin prices.

Billions are flowing back into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but the figures alone do not reveal how much of the demand comes from institutions, according to CoinShares.

US crypto investment products had attracted about $4.1 billion in September, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) accounting for more than 53% of those inflows, CoinShares head of research James Butterfill told Cointelegraph.

Crypto investment products attracted about $3.5 billion across the industry over the preceding five trading days, CoinShares said in a Sept. 25 market update.

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The ECB is seeking firms to explore AI agents and machine-to-machine interactions as it prepares a separate digital euro pilot for 2027.

The European Central Bank is seeking fintechs, payment firms and other organizations to explore the use of AI agents in digital euro payments.

The ECB opened applications on Monday for a new round of its digital euro innovation platform, dividing the program between hands-on testing of payment features and workshops on future digital euro uses.

The experimentation track will run from January through June 2027, with selected participants developing prototypes for e-receipts, multiparty transactions, conditional payments and new front-end features.

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Glamsterdam will bring proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and new gas pricing, while its mainnet date remains unset.

Ethereum developers have scheduled the network’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, to activate on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6.

Sepolia node operators must update both their execution-layer and consensus-layer clients before the activation, the Ethereum Foundation said Monday.

One of Glamsterdam’s changes is enshrined proposer-builder separation. It will move the handoff between specialized block builders and validators into Ethereum’s protocol, reducing reliance on outside middleware.

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US spot crypto ETF inflows fell about 80% from Friday as Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP funds attracted $64.8 million combined on Monday.

US spot crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) attracted about $64.8 million on inflows continued to cool on Monday, down roughly 80% from Friday after a strong week of buying.

SoSoValue data showed US spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs led Monday’s inflows with $31.07 million, followed by $17.1 million for Ether (ETH) ETFs. Solana (SOL) funds recorded $12.7 million, while XRP (XRP) ETFs drew $3.96 million.

The four categories attracted roughly $330.8 million on Friday. Bitcoin funds drew $134.47, while Ether took in $86.95 million, Solana $86.7 million and XRP $22.65 million.

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Bitcoin price action consolidated after early-week losses while protecting a “trend-defining” support zone.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved crucial support into Tuesday as analysis warned of a new profit-taking surge.

Key points:

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Greece joined the EU MiCA register with four providers as HCMC expanded its denial of remarks attributed to officials in a report on Binance.

Greece has entered the European Union’s crypto regulatory register for the first time, with four providers added.

Four Greek providers — BCash, Xenios Blockchain Group, Capital Wallet Greece and Piraeus Bank — appeared on the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) register updated Thursday.

Six other crypto-asset service providers from Germany, France and Slovenia were added, bringing the register to 359 unique providers.

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BitMine could reach 5% of Ether’s supply by early November, while Tom Lee has left open whether it would continue buying beyond that level.

Ethereum treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies could reach its goal of holding 5% of Ether’s supply by early November if its recent buying pace continues.

A Cointelegraph review of BitMine’s 12 weekly updates issued from July 13 through Sept. 28 shows the company reported acquiring about 259,000 Ether (ETH), averaging roughly 21,600 ETH per week. BitMine reported 6,001,302 ETH as of Sunday, equal to 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH supply it cited.& &

At this supply level, 5% would equate to about 6.105 million ETH, leaving BitMine roughly 103,700 ETH short. Maintaining its 12-week average purchase rate would close the gap in about 4.8 weeks, though the estimate could shift if the company changes its buying pace.

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The disclosure came as Senate Democratic investigators alleged USDT had become a key part of Iran’s shadow banking network.

Stablecoin issuer Tether said it helped authorities freeze nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT during 2026, as a Senate Democrat called for an investigation into the stablecoin issuer on Monday.

In a statement on Monday, the company said it has been working closely with international law enforcement for years. This year alone, it froze more than $130 million in USDT across four wallets, and in April, it froze more than $344 million linked to the Central Bank of Iran.&

“Tether has consistently demonstrated that USDT is not a haven for sanctioned actors, terrorist organizations or criminal networks,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.& &

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Coinbase joins Kraken in bringing US derivatives infrastructure in-house, after Kraken’s parent acquired Bitnomial and its CFTC-regulated exchange, clearinghouse and brokerage in May.

Coinbase has received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to launch Coinbase Clearing LLC, its own US-based derivatives clearing organization.&

The registration became effective Monday, permitting the clearinghouse to clear fully collateralized futures, options on futures and swaps, though the registration does not permit the clearinghouse to clear its leveraged products.&

“Today’s CFTC approval completes Coinbase’s end-to-end derivatives infrastructure, enabling us to bring more regulated derivatives products to market with native USDC collateral and 24/7 settlement,” said Molly Abraham, Coinbase’s general counsel.

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The launch comes after several AI agents breached their testing environments this year, adding to calls for companies to slow the development of autonomous AI systems.

Chipmaker Nvidia has announced a new software platform that aims to address recent concerns about artificial intelligence agents “going rogue” and breaching their testing environments.

On Monday, Nvidia introduced its Open Agent Safety Platform with over 100 industry partners. The platform combines OpenShell, an open-source runtime that runs agents in sandboxed environments and controls their access to files, tools and networks, with Sentry, a separate hardware security layer that monitors agents and can quarantine them if they attempt to cross those boundaries.

“AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

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The cross-chain protocol said it actively prevents stolen funds from being laundered, drawing a contrast with THORChain’s position that it does not selectively censor transactions.

NEAR Intents said it blocked more than $50 million in attempted transfers linked to the Bitget hack.&

Attackers stole $387.5 million from Bitget on Thursday. A significant portion of these funds moved across chains to Ethereum, according to Alex Shevchenko, general manager of NEAR Intents, a protocol that lets users swap crypto assets across blockchains.&

Shevchenko said its SHIELD system detected and blocked more than $50 million in attempted transfers, which subsequently went to other providers. It managed to freeze $503,000 in funds during execution, while around $166,000 in suspected stolen funds passed through.

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Aiden Pleterski was allegedly behind a crypto Ponzi scheme between 2021 and 2022 that resulted in a kidnapping and related criminal charges.

The criminal trial for a self-described ‘crypto king’ who allegedly defrauded investors with claims of large profits on digital assets is set to begin next week, more than two years after charges were filed in Canada.

On Oct. 5, Aiden Pleterski, a social media personality who allegedly defrauded his followers out of about $30 million between 2021 and 2022, will appear for his criminal trial in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice. Canadian authorities charged Pleterski with money laundering and fraud in May 2024 after he allegedly solicited investments and made false claims related to “large weekly profits through savvy investments.”

According to a Monday CBC News report, Pleterski has been unable to secure a delay for his trial to obtain counsel, and is expected to represent himself in court. The trial is expected to run for about four weeks, with the fraud charge alone carrying a maximum sentence of up to 14 years in prison if he is convicted.

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The crypto company is seeking a valuation of up to $6 billion, well below its 2022 peak, as recently listed crypto stocks struggle to hold their gains.

Blockchain.com, a crypto exchange and wallet provider, is reportedly looking to raise about $500 million in an initial public offering (IPO) this year, more than four years after the company reached a $14 billion valuation at the height of the previous crypto boom.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Monday that Blockchain.com was seeking an IPO valuation of between $4 billion and $6 billion. The company was also open to a smaller offering if needed to complete a public listing.

As Cointelegraph reported, Blockchain.com confidentially filed draft registration documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in May, paving the way for a potential IPO. At the time, the company didn’t disclose how many shares it planned to offer or a potential price range.

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With the failed cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, the SEC announced updates on how federal securities laws could apply to token issuers, following similar guidance from the CFTC.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) updated its policies on how securities laws will apply to “certain types of crypto assets and certain transactions involving crypto assets,” following a similar move by the country’s federal commodities regulator last week.

In a Friday update to the SEC’s frequently asked questions issued in March, the agency said that the latest interpretation of its rules on crypto was non-binding, had “no legal force or effect, [did] not alter or amend applicable law, and [did] not create any new or additional obligations for any person.” The FAQs would apply to how the SEC considers digital asset products falling under the Howey test for investment contracts.&

According to the SEC, token issuers could conduct buyback programs for customers provided “a crypto system is functional and has no central party” that would not necessarily qualify as “a representation or promise to undertake essential managerial efforts,” i.e., not an investment contract under federal securities laws.&

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Eligible institutions can pledge Benji-issued fund shares for stablecoin credit lines while keeping the underlying assets in off-exchange custody.

Franklin Templeton has partnered with Bybit on a program that lets institutional investors use tokenized shares of its money market funds as trading collateral, expanding their use beyond a simple buy-and-hold investment.

The companies announced Monday that eligible clients can pledge fund shares issued through Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform while the assets remain in off-exchange custody. In return, clients can access credit lines denominated in the USDT or USDC stablecoins to trade on Bybit without selling the fund shares or transferring them onto the exchange.

The arrangement allows institutions to keep earning yield on their money market fund holdings while using those assets to finance crypto trading.

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Fairshake pledged an initial $30 million on media opposing the Democratic candidate in Ohio’s Senate race in what some see as a repeat of spending by the crypto industry in 2024.

Update (Sept. 28, 8:52 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from Jon Husted’s campaign.

A political action committee (PAC) aligned with and largely funded by the cryptocurrency industry reported spending more than $11 million on ads supporting Republican Jon Husted and opposing Democrat Sherrod Brown in a race for one of Ohio’s seats in the US Senate.

In a Thursday filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Defend American Jobs PAC, affiliated with the Coinbase- and Ripple Labs-backed group Fairshake, reported spending $11.4 million on media supporting Husted and opposing Brown’s potential return to the Senate. The ad buys appeared to be part of Fairshake’s pledge to initially spend $30 million in the Ohio race in an attempt to block Brown, who was previously chair of the Senate Banking Committee and one of the more outspoken voices in Congress against pro-crypto legislation and policies.

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Some stolen assets have been frozen, but Bitget has yet to disclose how much has been recovered as investigators continue to assess a possible North Korea link.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the crypto exchange’s recent $388 million exploit stemmed from a vulnerability in a third-party security product that allowed the attacker to obtain “high-level internal credentials.”

In comments to Cointelegraph, Chen said the attacker used those credentials to issue fraudulent withdrawal commands. Bitget’s private keys were not compromised, and its cold wallets were not affected, she said.

Bitget said it has since addressed the security flaw and tightened its withdrawal controls, including restricting internal access, adding independent verification for withdrawals and increasing monitoring for unusual activity.

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ESMA will focus on CASP resilience, outsourcing and reverse solicitation while pursuing harmonized reporting across national regulators.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) will focus its coordination of national crypto supervision in 2027 on operational resilience, outsourcing and firms maintaining sufficient operations inside the bloc as implementation deepens under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).

ESMA Chair Verena Ross said Monday that the regulator’s focus under MiCA had shifted “from rulemaking towards supervision and convergence.”

“We want innovation to flourish within a framework that provides clarity for firms, safeguards for investors and confidence in the markets,” Ross said during a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

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Altseason is almost here and early signs suggest traders are becoming more selective, with capital flowing into revenue-generating protocols across a number of different narratives.

Altseason may not be officially here, but traders are starting their rotations — and the numbers are getting harder to ignore.

Over the past 30 days, memecoin launchpad PONS soared more than 350% in price, while in DeFi, Uniswap’s UNI gained more than 110%, Arbitrum’s ARB jumped over 150% and AI-focused NEAR also shot up around 180%.

Privacy token Zcash hit a record high above $1,600 last week, while Bitcoin Layer-2 token LIT and memecoin launchpad token PUMP are also among the biggest gainers over the period, according to CoinMarketCap.

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Strategy sold 1.47 million MSTR shares for $246.2 million, using the proceeds for Bitcoin purchases and STRC preferred stock repurchases.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought 1,665 Bitcoin for $142.7 million last week, lifting its holdings to 847,666 BTC as the company sold common shares to fund the purchase.

The company bought the Bitcoin at an average price of $85,681 per coin between Monday and Sunday, Strategy said in a Sept. 28 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Strategy has spent $63.95 billion on its holdings at an average price of $75,437 per Bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

Strategy funded the purchase with proceeds from MSTR stock sales. It sold 1.47 million shares for $246.2 million in net proceeds, allocating $142.7 million to Bitcoin and $103.5 million to repurchases of its STRC preferred stock.

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Bitcoin fell below $83,000 to start the week amid US-Iran war developments but remains up more than 40% for Q3 ahead of key inflation and jobs data.

Bitcoin (BTC) is coiling below its 2026 open days before the Q3 candle close as new resistance caps BTC price upside.

Key points:

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Ether withdrawals are scheduled to return Tuesday and USDt on Wednesday as Bitget restores services following last week’s $388 million hack.

Crypto exchange Bitget is resuming withdrawals after a security breach affecting nearly $388 million in assets, as the attacker continues moving stolen crypto through THORChain.

Bitget said it resumed Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals Monday after suspending them following last week’s security incident, with additional assets and networks set to follow over the coming days.

The Sept. 24 breach compromised part of Bitget’s hot and warm wallet infrastructure, while its cold wallets remained secure, according to the exchange.

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The SFC and AFRC signed a new MoU extending financial reporting, audit and compliance cooperation to licensed virtual asset service providers.

Hong Kong regulators have expanded their cooperation on financial reporting and audits to cover licensed crypto firms under a new memorandum of understanding (MoU).&

On Monday, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) said that the agreement extends their regulatory cooperation to financial and compliance reporting by SFC-licensed virtual asset service providers, licensed corporations, registered open-ended fund companies and authorized funds.&

According to the SFC, the MoU also covers related audit and assurance work and establishes a framework for information sharing, case referrals, mutual assistance and coordinated inspections and investigations. The agreement replaces a 2021 MoU signed by the SFC and the Financial Reporting Council, which was renamed the AFRC in 2022.&

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DYORSWAP said it paid more than 200 ETH in compensation, while Upbit operator Dunamu’s GIWA warned that its mainnet had not launched.

Scammers stole about $2 million in Ether (ETH) from a bridge for a fake GIWA blockchain that decentralized exchange (DEX) DYORSWAP said it initially mistook for the project’s mainnet.

In a reconstruction published Monday, DYORSWAP said the fraudulent bridge received about 767.65 ETH from 1,335 addresses. The scammers drained 766.25 ETH.

GIWA, an Ethereum layer-2 network developed by Upbit operator Dunamu, said on Sunday that its mainnet had not launched and warned that purported mainnet connection details circulating online were false.

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Bitcoin joined US stock futures in dropping on Monday after US president Donald Trump did not commit to permanently halting strikes on Iran.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell to weekly lows on Monday as upside momentum gave way to liquidity hunting on exchange order books.

Key points:

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Daily inflows slowed as Bitcoin pulled back from above $87,100, while Ether and XRP ETFs also attracted fresh capital during the week.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded their strongest week of inflows this year, drawing $2.39 billion after adding $134.5 million on Friday.

The weekly total was the largest since the week ending Oct. 10, 2025, when net inflows totaled $2.71 billion, according to SoSoValue. It also surpassed the previous 2026 high of $1.92 billion recorded in August.

The funds’ year-to-date flows rose to about $926 million on Friday, recovering from a year-to-date deficit that reached roughly $5.55 billion in early July.

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Crypto market making is effectively restricted under South Korea’s manipulation rules, but regulators are reconsidering the approach after a JPYC spiked on Upbit this month.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said it is considering a market-making system for digital assets, after a stablecoin linked to the value of the Japanese yen traded for as much as four times its peg on a major South Korean crypto exchange earlier this month.&

Crypto exchange Upbit opened trading of JPYC, a yen-backed stablecoin, on Sept. 17, with the market opening at 12 Korean won per JPYC before reaching a high of 37.6 Korean won just an hour later, more than four times its market value. The spike was attributed to limited liquidity on Upbit.&

“We will also review the need to introduce systems such as market-making activities to increase the efficiency and stability of the digital asset landscape,” Yoo Young-joon, director of digital finance policy at the FSC, said at a conference in Seoul on Monday, Digital Asset reported. “There were also criticisms that user losses occurred from the price surge after the JPYC listing, so demands for discipline in this area are expanding.”

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Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin said PeerDAS marked the start of Ethereum’s transition “from being just a blockchain to being something much more powerful.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s Hegotá upgrade could be the network’s last “normal” fork before development shifts toward technologies that include recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, optimized consensus and quantum-safe cryptography.&

On Sunday, Buterin said Hegotá, which is planned for 2027, is likely to be the final upgrade whose features and technology would still be recognizable to someone familiar with Ethereum in 2015.&

He said PeerDAS, which allows nodes to verify data availability by sampling portions of data rather than downloading everything, marked the beginning of Ethereum’s transition “from being just a blockchain to being something much more powerful.”&

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The law also restricts crypto companies from offering certain memecoins tied to public officials to California residents and takes effect for tokens issued from Jan. 1, 2027.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation barring state and local public officials from issuing memecoins, as Newsom criticized US President Donald Trump’s crypto ventures.&

Newsom on Sunday signed Assembly Bill 2409, introduced by Assembly Member Avelino Valencia on Feb. 20, 2026. The law also prohibits digital asset service providers from offering certain memecoins issued by or in partnership with federal, state or local public officials to California residents and applies to tokens issued on or after Jan. 1, 2027.&

“No official should profit off their office — and we’re putting stronger protections in place to ensure it doesn’t happen in our state,” Newsom said Sunday as he slammed Trump’s launch of a memecoin in 2025.&

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The Zano blockchain has been restarted at the block height that came immediately before Hard Fork 6, which introduced Gateway Addresses.

Zano has rolled back approximately a month of blockchain history after a vulnerability involving Gateway Addresses allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar to enter circulation, according to its core team.&

The Zano blockchain has been restarted at block 3,833,000, immediately before Hard Fork 6, which introduced the affected feature. The recovery requires participating nodes, miners, stakers, exchanges and other services to adopt the update, the team said Sunday.&

The rollback invalidates a month of legitimate transactions along with the unauthorized tokens, meaning transactions made during that period will no longer appear on the recovered chain. It also cannot reverse payments already settled on other blockchains. The team said it is working to account for any losses and will publish a reimbursement and claims process.&

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THORChain refuses to blacklist addresses linked to the Bitget hack. Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum is evolving from being a mere blockchain, into a world cryptographic computer.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A centralized exchange with lax security gets hacked by the North Koreans for $387.5 million, and then somehow shifts the blame game onto a decentralized exchange for not blacklisting the addresses.

The drama began on September 25 when the Asian focused exchange Bitget revealed $351.6 million in “unauthorized transfers” but it later upgraded the tally to $387.5 million. It said a preliminary investigation had linked the IP addressees to VPN services used by a North Korean hacking group.

While that isn’t firm proof, CEO Gracy Chen said its investigators had flagged other similarities with previous thefts.

North Korean hackers were believed to be behind the $1.5 billion Bybit exchange hack, and much of the funds from that attack were then swapped on the decentralized exchange THORChain (which is not a mixer and funds can still be traced after being swapped).

Chen then publicly called on THORChain to block the addresses linked to the attack. “Decentralization is a design principle, not a shield for facilitating known stolen funds,”& she thundered. Thorchain politely said no dice, which has set off a massive debate over whether they can or should comply with Chen’s request.

Decentralization maxis like Joel Valenzuela said doing so would undermine crypto’s cypherpunk ethos.

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A rogue OpenAI research agent bypassed blocks on the Australian government health-data portal, accessing non-public files in June.

The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have reportedly been summoned to appear at an Australian Senate inquiry into AI, just days after news broke that a rogue OpenAI bot had hacked the country’s health data.

The Australian Medicare breach is one of the highest-profile incidents of AI agents accessing external systems outside the US, according to a Sunday Business World report.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei were asked to appear at the inquiry in Canberra on Thursday, the report said.

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The Bitcoin miner has continued to expand its data-center business as well.

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms this week repaid a $200 million credit facility from Coinbase Credit, releasing its collateral.

The facility had been secured by a pledge of Riot’s financial assets, including Bitcoin, USDC and cash, which was held in the custody of Coinbase Custody Trust Company.

Riot finished paying the remaining principal and interest on Monday, according to a Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Our ambition should be to “enable 10 million new companies to raise capital,” Strategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor wrote in an essay.

Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy, said that an age of digital assets and intelligence needs a “bill of digital rights,” rather than restrictions.

An age of AI can increase production, but it needs better money and capital markets to realize its potential, according to an essay that Saylor, executive chairman of world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, posted on X Saturday.

A useful framework for digital assets should establish five fundamental rights, or freedoms, Saylor wrote.

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The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against prediction market Kalshi, siding with Ohio and Tennessee on regulating sports-event contracts under state laws.

Prediction market Kalshi lost on appeal when a court ruled that Ohio and Tennessee can regulate sports-event contracts under their state gambling laws.

The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kalshi on Friday when a three-judge panel sided unanimously with Ohio and Tennessee, finding that the prediction market failed to demonstrate its sports-event contracts are “swaps” under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The ruling followed a similar finding from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last month, which broke from an April decision by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the company to do business in New Jersey as its appeal process proceeds.

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Peirce, known as “Crypto Mom,” served on the SEC for about eight years, including as director of the Crypto Task Force.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has submitted her formal resignation from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, effective Oct. 2.

Peirce, also known as “Crypto Mom” amid her advocacy of clear, rules-based regulation of the crypto industry, posted a copy of her resignation letter on her X account Friday.

In the letter, she thanked the president for the “honor of her professional lifetime” serving as a commissioner and said she was leaving the SEC under the excellent leadership of Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda, the two remaining members, who are both Republicans.

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The CFTC claimed that Cash FX engaged in minimal forex trading and misappropriated most of the participant funds.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is suing& Cash FX Group and three individuals in a $950 million foreign-exchange investment case involving cryptocurrency.

The defendants are Cash FX and its CEO Huascar Jose Lopez Castillo of Brazil, The Conversion Pros and its CEO Ronald Pope of Oregon, and Justin Halladay of Florida.

The CFTC said its complaint was filed Friday in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida. It alleges the defendants operated a multilevel marketing Ponzi scheme, soliciting and accepting over $950 million for the purported purpose of trading retail foreign currency contracts in a commodity pool.&

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OG.com, recently spun out of Crypto.com, joins Coinbase, Kalshi and Kraken parent Payward in seeking approval to bring perpetual futures to individual US stocks.

OG.com Markets is seeking US regulatory approval to offer perpetual futures tied to individual stocks, as trading platforms push to bring the popular derivatives product to US equity markets.

In a Thursday filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), OG.com proposed new rules allowing it to list cash-settled single-stock futures that never expire and can trade 24 hours a day, five days a week.

OG.com was recently spun out of crypto exchange Crypto.com as an independent prediction markets and derivatives platform valued at $5 billion. At the time, CEO Kris Marszalek said the platform planned to expand beyond prediction markets into futures and perpetual contracts.

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Former CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger joined the Blockchain Association in 2025 after resigning during her second term at the federal commodities regulator.

Update (Sept. 25, 10:20 pm UTC): This article has been updated to clarify Kristin Smith’s role with the Solana Policy Institute.

Summer Mersinger, formerly a commissioner with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will step down as CEO of the Blockchain Association and leave the advocacy organization at year’s end after one of the group’s legislative priorities faced a significant setback in Congress.

On Friday, the Blockchain Association (BA) announced that Mersinger would step down as CEO on Oct. 16, when the group’s former chief executive, Kristin Smith, would return to lead the organization as interim CEO in addition to her existing role as president of the Solana Policy Institute. Mersinger joined the Blockchain Association in June 2025 after leaving the CFTC three years before her second term as a commissioner was scheduled to end.

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US prosecutors alleged that a payments business illegally transferred hundreds of millions of dollars at the direction of EQIBank, where Tether holds some assets.

Stablecoin issuer Tether said that it had limited exposure through assets held at a bank that reportedly directed a payments company to allegedly move hundreds of millions of dollars on its behalf.

In response to reports linking Tether and Bitfinex to a Montana-based payments business named in a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the Department of Justice, a company spokesperson told Cointelegraph that it had “no knowledge” of any of the alleged conduct. Tether confirmed it was a customer of EQIBank, the bank the Justice Department alleged directed the payments company, Capstone, to send and receive money, but the amount held at the bank represented 0.034% of the group’s total assets.

US prosecutors reportedly froze about $84 million in Capstone’s accounts as part of the complaint. Justice Department officials alleged that the business was unlicensed and had made payments to “hundreds of individuals and entities” on behalf of Tether and Bitfinex, according to the Financial Times.

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The crypto executive and Dystopia Labs founder previously held senior roles at Stellar and Solana before joining venture capital firm Hack VC.

Update (Sept. 25, 18:30 UTC). This article was updated with additional details on Hsin-Ju Chuang’s cause of death.

Hsin-Ju Chuang, a former partner at crypto venture firm Hack VC, died at age 37, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner. The county’s Coroner Death Registry later listed her death as a suicide.

California Highway Patrol officers responded to southbound Interstate 15 south of Field Road in Harvard, California, on Aug. 24, where Chuang was pronounced dead at the scene.

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The Bitget breach announced on Thursday affected about $35 million more than previously reported, based on an analysis of assets on Zcash and TRON.

Crypto exchange Bitget released an updated incident report on Thursday’s security breach, clarifying that about $388 million in assets had been affected and not $352 million as previously reported.

In a Friday update, Bitget said it would continue to pause withdrawals following the security breach, and the company had launched a bounty program to incentivize freezing or recovering the assets. The exchange confirmed that “$387.5 million were transferred to attacker-controlled addresses” based on onchain tracing — about $35 million more than reported on Thursday.&

“The revised figure reflects a more complete accounting of transfers that occurred during the incident, adding affected assets on Zcash and TRON that were not included in the initial estimate,” said Bitget. “It does not reflect further unauthorized transfers. The incident remains contained and no further unauthorized transfers are possible.”

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Strategy’s proposal would move STRC and its three other preferred stocks to daily dividend payments, following a similar move by Bitcoin treasury firm Strive.

Strategy is seeking shareholder approval to move its four preferred stocks, including STRC, to daily dividend payments without changing their dividend rates or the total amount paid.

The company’s board approved the proposal on Thursday, according to a Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the amendments at a virtual special meeting on Oct. 28.

If approved, each calendar day would become a dividend record date, with the corresponding payment made on the next business day. STRC would move to the new schedule first, with its initial daily dividend payment expected on Nov. 2.

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Stablecoins and tokenized assets are pushing banks, exchanges and crypto companies into the same markets, from payments to stocks and ETFs.

The line between crypto companies and traditional finance is blurring. Binance is buying a $100 million stake in Circle, Canada’s six largest banks are exploring tokenized deposits and the New York Stock Exchange is working with Blockchain.com to bring US stocks and ETFs onchain.

Crypto companies want a bigger role in payments and traditional assets, while banks and exchanges are bringing those markets onchain without giving up their place at the center of the financial system.

This week’s Crypto Biz highlights how stablecoins and tokenized assets put crypto companies and traditional finance on increasingly overlapping turf, with both sides vying for control over how money and assets move.

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The IRS can now see your crypto gains, but has no idea about the cost-basis. That’s proving to be a big headache for some cryptocurrency investors.

It’s that time of year again in the United States. The days start to draw in, the leaves start to fall, and the tax man comes knocking for your 2025 return.

This year, thanks to the Inland Revenue Service’s new rules, the agency now knows more about Americans’ crypto trades than ever before, with brokers required to report gross proceeds from certain digital asset sales.

But unfortunately for some taxpayers, getting a form from an exchange hasn’t made filing their returns any easier.

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CoinGlass will retain its brand and team, while its website, app, free tools, API and pricing will remain unchanged following the acquisition.

CoinMarketCap has acquired crypto derivatives data platform CoinGlass for an undisclosed amount, expanding its coverage of leveraged trading across major exchanges.

CoinMarketCap announced Friday that CoinGlass will continue operating under its existing brand, with its team remaining in place. Its website, app, free tools, API and pricing will be unchanged.

CoinGlass tracks open interest, funding rates, liquidations and options. It covers 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 instruments, according to the announcement.

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The analyzed Safari sample targets iOS 18.4–18.6.2 using previously patched flaws, while its effectiveness on iOS 26.5 remains unverified.

An iPhone Safari attack behind recent security warnings hasn’t yet been linked to a confirmed cryptocurrency theft in SlowMist’s investigation.

Multiple reports surfaced this week urging iPhone users to update their devices immediately and warning that malicious Safari pages could expose crypto private keys and seed phrases, with some citing a range from iOS 13 through iOS 26.5.

SlowMist told Cointelegraph that it has not independently confirmed a victim compromised by the specific Safari attack sample it analyzed, while its strongest technical evidence covers iOS 18.4 through 18.6.2.

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IBIT’s expected volatility sits near the bottom of its 12-month range, according to Saxo Bank’s analysis of options data from Sept. 23.

Options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) are pricing smaller swings than the fund experienced during Bitcoin’s recent rebound, according to Saxo Bank.

IBIT’s implied volatility stood at 37.4%, compared with realized volatility of 45.5% over the 20 trading sessions through Tuesday, Saxo investment and options strategist Koen Hoorelbeke wrote Thursday.

Based on Wednesday’s data, Hoorelbeke’s analysis put IBIT’s implied volatility rank at 11.9, placing the measure near the bottom of its 12-month range.

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Yuga Labs’ 0xQuit said the NFTs are safe and will be returned once the risk passes, while holders were urged to revoke NFT permissions.

[Update, 12:55 UTC, Sept. 25: This article was updated with Magic Eden’s statement identifying the affected protocol and its guidance for former users.]

A whitehat moved 3,832 non-fungible tokens from hundreds of wallets on Friday amid concerns about a vulnerability involving NFT marketplace Magic Eden.&

NFT community member who goes by Cirrus on X flagged the activity on Friday, saying a single wallet moved 3,832 NFTs from hundreds of wallets. Cirrus said the transactions appeared as sales through Magic Eden and advised NFT holders to revoke permissions as a precaution.

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KelpDAO says LayerZero endorsed its bridge setup before the attack, while CEO Bryan Pellegrino has dismissed the lawsuit as meritless.

KelpDAO has filed a lawsuit against cross-chain protocol LayerZero following the roughly $292 million exploit of its rsETH bridge earlier this year, alleging that failures in LayerZero’s security infrastructure contributed to the attack.

KelpDAO said Friday that LayerZero failed to disclose risks in its technology or prevent attackers from compromising its infrastructure. It also alleged that LayerZero had reviewed and endorsed its deployment and configuration in writing before the exploit.

The lawsuit also names LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino.

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US spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $191 million Thursday as daily inflows slowed for a third day, lifting year-to-date net flows to $787 million.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) drew about $191 million in net inflows on Thursday, pushing their six-session total past $2.8 billion.

After hitting a 2026 high of $999 million on Monday, daily inflows fell for three consecutive sessions while Bitcoin retreated from above $87,000. Thursday’s total was down 81% from Monday, according to SoSoValue data.

The latest inflow streak lifted the funds’ year-to-date total to roughly $787 million, reversing a 2026 deficit of about $5.5 billion at the end of June. September alone has attracted $2.56 billion so far, following $3.52 billion in August.

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Keonne Rodriguez says he and 70 others face another move after their treatment program was deactivated. His previous transfer took 30 days.

Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez faces another prison transfer after the drug treatment program at FCI McKean was deactivated, he said Wednesday.

Rodriguez said on X that McKean’s warden told program participants that Rodriguez and 70 others would be moved to facilities where treatment remains available. He entered the program because completing it could reduce his sentence by up to a year.

In a letter published by The Rage, Rodriguez called his earlier journey from FPC Morgantown to McKean the “absolute worst 30 days” of his life. He said his request to make the roughly four-hour trip himself was denied.

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Anthony Albanese said governments must help shape AI’s development, after revealing earlier that an OpenAI agent accessed non-public files on an Australian Medicare data portal.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned artificial intelligence is evolving at a “furious pace” and has urged other countries to shape its development, after an OpenAI agent breached an Australian government website this year.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Albanese called for international cooperation on emerging technology, adding that AI company leaders themselves have warned about advancing frontier AI too quickly without safeguards.

“Recently, an artificial intelligence agent infiltrated an Australian government website. This is unacceptable,” he told world leaders on Thursday.

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Shielded Bitcoin would use zero-knowledge proofs and encrypted notes to hide transaction details without changing Bitcoin consensus, but researchers have raised questions about anonymity and quantum resistance.

Researchers at the cryptography research firm Alloc Init have proposed a system for bringing Zcash-style private transfers to Bitcoin without requiring a soft fork.&

The proposal, called Shielded Bitcoin, would conceal transaction amounts, senders, receivers and links to previously spent funds using encrypted notes and zero-knowledge proofs. The paper was published on Thursday by Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov and Aleksei Moskvin.

The proposal offers a potential path to stronger privacy for Bitcoin users without requiring consensus changes to the base protocol.

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Block joins Google, Microsoft, AWS and Coinbase in backing x402, an open payment standard enabling agentic AI commerce.

Block has joined the x402 Foundation and added Bitcoin Lightning support to the payment protocol as the company expands its push into payments for AI agents.

Block on Thursday said Lightning is suited to the low-cost, high-volume payments that agentic commerce will depend on.

“Bringing Lightning to x402 is a concrete step toward making Bitcoin everyday money for people and the agents acting on their behalf, and we’re excited to help the industry build on it,” said Steve Lee, head of Block’s Bitcoin development initiative Spiral.&

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Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said a preliminary investigation found IP addresses matching VPN choices associated with a DPRK hacking group.

Update (Sept. 25 at 4:30 am UTC): This article has been updated to add new comments from Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and preliminary analysis from onchain researcher Specter.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said North Korean hackers may be behind the exchange’s $351.6 million security breach on Thursday, citing preliminary findings linking IP addresses to VPN services used by a North Korean group.&

Speaking during a live Q&A following the incident on X, Chen said security investigators had flagged similarities with previous North Korean attacks. She said the exchange did not believe the breach was an inside job.&

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The APAC region accounts for half of the Global Crypto Adoption Index. Bitget suffers massive $352M loss and OpenAI forgets to mention its agents hacked the Australian Government.

Almost half of the top 20 nations in terms of grassroots crypto adoption are in the Asia Pacific region. According to Chainalysis’s newly released 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, Japan ranks at number 4, followed by South Korea (5), India (6), Thailand (8), China (12), Indonesia (14), Australia (15), Vietnam (18) and the Philippines (19), which totals nine countries out of 20 on the index.

A big growth area in the APAC region is cross border stablecoin transfers.

Tianwei Liu, co-founder and CEO of StraitsX, told Cointelegraph that in Asia, fragmented currencies and payment systems have created demand for stablecoin settlement.&

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The APAC region accounts for half of the Global Crypto Adoption Index. Bitget suffers massive $351M loss and OpenAI forgets to mention its agents hacked the Australian Government.

Almost half of the top 20 nations in terms of grassroots crypto adoption are in the Asia Pacific region. According to Chainalysis’s newly released 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, Japan ranks at number 4, followed by South Korea (5), India (6), Thailand (8), China (12), Indonesia (14), Australia (15), Vietnam (18) and the Philippines (19), which totals nine countries out of 20 on the index.

A big growth area in the APAC region is cross border stablecoin transfers.

Tianwei Liu, co-founder and CEO of StraitsX, told Cointelegraph that in Asia, fragmented currencies and payment systems have created demand for stablecoin settlement.&

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The Fed’s proposal would set capital requirements, a two-day redemption window and new reserve disclosures as regulators implement the GENIUS Act.

The Federal Reserve has proposed capital, redemption and other regulatory requirements for stablecoin issuers under its supervision as it moves to implement the GENIUS Act.

The GENIUS Act already requires stablecoin issuers to maintain reserves backing their tokens on a one-to-one basis and limits the types of assets they can hold, including cash, bank deposits and short-term US Treasurys. The law left federal regulators to establish more detailed capital, reserve-diversification and risk-management requirements.

Under the Fed proposal, issuers would face an operational-risk capital charge equal to 2% of the first $20 billion in stablecoins outstanding, 1.5% of the next $30 billion and 1% of amounts above $50 billion, along with additional capital requirements tied to credit and operational risks.

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Bitget said unauthorized transfers affected a limited number of hot wallets, while cold wallets and most platform assets remained unaffected.

Crypto exchange Bitget has confirmed unauthorized transfers affecting approximately $351.6 million in assets and temporarily suspended withdrawals as it investigates the security breach.

Bitget said its security systems detected the transfers involving a limited number of hot wallets at 18:31 UTC on Thursday, prompting the exchange to activate emergency response procedures.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the breach was contained to a portion of the exchange’s hot and warm wallet layers, while its cold wallets remained secure.

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Although the CFTC chair did not say the failed vote on the CLARITY Act was behind new rules for authorized crypto entities, he said the move was “to provide regulatory clarity.“

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has updated its guidance on tokenized assets and using blockchain technology for recordkeeping.

In a Thursday notice, the CFTC said that it had updated information under its frequently asked questions on registered crypto-related entities.&

The guidance originally released in March was updated to specify that authorized companies could invest customer funds in tokenized forms, provided “the tokenized form of the asset grants the holder legal and economic rights that are the same or functionally equivalent to the rights received by holders of the asset in its traditional form.” The regulator added that it “would not object” to companies utilizing blockchain-based recordkeeping under the new rules.

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US Treasury yields hit a 19-year high on Thursday, pressuring risk assets as Bitcoin held near $84,000 and ONDO became top performer among altcoins.

Bitcoin (BTC) had a volatile Thursday during US hours as the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note climbed to its highest level in nearly two decades. After briefly falling below $83,000, BTC struggled to reclaim $84,500. Ondo Finance (ONDO), meanwhile, was among the top-performing altcoins.

Key points:&

The US 10-year Treasury yield rose more than 4 basis points to 5.18% on Thursday, its highest level since July 2007, according to TradingView data. The 30-year yield hit 5.46%, reclaiming 2004 highs.

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DoubleZero launched a dedicated fiber market data feed for Hyperliquid, giving professional trading firms faster access to its full order book.

DoubleZero has launched a dedicated market data feed for Hyperliquid, giving professional trading firms access to the decentralized exchange’s full order book over fiber rather than through its public APIs.

The feed includes Hyperliquid’s native perpetual futures and markets operated by trade[XYZ], which uses Hyperliquid’s infrastructure to offer perpetual contracts tied to assets including oil, gold and silver. The Hyperliquid feed was developed with validator operators and ecosystem partners including Hyperion DeFi, MAVAN and Kinetiq.

DoubleZero said the service delivers a continuous, ordered stream of market data for market makers, quantitative trading firms, and proprietary trading firms that need faster, more consistent order book updates.

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Most DATs now trade below the value of their crypto holdings, weakening a financing model that once helped companies expand their balance sheets.

The crypto treasury model has largely lost its early advantage, with most digital asset treasury (DAT) companies no longer commanding the premiums that allowed them to raise capital and accumulate more crypto without diluting existing shareholders, according to a new report from DWF Ventures.

The report, published Thursday, found that only four of the 20 largest DATs by assets under management trade above an mNAV of 1, meaning their market value exceeds the value of their crypto holdings. They are Bit Digital, Strive, Hyperliquid Strategies and BitMine.

The widespread discounts suggest investors are no longer willing to pay the same premium for crypto exposure through publicly traded companies.

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The France-based semiconductor company has fully unwound a Bitcoin treasury that once held more than 3,200 BTC as more firms scale back crypto holdings.

Sequans Communications has sold its remaining 314 Bitcoin, completing its exit from a Bitcoin treasury strategy that once saw the semiconductor company hold more than 3,200 BTC.

On Thursday, the French semiconductor company said the exit follows the redemption of its convertible debt in May and will allow it to refocus on its core cellular internet-of-things (IoT) and software-defined radio businesses.

CEO Georges Karam said the company used Bitcoin sales to eliminate its convertible debt and strengthen its balance sheet, leaving Sequans with no cryptocurrency holdings and no outstanding debt beyond government-financed research and development obligations.

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SoFi dives deeper into payments as it moves its entire card program to blockchain-based settlement using its SoFiUSD stablecoin, with more than $25 billion in expected annualized volume.

Stablecoins are increasingly being used to settle payments behind existing card networks, allowing money to move around the clock without changing how consumers pay.

But rather than cutting Visa, Mastercard or banks out of the process, the technology is beginning to replace a narrower piece of the payments stack: the traditional banking rails used to settle obligations between participants.

That shift was in focus this week when SoFi began settling debit and credit card transactions with Mastercard using its SoFiUSD stablecoin. The bank said it is migrating its entire card program, which it expects to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume, to the system.

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The action filed by state lawmakers followed a similar lawsuit against prediction markets company Kalshi in July that alleged the platform was running an illegal gambling operation.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing prediction markets platform Polymarket for offering contracts related to sporting events.

On Thursday, New York state officials filed a lawsuit against Polymarket, alleging that the company’s prediction market event contracts violated state gambling laws. The lawsuit followed a similar action against Kalshi in July and litigation against prediction market platforms run by Coinbase and Gemini in April.&

Thursday’s filing cited Polymarket’s sporting event contracts on its mobile app launched in December 2025, including its advertising practices to New Yorkers. According to the filing, state officials could also seek to block the platform to residents.

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IBM’s beta link lets banks instruct tokenized deposit transfers on Swift’s ledger using existing payment messages and compliance processes.

IBM has added beta connectivity to Swift’s blockchain-based ledger for tokenized deposits and a beta option for banks to run IBM’s digital asset platform in their own data centers.

IBM on Thursday announced the two additions to its Digital Asset Haven platform. Financial institutions participating in Swift’s program have tested tokenized deposits on the ledger using the platform, IBM said.

Digital Asset Haven, IBM’s platform for banks and other regulated institutions to manage and secure digital assets, now includes a messaging adapter that lets institutions instruct tokenized deposit transactions using ISO 20022, the global standard for financial messaging. IBM said banks can use existing payment formats and compliance processes instead of building blockchain-specific workflows.

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Rachel Conlan will oversee institutional partnerships and ecosystem growth, while Jamal Raees will focus on stablecoins and tokenized deposits, following a wave of new partnerships.

Solana Foundation has appointed former Binance chief marketing officer Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and former Polygon Labs executive Jamal Raees as general manager of payments.

Conlan will lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring businesses onto Solana, the foundation said Thursday. She spent three years at Binance and previously held senior roles at OKX, CAA Sports and Havas.

Raees said he would deepen the foundation’s engagement with major payments companies and focus on infrastructure used by teams building payment services on Solana.

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HIFI CEO Zach Walsh told Cointelegraph the $37 million Series A is the company’s first priced funding round, though HIFI did not disclose its valuation.

Stablecoin infrastructure company HIFI has raised $37 million in a Series A funding round led by Left Lane Capital as the use of stablecoins for payments and cross-border transfers continues to grow despite weakness in the broader crypto market.

Cross-border stablecoin flows rose 77.5% to $220.3 billion in the 12 months ending June 2026, even as the wider crypto market shrank by more than a third over the same period, according to Chainalysis.

HIFI CEO Zach Walsh told Cointelegraph that the Series A is the company’s first priced funding round. The company did not disclose its valuation. “HIFI is processing approximately $7 billion in annualized volume directly through its platform,” Walsh said.

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Bybit’s global campaign positions it as a broader financial platform, though its stock, gold and forex derivatives were already available.

The era of the “pure crypto exchange” is ending as customers seek stocks, gold and payments alongside digital assets, Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou told Cointelegraph on Thursday.

“The people who trade crypto also want stocks, gold, forex, indices, and derivatives,” Zhou said. “They want to pay, save, and grow their wealth in the same place.”

His comments accompanied Bybit’s launch of “Make Your Move,” a campaign positioning the exchange as a broader financial platform. Bybit already offers derivatives tied to stocks, gold and indexes, as well as forex. Those products provide price exposure without ownership of the underlying assets.

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The EBA outlined potential rules for crypto lending and firms providing access to DeFi protocols as part of the European Commission’s MiCA review.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has called for crypto lending to be brought under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework as regulators consider potential changes to MiCA.&

In a response to the European Commission’s (EC) targeted consultation on MiCA, the EBA said crypto borrowing and lending should be regulated, including where crypto asset service providers facilitate access to decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocols.

The regulator recommended that the EC conduct a cost-benefit analysis of legislative changes that could add intermediating crypto borrowing and lending to the list of services regulated under MiCA, potentially adding specific compliance requirements and oversight activity. It also suggested requirements for crypto firms that provide clients access to DeFi lending protocols.

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Bitcoin traded near $83,200 as Fed hike odds reached about 75% and Treasury prepared a $6 billion buyback of long-dated bonds.

Key points

Bitcoin fell below $84,000 during Asian trading hours on Thursday, slipping to $83,200 after the US 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest level since 2007.

The 10-year yield closed Wednesday at 5.11%, up from 4.96% Tuesday, and reached 5.13% intraday. CME attributed the bond selloff partly to stronger US business data and rising oil prices.

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US spot Bitcoin ETF inflows slowed to $347 million on Wednesday as Bitcoin fell below $84,000, while five-day inflows reached $2.65 billion.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) drew about $347 million in net inflows on Wednesday, extending their positive streak to five trading days even as Bitcoin fell below $84,000 after briefly trading above $87,000.

The funds have drawn about $2.65 billion over the five sessions through Wednesday, according to SoSoValue data. Wednesday’s tally was down from $714.75 million on Tuesday and a 2026 high of $998.95 million on Monday.

The funds have attracted $2.37 billion so far in September, offsetting earlier outflows and lifting year-to-date inflows to about $596 million.

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Every institution interviewed that owned crypto held Bitcoin, usually as its largest asset; some set exit conditions for Ether and Solana.

None of the 15 institutions interviewed by asset manager Bitwise cut their crypto allocations during a roughly 50% market drawdown, while several bought more.

Every institution in the group that owned crypto held Bitcoin (BTC), usually as its largest and longest-held position, while Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) were smaller bets with shorter investment horizons and conditions for selling.

Bitwise’s Institutional Crypto Adoption Report draws on interviews conducted in late March and April amid a market decline that began in October 2025. The interviews included investment professionals at endowments, foundations, public pensions, sovereign wealth funds, multi-family offices, investment consultants and public companies.

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OpenAI notified Australia nearly three months after its agent breached a government portal while gathering public medicine-spending data.

[Update, 10:45 UTC, Sept. 24: This article was updated with OpenAI’s account of when it learned of the June activity, how it notified Australian authorities and what information its models accessed.]

An OpenAI research agent bypassed blocks on an Australian government health data portal, accessed non-public files and wrote files to an internal server in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday.

The government has opened a forensic investigation and announced a review of how it handles AI-related cyber incidents.

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A weeklong optimization challenge cut the estimated GPU cost of preparing an experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction to under $67, potentially making the “last-resort measure” a little easier on the wallet.

The estimated computational cost to prepare a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has fallen below $67 after a week of optimization, down from the roughly $320 spent on the first such mainnet transaction in August, according to StarkWare.&

The results came after participants in the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge found ways to push down the GPU computation needed to build a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction.&

The reduction could make the experimental defense (which doesn’t require changes to the network’s consensus rules) against future quantum attacks more practical for Bitcoin holders. However, the latest optimizations have only been demonstrated in benchmark tests.&

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The reported initiative could involve private-sector companies and several US agencies as Washington looks to expand the international use of dollar-backed stablecoins.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering an initiative to promote the use of dollar-backed stablecoins overseas as part of an effort to reinforce the US dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.&

Citing people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the US government could support stablecoin projects by creating joint ventures with private-sector firms. The effort could involve several federal agencies, including the Treasury Department, State Department and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).

The initiative would seek to expand the international use of dollar-denominated stablecoins while potentially boosting demand for US Treasurys, a common reserve asset for dollar-backed stablecoins.

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Kalshi said nearly $5 billion in similarly sized Ether perpetual trades reflected its liquidity incentive programs and rejected allegations that the activity was wash trading.

Prediction markets operator Kalshi said it has not been contacted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and does not believe there is any formal examination, after a report that the regulator was reviewing a flurry of trading activity in its Ether perpetual futures market.&

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the CFTC is examining a pattern of rapid trades clustered around $5,500, citing a person familiar with the matter. The trading pattern has prompted allegations of wash trading.&

The scrutiny comes as Kalshi has reported rapid growth in its perpetual futures business. A week after launching its perpetual futures markets in May, the company told CNBC that trading volume had surpassed $1 billion.

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SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said that the agency dropped many cases against crypto companies in early 2025 to avoid potential credibility problems in court.

Mark Uyeda, who served as acting chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before Paul Atkins’s confirmation, said the agency dropped civil cases against cryptocurrency companies filed under the previous administration because it was preparing a “180-degree change” in rulemaking.

In a Wednesday panel at the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy’s Financial Markets Quality Conference, Uyeda said the SEC dropped cases involving crypto companies in early 2025 as it could have hurt the agency’s credibility in arguing positions in court contrary to its planned policy changes. Uyeda argued that there had been “significant concerns” that the cases against crypto companies were “justifiable under law.”

“I’m not about to have our litigators, even though they’re having cases that were authorized under the prior administration, stand up in court and have a commission interpretation be issued that is a 180-degree change from what they’d been arguing for that court,” said the commissioner. “I think that hurts [our] credibility as an agency.”

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The crypto executive and Dystopia Labs founder previously held senior roles at Stellar and Solana before joining venture capital firm Hack VC.

Hsin-Ju Chuang, a former partner at crypto venture firm Hack VC, has died at age 37, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner.

California Highway Patrol officers responded to southbound Interstate 15 south of Field Road on Aug. 24, where Chuang was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities have not publicly disclosed a cause of death. Cointelegraph contacted the California Highway Patrol for additional information but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Chuang founded Dystopia Labs and previously served as head of growth at Stellar and Solana. She joined Hack VC as a venture partner in 2021 before becoming partner and head of platform in 2025.

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The case between New Jersey authorities and a prediction market company, if accepted by the Supreme Court, could result in clarity for state and federal officials over sports bets.

A group of US state lawmakers has filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court, urging justices to weigh in on a case between prediction markets platform Kalshi and gaming authorities.&

On Tuesday, the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS) filed in the US Supreme Court, supporting New Jersey’s Attorney General and gaming authorities’ petition for a writ of certiorari. The petition, filed on Sept. 2, asked the nation’s highest court to consider New Jersey’s case against Kalshi, potentially resolving whether state authorities or federal agencies have jurisdiction over prediction market companies.

In its amicus curiae filing supporting New Jersey’s position, the NCLGS argued that a ruling favoring Kalshi would “[render] states powerless” to regulate sports betting on prediction markets, causing “substantial harm and confusion.” According to the group, “gaming-related matters” should be left to individual US state authorities, though the filing did not address the competing argument that event contracts traded on federally regulated markets fall under the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.

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President Donald Trump disclosed a July purchase of Strategy shares as his administration continues to advance crypto policy through federal regulators and Congress.

President Donald Trump disclosed purchasing $50,001 to $100,000 worth of Strategy shares in July, according to a US Office of Government Ethics filing released Tuesday.

The filing shows Trump bought $50,001 to $100,000 worth of Strategy shares on July 27, following a smaller $1,001 to $15,000 purchase three days earlier. Strategy is the world’s largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder, with 846,000 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net data.

Trump also disclosed transactions involving several other crypto-linked companies, including a Coinbase stock purchase and sales of Bitcoin miners MARA Holdings and CleanSpark in July. The July 27 Strategy purchase was the largest of the crypto-linked transactions identified in the filing.

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The survey released by Visa posited that bank-like protections for stablecoins could increase adoption in the US as companies are preparing for the enactment of the GENIUS Act.

Visa released the results of a survey signaling that bank-level fraud protection and insurance could drive adoption in stablecoins for cross-border transactions among US users.

In a survey of 2,192 US-based customers published on Wednesday, Visa said that the “adoption intention” of stablecoins among US users could climb from 36% to 56% “in a hypothetical scenario with bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance.” The findings from a survey by Morning Consult between February and March showed that Americans who were asked about financial terms like stablecoins were looking for faster and cheaper methods to send money abroad.

“Nearly two-thirds (64%) [of respondents] say trust depends more on who offers a payment method than on the tech itself,” said Visa. “Willingness to use stablecoins rises from 36% to 45% when offered through an existing financial provider.”

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The product gives European investors brokerage access to the LIT token as Bitwise expands its lineup of products tied to decentralized derivatives platforms.

Bitwise Asset Management has launched an exchange-traded product (ETP) in Europe tracking Lighter, giving traditional investors a way to bet on one of Hyperliquid’s emerging rivals without buying its token directly.

On Wednesday, Bitwise said its Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP (BLIT) had launched on Deutsche Börse Xetra, making it the first exchange-traded product tracking LIT, the native token of decentralized derivatives platform Lighter.

The product is fully backed by LIT held in cold storage and carries a 0.85% annual expense ratio. European investors can buy the ETP through a regular brokerage account without buying or holding LIT directly.

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Blockchain.com users could gain access to tokenized US stocks and ETFs through NYSE’s planned digital trading platform under a new partnership, as bourses rush to deliver new trading.

Blockchain.com and the New York Stock Exchange have signed a memorandum of understanding to give Blockchain.com users access to tokenized US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds through NYSE’s planned digital trading platform.

Under the proposed arrangement, Blockchain.com would distribute tokenized US equities and ETFs traded on NYSE’s digital alternative trading system (ATS), subject to regulatory approval. The deal would extend NYSE’s planned tokenized securities offering to Blockchain.com’s global customer base.

The agreement also covers an exchange of market data. NYSE affiliate ICE Data Services plans to distribute Blockchain.com’s crypto market data and analytics to its clients, while Blockchain.com would add certain ICE and NYSE market data feeds to its platform.

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Bitcoin long liquidations mounted as BTC/USD briefly traded below $84,000, while analysis flagged key support to hold.

Bitcoin (BTC) was rejected near $87,000 on Wednesday as onchain data showed negative spot demand.

Key points:

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National regulators will map client-facing uses of the technologies, check a subset of firms and develop common approaches to oversight.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) will make AI and tokenization the initial focus of a new supervisory priority on digital innovation starting in 2027.

Across the European Union, supervisors will identify where tokenization is emerging and document how firms use or plan to use AI and tokenization in products and processes that directly affect investors. They will also conduct initial checks on a subset of the most affected firms.

ESMA said Wednesday that the priority is intended to help supervisors build expertise and develop common approaches as firms increasingly use AI and tokenized products in financial services.

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The SEC has opened a five-year path for tokenized stocks, but only some products and venues fit the model. Will Uniswap, Robinhood, Coinbase or Kraken come out on top?

“Tokenization is coming to America,” said Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev after the SEC announced its Innovation Exemption last week — and it seems the markets looked kindly on the development.

BTC and ETH soared over 10%, and Uniswap’s UNI token — a protocol that looks as it if could become prime real estate for tokenized stock trading — gained more than 30% in the days that followed.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission has indeed greenlit tokenized stocks in America, most of the existing stock tokens fall outside of the new rules.

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MoonPay’s North Capital acquisition adds US broker-dealer, trading and investment infrastructure as it expands into tokenized securities.

MoonPay, a crypto payments company, agreed to acquire private-markets infrastructure provider North Capital, expanding into regulated US securities infrastructure as it builds out services for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

The acquisition would allow MoonPay to expand into the issuance, custody and secondary trading of private securities, including tokenized securities, the company said in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Wednesday.

MoonPay’s all-stock deal to acquire North Capital is worth more than $60 million, a person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph. MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said the acquisition would help the company connect parts of the financial system through “modern, programmable infrastructure.”

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Cross-border stablecoin transfers surged as the wider crypto market shrank 37%, with Chainalysis pointing to growing use for trade, remittances and savings.

Crypto’s downturn over the last year has done little to slow stablecoins at the border, with cross-border stablecoin flows rising 77.5% in the year to June 2026 as the broader market lost more than a third of its value, according to new research from Chainalysis.&

In its newly released 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, Chainalysis said cross-border stablecoin flows rose 77.5% to $220.3 billion in the 12 months ending June 2026, from $124.2 billion in the previous 12-month period, despite total crypto market capitalization falling 37% to $2.1 trillion over the same period.&

“The bear market hit the price-sensitive half of crypto and left the payments half alone,” Chainalysis said.

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EU supervisors warn quantum computing could weaken blockchain security as Bitcoin developers weigh a draft migration plan and Ethereum targets 2029.

European Union financial supervisors warned Wednesday that advances in quantum computing could threaten the cryptography securing blockchains.

The European Banking Authority, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and European Securities and Markets Authority said in a joint risk update that quantum computing could undermine systems used to secure transactions, communications and databases.

The warning follows a more detailed assessment from Google Quantum AI. In March, its researchers estimated that breaking the cryptography used by many cryptocurrencies could require about 20 times fewer physical qubits than earlier estimates. A qubit is the basic unit of a quantum computer.

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Michael Selig said tokenization could reshape financial markets as the CFTC and SEC continue advancing onchain initiatives despite the CLARITY Act setback.

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig said financial markets should prepare for “mass tokenization” as regulators adapt existing frameworks for blockchain, artificial intelligence and onchain markets.

In remarks delivered Tuesday at the US Treasury Market Conference, Selig said tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) could become the foundation of a more efficient financial system, enabling near-instant settlement and real-time collateral movement between clearinghouses, intermediaries and users.& &

“Just as the transition from hand signals to electronic trading advanced our financial system, I believe tokenization can do the same for all asset classes,” Selig said, adding that the CFTC would pursue principles-based rules as tokenization and onchain finance evolve.

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BTC price analysis concluded that onchain signals had “confirmed” the new Bitcoin bull market.

Bitcoin (BTC) faces its “next real test” at $90,000 as traders continue to return to unrealized profit.

Key points:

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Bitpanda will provide crypto infrastructure to Raiffeisen network banks, potentially extending digital asset access to about 18 million customers.

Update (Sept. 23, 2:20 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from an RBI spokesperson on the planned rollout, from the sixth paragraph.

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), an Austrian banking group with operations across Central and Eastern Europe, is expanding its cryptocurrency push through a group-wide partnership with Bitpanda.

Bitpanda Enterprise will provide the digital asset infrastructure that RBI’s network banks can use to introduce crypto services, potentially reaching about 18 million customers, according to a joint announcement on Wednesday. Individual banks will determine their offerings and rollout based on local market and regulatory requirements, the companies said.

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BitMEX officially ended exchange operations after more than 11 years, while withdrawals remain open as the crypto derivatives platform urges users to remove their funds.

BitMEX ended all exchange operations at 4:00 UTC on Wednesday, two months after the crypto derivatives exchange announced plans to shut down after more than 11 years of operations.

The platform no longer allows trading or deposits, but users can still log in and withdraw remaining balances through its website, BitMEX announced in an X post on Wednesday.

As part of its gradual phaseout, BitMEX will disable application programming interface (API) withdrawals on Sept. 28, requiring users to process withdrawals through the web platform.

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The proposed NU7 change would disable version 4 transactions, leaving ZEC in Zcash’s legacy Sprout shielded pool unspendable.

Zcash users holding ZEC in the network’s legacy Sprout shielded pool should move it before the planned NU7 upgrade or risk losing the ability to spend it.

Under Zcash Improvement Proposal-2003, NU7 would stop accepting the older transaction format that allows users to spend Sprout funds. ZEC left in the pool would become unspendable after the upgrade.

The proposal would not burn Sprout funds and leaves open the possibility of restoring access later. However, it warns that holders may never be able to spend funds left in the pool.

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US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded more than $1.7 billion in net inflows over two days as Bitcoin rose above investors’ estimated average cost basis.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded more than $1.7 billion in net inflows over two days as Bitcoin traded above the estimated cost basis of the average ETF investor.

The funds had $715 million in net inflows on Tuesday, following a 2026 high of $999 million on Monday, according to SoSoValue data.

Total net assets across US spot Bitcoin ETFs reached around $111 billion on Tuesday, up 56% from their 2026 low of roughly $71 billion on June 30. The total remains about 13% below the 2026 high of $128 billion recorded on Jan. 14.

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US President Donald Trump previously tapped David Sacks as his AI and crypto czar before Sacks stepped down from the role earlier this year after reaching his service limit as a special government employee.

Update (Sept. 24 at 1:05 am UTC): This article has been updated with a response from a US Treasury spokesperson.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly being considered as US President Donald Trump’s next artificial intelligence czar, days after Trump announced plans for an “AI Force” amid mounting concerns about the technology’s risks.

Bessent is a frontrunner for the position, three sources familiar with the matter told Semafor. Other candidates include the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, a former managing partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross.

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SlowMist said malicious FomoPeek versions distributed through Apple’s App Store used iOS kernel exploits to escape the sandbox and access sensitive data from other apps.

[Update 09:15 UTC, Sept. 23: This article was updated with comments from SlowMist on how FomoPeek operated, what its researchers verified and its advice for people who installed affected versions.]

A malicious iOS app distributed through Apple’s App Store has been linked to nearly $580,000 in stolen crypto after researchers found it contained multiple kernel exploits capable of escaping Apple’s sandbox and accessing sensitive wallet data.

According to an investigation published by blockchain security firm SlowMist, the app, called FomoPeek, introduced two malicious modules that could exploit iOS vulnerabilities, gain elevated privileges and access Keychain data and files belonging to other apps.&

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BlackRock says AI agents could drive demand for stablecoins and programmable payment rails, while tokenized computing capacity could create another opportunity for digital assets.

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, says broad AI adoption could represent an underappreciated source of demand for digital assets.&

In its latest research paper, “The Machine-Native Economy,” BlackRock said the rise of AI and machine-to-machine payments could increase demand for blockchains and other programmable payment infrastructure, including stablecoins and other on-chain assets. It also sees a potential opportunity for digital assets to support the compute market, allowing claims on computing capacity to be tokenized, traded and used as collateral.&

“Together, these developments position AI as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption and digital assets as a potential facilitator of the AI economy,” BlackRock’s Will Su, Robert Mitchnick, Jay Jacobs and William Helm wrote. “This relationship remains underappreciated and could expand the role of digital assets as core infrastructure for an increasingly autonomous digital economy.”

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are expected to brief the UN Security Council as it examines AI risks and global security.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are expected to brief the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday as the body examines artificial intelligence risks and their implications for international security.&

According to CNBC, the UN confirmed Altman and Amodei’s participation. Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue and Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, are also expected to take part.

Reuters reported that the Security Council meeting will examine growing concerns over AI’s impact on international security. Chinese AI companies DeepSeek and Moonshot have been invited to make statements at the meeting, according to Reuters. DeepSeek is expected to participate, though its founder Liang Wenfeng does not plan to attend, the report said, citing a source familiar with the matter.

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The warning comes weeks after the CFTC fined a former White House teleprompter operator who made more than $107,000 trading prediction contracts tied to President Trump’s speeches.

The top US derivatives regulator has warned that prediction market contracts tied to what a person says or does carry a heightened risk of manipulation, putting exchanges on notice as the industry faces increasing scrutiny over market integrity.&

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Market Oversight on Tuesday said it issued an advisory to some of its regulated entities, advising that there are only “limited circumstances” in which “mention markets” — event contracts based on whether an individual will say certain words, attend or appear at an event or interact with another person — can be listed consistently with the Commodity Exchange Act.&

“These contract types present a heightened risk of manipulation because their settlement turns on the discrete conduct of a person that may be neither independently generated nor externally verifiable,” the regulator said.&

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Arch Lending’s Himanshu Sahay said on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast that the lender plans to move into tokenized equities as onchain stocks gain traction as collateral.

Crypto lender Arch Lending plans to expand into loans backed by tokenized equities as the market for onchain stocks expands and lenders begin exploring new uses for the assets as collateral.

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Many Democrats have previously called for investigations into the Trump family’s crypto ventures, but now a Republican is asking for an inquiry based on ties to the presidency.

Senator John Curtis, a Republican representing Utah, sent a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation into US President Donald Trump’s and former President Joe Biden’s sons, citing the former’s involvement in the crypto industry.

In a Monday letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin, Curtis said that the body should probe “the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, preferential treatment, or access by domestic and foreign interest.”& He also asked for subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.

The Utah lawmaker specifically called out Donald Trump Jr. for accepting gifts from Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev as part of his wedding, his “active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures” and advisory roles with prediction market platforms, as the companies are under the regulatory purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.& The president said last week that his son had paid Kremlev back for what Donald Trump Jr. and his wife called a “generous wedding gift.“

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The country’s largest financial institutions are exploring tokenized deposits for interbank payments, just weeks after regulators clarified how they should be treated.

Canada’s six largest banks are jointly exploring a system for tokenized Canadian dollar deposits that would allow digital representations of bank deposits to move between financial institutions.

The initiative involves Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group,& according to a joint announcement from the banks on Tuesday.& The first phase will focus on moving tokenized deposits between Canadian financial institutions before potentially connecting with other digital asset systems.

The project comes less than two weeks after Canada’s banking regulator provided additional clarity on the legal permissibility of tokenized deposits for financial institutions.

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21shares listed physically backed ZEC and ETHFI products on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam, as issuers broaden their offerings beyond major cryptocurrencies.

European asset manager 21shares has launched the region’s first exchange-traded product tied to Zcash, extending the privacy coin’s reach into regulated markets following its strong performance over the past year.

On Tuesday, 21shares listed its physically backed Zcash ETP on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam, allowing investors to gain exposure to ZEC through brokerage accounts without holding the cryptocurrency directly.

The asset manager also introduced an ETP tracking ETHFI, the governance and utility token of Ether.fi, a decentralized finance protocol that offers staking and other crypto-based financial services. The ETHFI product is physically backed and trades on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam.

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Bitcoin price action avoided a significant drop below $86,000 as US president Donald Trump pledged a deal with Iran after November’s midterm election.

Bitcoin (BTC) fluctuated around $86,000 on Tuesday as crude-oil prices hit their lowest levels in nearly three weeks.

Key points:

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Control of the US House and Senate is up for grabs in 2026, and some advocates speculate that the crypto industry could ratchet up attempts to sway elections after the CLARITY vote.

Last week’s US Senate failure to advance a digital asset market structure bill could light a fire under cryptocurrency industry groups seeking to sway key congressional races in the 2026 US midterm election that‘s just 42 days away.

Senators on Sept. 15 voted 49 in favor and 50 against advancing the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, significantly reducing the chances of Congress passing the legislation with limited days in session before 2027.

While some crypto advocates haven’t ruled out the possibility of CLARITY coming up for another vote before the next session of Congress, at least one of the industry’s political action committees (PACs) isn’t taking any chances.

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Researchers can trace an estimated 1.1 million BTC to a distinctive early mining operation. The harder question is whether that miner was actually Satoshi.

One of the first things anyone learns about Bitcoin is that it has a pseudonymous creator — and they’re a billionaire multiple times over.

Nearly 1.1 million BTC is widely attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, but it’s a number that rests on a forensic trail identifying a mining operation, not a person. The estimate also varies by more than 200,000 Bitcoin depending on how strictly a certain “fingerprint” test is applied.

When 600 BTC mined in 2010 suddenly moved after 16 years, triggering speculation that “Satoshi’s coins” had awoken, that distinction became more important.

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The ECB and EU central banks want to replace MiCA’s stablecoin bank-deposit requirements with liquidity thresholds, warning that sudden withdrawals could strain lenders.

[Updated 15:33 UTC, Sept. 22 with comment from Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino in final paragraph.]

The European Central Bank (ECB) and EU central banks want to replace mandatory bank-deposit thresholds for stablecoin reserves with new liquidity requirements, arguing that large stablecoin deposits could create liquidity risks for banks.

The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) called for removing rules requiring at least 30% of reserves, or 60% for significant stablecoins, to be held as bank deposits. The proposal came in the ESCB’s response, published Tuesday, to the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).

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Circle sold Binance $100 million in stock and agreed to pay monthly incentives under an expanded five-year partnership promoting USDC.

Binance has invested $100 million in stablecoin issuer Circle as part of an expanded five-year agreement to promote USDC on the crypto exchange.

Circle issued Binance 1,237,011 shares of its Class A common stock at $80.84 per share in a private placement on Sept. 17, according to a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The purchase price reflected a discount to Circle’s market price before the transaction closed.

New York Stock Exchange-traded CRCL shares were up more than 1.3% in Tuesday’s premarket activity after closing Monday at $94.29 apiece, according to Yahoo Finance data.

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The ECB aims to gain firsthand DLT market experience by buying tokenized public-sector securities and settling the trades through Pontes.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing to invest a “small portion” of its own funds in tokenized public-sector securities.

The purchases will be settled in central bank money through Pontes, the Eurosystem’s settlement system for distributed ledger technology-based transactions launched Monday.

The ECB said in a separate announcement Monday that the initiative will give it firsthand experience across the full investment lifecycle, including trade execution, settlement, systems and portfolio management.&

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Glassnode’s Altcoin Cycle Signal printed a new altseason signal after a month of Bitcoin and altcoin market-cap gains.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) rise to $86,000 this week has dragged altcoin markets higher as the industry’s market cap reclaimed $3 trillion.

Key points:

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Bitcoin traded near $86,000 as major altcoins gained, while rising derivatives leverage pointed to growing speculative activity across crypto markets.

The cryptocurrency market cap briefly climbed back above $3 trillion earlier on Tuesday as Bitcoin and the biggest altcoins extended a broad rally, while increasing leverage pointed to growing speculative activity.&

Bitcoin (BTC) traded around $86,000, up about 4.5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether (ETH) gained about 2.3% to $2,745, while XRP rose 5.7% to $1.53 and Solana (SOL) advanced 3.6% to $117. BNB gained 1.6%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) was among the stronger large-cap performers, rising about 11%.

The total crypto market cap stood just below $3 trillion at the time of writing, up about 4.3% over the previous day.&

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White hats secured about 40% of the Bitcoin moved in the Coldcard exploit’s second wave, transferring it to a Wyoming trust for victims.

White hats have transferred Bitcoin they rescued from wallets exposed by a Coldcard vulnerability to a trust set up to return the funds to victims.

A total of 52.37 Bitcoin was moved to an address controlled by Wyoming-based Crypto Recovery Trust, Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn said in an X post on Monday. About 40% of the Bitcoin associated with the second wave was swept by white hats to protect victims’ funds.

Thorn said 3.0134 BTC included in the transfer came from addresses Galaxy had not previously tracked. He said the funds were presumably also rescued from wallets affected by the Coldcard flaw, but that Galaxy could not confirm their origin.

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Solstice CEO Ben Nadareski says deeper liquidity and growing institutional participation could make future crypto bull runs less volatile than previous cycles.

Ben Nadareski, CEO of Solana-based decentralized finance platform Solstice, said crypto markets are unlikely to return to the extreme boom-and-bust cycles as deeper liquidity brings stability to digital assets.

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show, Nadareski said liquidity across major crypto trading pairs has increased significantly, even during bear markets, reducing the conditions that produced sharp price swings seen in previous cycles.

He added that crypto is increasingly a market for institutional capital and household wealth rather than speculative trading.

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US spot Bitcoin ETFs drew nearly $1 billion on Monday, their largest daily inflow since October 2025, as Bitcoin briefly climbed above $87,000.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) drew nearly $1 billion in net inflows on Monday, their biggest daily haul of 2026.

The funds recorded $998.9 million in daily net inflows, surpassing the previous 2026 high of $844 million on Jan. 14, according to SoSoValue data.

Monday’s total also marked the largest daily inflow since Oct. 6, 2025, when US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted more than $1.2 billion. Despite the surge, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have posted about $464 million in net outflows so far in 2026.

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Animoca Brands suspended its reverse merger talks with Currenc but said it remains committed to pursuing a listing on a major exchange.

Animoca Brands has suspended plans to take the company public through a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed Currenc Group.

Both parties mutually agreed on the decision after reviewing market conditions and the deal’s projected closing timelines, Animoca announced Tuesday.

Under the proposed transaction, Currenc would have acquired Animoca, with Animoca shareholders owning 95% of the combined Nasdaq-listed company.

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Treasury named AI among five major transitions expected to reshape Australia’s economy, while Coinbase says the report overlooks the digital financial infrastructure AI agents could eventually need.

Australia’s new 40-year economic outlook has identified artificial intelligence as one of five major transitions expected to have a profound effect on the economy, while leaving out any mention of crypto.&

The latest Intergenerational Report, published on Monday by the Australian Treasury, described agentic AI systems as having become “significantly” more capable, autonomous and widely used — surpassing human-level performance on some benchmarks. The other major transitions are geopolitical conflicts, an aging population, a shift to clean energy and Australia’s industrial transformation toward services.

“The Intergenerational Report makes it clear that Australia’s prosperity over the next 40 years will depend heavily on our ability to adopt new technology and lift productivity,” Coinbase Australia country director John O’Loghlen said in emailed comments. “And while the report focuses heavily on artificial intelligence, it completely misses the financial infrastructure those agents will need.”

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Trueo said Base was the right choice when it launched, as Ethereum gas fees were higher, but said mainnet now offers greater integration potential.

Prediction market platform Trueo plans to migrate from Base to Ethereum, citing broader integration opportunities and plans to build the next iteration of its oracle system.

The project, which launched on Base in March 2025, said its priority after the migration will be attracting liquidity and launching the next generation of its oracle, the system used to verify real-world outcomes that are used to resolve prediction markets.

Trueo said it chose to move from Base to Ethereum because it offered higher integration potential and product upside, while on Base, integrations are limited to the immediate ecosystem.

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Kakao Pay and KakaoBank are exploring digital asset opportunities with Fireblocks, including infrastructure for stablecoins.

South Korean financial companies Kakao Pay and KakaoBank have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with crypto infrastructure provider Fireblocks to explore digital asset opportunities, including stablecoins.&

Under the agreement, the companies will conduct proof-of-concept tests for digital asset infrastructure suited to South Korea’s regulatory, security and service requirements. The initiative aims to help establish secure onchain infrastructure for the country’s emerging digital asset market.&

The announcement on Monday did not include a launch, investment or implementation timeline.&

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The investigation is reportedly examining whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that violated US sanctions on Iran, months after reports first revealed a Justice Department probe.

The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office is investigating whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that violated US sanctions on Iran, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, providing new details about a Justice Department investigation first reported in March.

The Justice Department’s Criminal Division in Washington is also involved in the investigation, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Asked for comment, a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph: “We maintain a zero-tolerance policy for sanctions violations. We fully cooperate with law enforcement, and we remain committed to rooting out and shutting down bad actors.”

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Saudi Arabia has left mBridge, a cross-border CBDC platform that has drawn scrutiny from US policymakers, according to the Financial Times.

Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from mBridge, a China-backed cross-border digital currency project designed to enable direct transactions between central banks, according to the Financial Times.

SAMA, Saudi Arabia’s central bank, joined mBridge as a full participant in June 2024 and ended its participation after completing a proof of concept on May 13, 2025, FT reported, citing a statement from the central bank. SAMA said it had planned to end its participation.

MBridge was established in 2021 through a collaboration between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, with the aim of making cross-border payments faster and cheaper.

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Ondo’s new in-kind conversion system allows approved institutions to mint and redeem tokenized stocks and ETFs using the underlying securities instead of cash.

Ondo Finance has introduced a way for eligible institutions to convert stocks and exchange-traded funds directly into their tokenized equivalents, or redeem the tokens for the underlying shares.

Under the new system, approved institutions can transfer shares from their Alpaca accounts to Ondo through an internal book transfer, with corresponding Ondo Stocks tokens then issued onchain. The process also works in reverse, allowing institutions to redeem the tokens for the underlying shares.

The in-kind option adds to Ondo’s existing cash-funded model. Under that system, an institution that already holds the underlying shares must still provide separate cash to mint the corresponding tokens.

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The digital asset-aligned PAC joined other groups to spend more than a combined $300 million in the 2024 Ohio Senate race, resulting in Sherrod Brown’s loss to Bernie Moreno.

Fairshake, the political action committee (PAC) funded largely by cryptocurrency companies Coinbase and Ripple Labs, plans to spend $30 million opposing Democrat Sherrod Brown’s bid to return to the US Senate.

In a statement to Cointelegraph, Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter confirmed reporting by the New York Times that the PAC initially planned to spend $30 million opposing Brown’s 2026 election bid to represent Ohio in the Senate. Vetter said that the PAC expected to announce additional expenditures before the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

Fairshake spent about $41 million supporting Republican Bernie Moreno and opposing Brown in the Ohio lawmaker’s 2024 reelection bid. Brown, who had been the Senate Banking Committee chair when Democrats were in the majority, lost to Moreno by about four points in 2024 following more than $300 million in spending by Fairshake and other PACs.

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Circle is bringing Bitcoin-backed borrowing to institutional clients, allowing them to tap BTC holdings for USDC liquidity without selling their Bitcoin.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has launched a Bitcoin-backed borrowing service for institutional clients, allowing eligible Circle Mint customers to use BTC as collateral to borrow USDC through onchain lending markets.

The service, called Digital Asset-Backed Borrowing, lets customers deposit Bitcoin, mint Circle’s wrapped Bitcoin token cirBTC and supply it as collateral to supported third-party lending markets on Arc or Ethereum. Morpho is the first lending protocol supported, with Circle planning to add Aave and other protocols. The rollout coincides with cirBTC going live on Arc on Monday.

According to Circle,& borrowed USDC is deposited directly into the customer’s Circle Mint balance, while borrowing rates, collateral requirements and liquidation thresholds are set by the third-party lending market. The borrowing positions are overcollateralized, with collateral supplied through a customer-controlled wallet to third-party DeFi protocols rather than lent directly by Circle. New York clients are excluded.

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Bitcoin crossed the $86,000 mark for the first time since late January as falling oil prices and concerns over supply lifted US stocks.

Bitcoin (BTC) spiked above $86,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as US stocks rose amid cooling oil prices.

Key points:

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Coinbase draws scrutiny after the CLARITY Act stalls, while the SEC moves ahead with tokenized stocks and crypto firms push deeper into payments.

The crypto industry spent much of the past two years preparing for regulatory clarity in Washington. This week, one of its biggest legislative priorities hit a major roadblock.

The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate on Tuesday, falling short of the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to the floor for debate. The setback significantly narrows the bill’s path this year, with the Senate calendar tightening ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Strategists say crypto exchanges such as Coinbase may have more at stake than most from the stalled legislation.

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Multicoin Capital co-founder Samani expects SOL to surpass Ether’s market capitalization “this market cycle” and argues that “today, no one really uses Ethereum.”

Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani predicts more crypto companies will choose to build on Solana over Ethereum due to its ease of use and greater functionality.

Solana will flip Ether during “this market cycle,” Samani told Cointelegraph during an episode of Trade Secrets, predicting that Ethereum may gradually lose its edge as the default smart contract network choice for crypto companies.

Samani and Multicoin amassed a sizable early position in Solana and he has been one of its strongest proponents for years. His prediction would require a five-fold increase in SOL’s $58 billion market capitalization to surpass Ether’s current market cap of $293 billion.

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Strategy bought 950 Bitcoin for $75.7 million after a two-week pause and spent another $174 million repurchasing its STRC preferred stock.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy resumed buying Bitcoin after a two-week pause while continuing to repurchase its STRC preferred stock.

Strategy acquired 950 Bitcoin (BTC) for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670 per coin between Monday and Sunday, according to a Form 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The purchase brought Strategy’s holdings to 846,000 BTC, acquired for about $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per Bitcoin, including fees and expenses. With Bitcoin trading at $84,925 at the time of publication, Strategy was sitting on an unrealized gain of about $8.05 billion on its holdings.

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Pontes will expand its services and operating hours gradually, with full implementation expected by 2028 and more participants set to join.

The European Central Bank (ECB) launched Pontes, a system that allows financial institutions to settle wholesale tokenized asset transactions in central bank money, providing an alternative to private settlement assets such as stablecoins.

The ECB announced Pontes’ launch on Monday as part of the Eurosystem’s strategy for tokenized finance. The system initially offers a core set of services, with full implementation expected by 2028.

Tokenization represents assets as digital tokens, typically on distributed ledger technology (DLT) networks. The ECB said it could make wholesale transactions faster and more efficient by combining issuance, trading, settlement, custody and servicing on a single platform while enabling automation through smart contracts.

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Near expanded privacy features for traders as NEAR Intents recorded $29.3 billion in cumulative volume, including swaps involving Zcash.

Near Protocol’s native token surged nearly 80% over the past week, outpacing the wider crypto market as the network expanded its privacy-focused trading services.

On Monday, NEAR traded around $4.29, up about 78.2% over seven days and 22% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Total cryptocurrency market capitalization rose about 6% over the same seven-day period.

On Thursday, Near Protocol said deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading through near.com were now confidential by default. Near said the feature obscures the link between a trader’s funding wallet and a dedicated Hyperliquid trading account.

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Bitcoin hit $85,000 for the first time since January as markets focused on cooling oil prices.

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week at its highest levels in nearly eight months as bulls propel the market to $85,000.

Key points:

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X alleges six Bitcoin-focused accounts coordinated posts and engagement to inflate creator payouts, with claimed and projected losses of at least $378,000.

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X has sued the alleged operators of a network of Bitcoin-focused accounts, seeking to recover at least $278,000 in creator payouts it says they obtained by manipulating engagement.

X filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales on Thursday against Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa and unidentified account operators, alleging they fraudulently obtained at least 207,384 British pounds ($278,000) from its creator revenue-sharing program. The court filing is available on X’s Transparency Center.

The company claims the defendants coordinated multiple accounts to boost engagement by reposting and liking one another’s content and publishing identical or substantially similar posts, creating what the company described as a “false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.”

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ZetaChain plans to wind down its Cosmos-based layer 1 and migrate ZETA to Solana, joining other crypto projects moving away from standalone chains.

ZetaChain tokenholders have approved a plan to wind down the project’s layer-1 blockchain and migrate its native ZETA token to Solana.&

Governance proposal 68 passed Sunday with 99.4% support and 58% participation, exceeding the network’s 40% quorum requirement. Under the proposal, ZETA will become an SPL token on Solana through a 1:1 conversion, with the same ticker and total supply.&

According to the proposal, the vote does not immediately trigger ZetaChain’s shutdown or migration. Core contributors will submit a second proposal detailing the withdrawal window for assets linked to other blockchains, snapshot block height, shutdown timetable, token claim process and exchange conversion period. Validators will continue operating and staking rewards will continue during the transition.

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The Bank of Korea’s new network will let foreign investors settle won transactions during business hours in their home countries.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) launched a pilot of its first 24-hour won settlement network, aimed at allowing foreign investors to settle won transactions outside South Korea’s normal banking hours.

On Monday, the central bank said its international wire network started trial operations with four domestic lenders: KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank, Hana Bank and Shinhan Bank. Full operations are scheduled for January 2027, when participation is expected to expand to other institutions and foreign banks.

The network will operate 24 hours a day, excluding weekends and public holidays. Foreign investors will be able to settle won transactions during business hours in their home countries through accounts with Registered Foreign Institutions for KRW Business, or RFI-Ks, without opening accounts directly with South Korean financial institutions.

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Bitcoin’s move above its 50-week moving average has historically marked the end of bear markets, but analysts say one weekly close isn’t enough to confirm a new bull run.

Bitcoin has closed above its 50-week moving average for the first time in more than 10 months, a development some analysts said could signal the end of Bitcoin’s bear market.&

Bitcoin closed the week at $81,159 on Coinbase on Sunday, above its 50-week moving average of $78,788, according to TradingView. The last weekly close above the moving average was on Nov. 9, 2025.

In August, Galaxy Research’s head of firmwide research Alex Thorn described the 50-week moving average as serving as a ceiling during bear markets.&

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The five-year digital bond reportedly shortened settlement from three to five business days to the same day using Euroclear’s blockchain infrastructure.

South Korea’s Hana Bank has reportedly issued a five-year, $100 million digital bond using Euroclear’s blockchain-based platform.&

On Monday, Yonhap News Agency reported that the bank used Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure to issue the foreign-currency bond. The report described the transaction as the first digital bond issuance in South Korea to directly use Euroclear’s blockchain infrastructure.&

According to Yonhap, the bond’s issuance, registration and settlement were processed on a distributed ledger network. Using the technology for bond allocation and payment settlement reportedly shortened the process from three to five business days to the same day.&

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North Korean cyber group WaterPlum targeted developers with fake jobs at crypto, AI and NFT companies, infecting at least 30,000 devices across more than 100 countries.

North Korean hacking group WaterPlum stole at least $10.7 million by posing as recruiters for legitimate crypto and AI companies, attacking unsuspecting job seekers with malware.&

The group, also known as Contagious Interview, targets software developers and IT professionals worldwide, according to a joint advisory from Japan, Germany, Australia and the US. Authorities said the fake recruiters also impersonated non-fungible token (NFT) companies and used recruiting services.

“The primary targets were individual web designers, engineers, and specialists in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 technologies,” they added.&

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Crypto missed out on CLARITY, but tokenized stocks were legalized and the Bitcoin Reserve advanced. Meanwhile Standard Chartered says Arbitrum’s price could increase 70 times by 2030.

After a year’s buildup, the US Senate failed to pass a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act.

The motion received just 49 votes in favor and 50 against, well short of the 60 votes required.

However, Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s “no” vote was not all it seemed, and he confirmed he’d only switched sides at the last minute to enable him to call a new vote in future.

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Trump posted on Truth Social that his new project would manage the fast-growing sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation.

US President Donald Trump said that he plans to create an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday that his new project would manage the fast-growing sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation, according to Newsweek and other media.

“For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” the president wrote. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”

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At the close of trading on Sept. 28, shareholders will receive two extra shares for each one they hold.

Grayscale’s Zcash ETF (ZCSH) plans a 3-for-1 forward share split, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

At the close of trading on Sept. 28, shareholders will receive two extra shares for each one they hold, according to the filing.

The forward split is expected to decrease the price per share of the fund, according to a Grayscale press release, with a proportionate increase in the number of shares outstanding.

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The partnership is non-exclusive, and Anthropic expects to announce other evaluators in forthcoming weeks with which it will also work.

&

Anthropic said it has chosen Accenture as its first embedded evaluator to help slow the pace of AI development as proposed last week by CEO Dario Amodei.

Amodei published a three-step proposal on Sept. 12 to slow the development of AI and allow safeguards to be put in place amid warnings of a potential for catastrophic harm in the wake of swift, unchecked development.

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The partnership is non-exclusive, and Anthropic expects to announce other evaluators in forthcoming weeks with which it will also work.

&

Anthropic said it has chosen Accenture as its first embedded evaluator to help slow the pace of AI development as proposed last week by CEO Dario Amodei.

Amodei published a three-step proposal on Sept. 12 to slow the development of AI and allow safeguards to be put in place amid warnings of a potential for catastrophic harm in the wake of swift, unchecked development.

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The new ASSX fund offers 2x daily exposure to Strive shares, giving traders a leveraged way to bet on the Bitcoin treasury company.

REX Shares and Tuttle Capital Management launched a leveraged exchange-traded fund that seeks to deliver twice the daily performance of Strive, a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company and asset manager.

The T-REX 2X Long ASST Daily Target ETF began trading Friday under the ticker ASSX on Cboe and seeks to deliver 200% of Strive’s daily share-price performance before fees and expenses.

The fund resets its leverage daily, meaning returns over periods longer than one trading day can differ significantly from twice the performance of Strive shares. Unlike spot Bitcoin ETFs, ASSX does not hold Bitcoin or seek to track its price, instead providing leveraged exposure to Strive shares.

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Kalshi’s proposal would bring perpetual futures tied to individual stocks to US traders, as Coinbase and Bitnomial pursue similar products.

Kalshi has filed to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks, joining Coinbase in the competition to bring crypto-style derivatives to traditional equity markets.

The prediction market filed the proposed rule change with the Securities and Exchange Commission and submitted it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for approval on Friday. The CFTC has yet to approve the proposal.

The proposed contracts would have no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep their prices aligned with the underlying stocks. Kalshi said the contracts would be treated as security futures products and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear.

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Kalshi’s proposal would bring perpetual futures tied to individual stocks to US traders, as Coinbase and Bitnomial pursue similar products.

Kalshi has filed to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks, joining Coinbase in a push to bring crypto-style derivatives to traditional equity markets.

The prediction market filed the proposed rule change with the Securities and Exchange Commission and submitted it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for approval on Friday. The CFTC has yet to approve the proposal.

The proposed contracts would have no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep their prices aligned with the underlying stocks. Kalshi said the contracts would be treated as security futures products and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear.

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VanEck said Metaplanet’s executive equity exposure remains well above its digital asset treasury peers, even after the company cut its potential share pool by 41%.

Asset manager VanEck has criticized Metaplanet’s executive compensation structure, contending that recent efforts by the Bitcoin treasury company to curb shareholder dilution still fall short of adequately aligning management with investors.

In a Friday report examining executive compensation across the 10 largest digital asset treasury companies, VanEck labeled Metaplanet’s compensation structure “Bad,” making it the only firm to fall into the lowest category. VanEck cited an equity plan equal to 14.7% of fully diluted shares and officer exposure of 8.2%.

VanEck said Metaplanet’s officer exposure is roughly 10 times the 0.8% average of the other nine companies analyzed, while its overall equity plan is nearly four times the peer average.

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Bastion Platforms National Trust Company will offer stablecoin custody and wallets, payment infrastructure and white-label issuance from a single federally regulated entity.

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Bastion said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) had granted it preliminary conditional approval for a US trust bank charter.

The charter adds federal supervision from the OCC to the state licenses Bastion already holds, according to a news release on Friday. Still, the proposed bank could not accept deposits or make loans, separating it from a conventional commercial bank.

Licensed as Bastion Platforms National Trust Company, it will offer stablecoin custody and wallets, payment infrastructure and white-label issuance from a single federally regulated entity.

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Former banking official gets four years in prison over false letters of credit and accepting $470,000 in cryptocurrency bribes.

A former bank official in Hong Kong who falsely authenticated letters of credit for more than $1.6 billion was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to make restitution of more than $470,000 he received in cryptocurrency bribes.

Lam Chun-yin, 32, who was a customer relationship manager at China Construction Bank (Asia), had previously pleaded guilty in District Court, The Standard reported on Saturday.

Judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung said deterrent sentences are necessary even for first-time offenders, especially in light of the grave nature of the crime and its impact on society.

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Former banking official gets four years in prison over false letters of credit and accepting $470,000 in cryptocurrency bribes.

A former bank official in Hong Kong who falsely authenticated letters of credit for more than $1.6 billion was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to make restitution of more than $470,000 he received in cryptocurrency bribes.

Lam Chun-yin, 32, who was a customer relationship manager at China Construction Bank (Asia), had previously pleaded guilty in District Court, The Standard reported on Saturday.

Judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung said deterrent sentences are necessary even for first-time offenders, especially in light of the grave nature of the crime and its impact on society.
HashKey begins beta distribution of Hong Kong-regulated HKDAP stablecoin

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Coinbase wants to bring 24/5 perpetual futures trading to individual US stocks, with its proposed contracts now awaiting regulatory approval.

Coinbase has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list single-stock perpetual futures in the United States, seeking to bring a derivatives product widely used in crypto markets to individual US equities.

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Binance is joining a growing number of crypto exchanges offering around-the-clock exposure to foreign exchange markets through perpetual futures.

Binance is expanding its derivatives offering into foreign exchange with the launch of 24/7 perpetual futures, starting with a US dollar-Brazilian real contract on Monday.

Unlike traditional FX markets, which close for the weekend, Binance’s contracts will trade continuously using a dual-mode pricing system. During regular FX trading hours, prices will track a weighted index from third-party data providers, while weekends and public holidays will use an orderbook-based pricing mechanism.

The USDBRLUSDT contract will go live on Sept. 21, settle in USDT and offer up to 100x leverage, according to a Friday announcement. Binance said the weekend system uses an exponentially weighted moving average of orderbook prices, rather than relying on external price feeds.

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Coinbase, Strategy and other crypto-linked stocks rallied Friday as the CFTC and SEC moved ahead with crypto-related actions under existing authority.

Crypto-linked stocks rebounded sharply on Friday, reversing losses that followed the Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act earlier this week, as Bitcoin climbed back above $80,000.

Strategy led the gains, rising more than 13%, while Coinbase and American Bitcoin climbed about 11% each. Robinhood gained nearly 9%, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Source: Yahoo Finance

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The US commodities regulator submitted a new crypto market regulatory action for White House review days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has submitted a new regulatory action covering crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review, as the agency moves forward with its approach to overseeing the digital asset sector.

According to a filing with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the action, titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,” was received on Sept. 17 and is listed at the “prerule” stage.& The designation indicates the action is at an early stage of the rulemaking process and has not yet been formally proposed.

The filing does not disclose details of the planned regulation, but comes days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, legislation aimed at establishing a federal regulatory framework for crypto markets.

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Bitcoin price action made swift gains at the start of Friday’s Wall Street trading session as US 30-year bond yields began rising again.

Bitcoin (BTC) jumped past $80,000 around Friday’s Wall Street open as fuel-crisis woes spread through global markets.

Key points:

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Banks now represent nearly one in four providers on ESMA’s MiCA register after roughly doubling their presence since late June.

Banks are rapidly expanding their presence in Europe’s regulated crypto market, with traditional lenders now accounting for nearly one in four providers listed under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework (MiCA).

The number of banks on the EU’s MiCA crypto provider list doubled to about 80 from roughly 40 between June 26 and Sept. 16, according to a Cointelegraph analysis of MiCA register data from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

The overall number of listed crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) rose from 243 to 349 over the period, but non-bank providers lost ground in relative terms, with their share falling from about 84% to 77%.

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The non-profit signaled support for reducing Ethereum block times, citing increasing institutional activity moving onto the smart-contract network.

Ethereum Institutional signaled support for Ethlabs’ motion to reduce block times and create a faster Ethereum to address increasing competition from other networks.

“Make Ethereum faster,” wrote the non-profit organization in a Friday X post, arguing that reducing block times is needed as “more institutional activity moves onchain.”&

On Thursday, Ethlabs published an article quoting 20 decentralized finance (DeFi) founders showing broad support for EIP-8198, also known as “Quick Slots,” which seeks to initially reduce Ethereum block times to 10 seconds from 12 seconds.

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HYPE hit a record $90.92 after Hyperliquid opened manual borrowing, letting users borrow stablecoins against HYPE and Bitcoin collateral.

HYPE, the native cryptocurrency of the Hyperliquid layer-1 blockchain and decentralized trading platform, set a fresh all-time high above $90 on Friday as the protocol rolled out manual borrowing.

HYPE surged as high as $90.92 shortly after Hyperliquid announced users can now supply HYPE and Bitcoin as collateral to borrow the stablecoins USDC and Tether’s USDt (USDT).

“Manual borrows are live on Hyperliquid,” the protocol said, adding that the feature and its portfolio-margin system use the same underlying HyperCore infrastructure. Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said the design means every borrowed asset comes from a supplier rather than being created through platform-level margin accounting.

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Industry watchers are debating the fate of the Zcash development fund after the ZEC token’s rally pushed its value above $95 million.

Crypto-focused venture capital firm Dragonfly’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, proposed winding down the Zcash developer fund after it expires under current rules in 2028.

“I’m of the opinion that this should be the final Dev Fund,” wrote Qureshi in a Friday X post, arguing that the fund is large enough to fund remaining work on Zcash and that it risks being “politicized” as it approaches $100 million in value.

The Zcash development fund held 63,962 Zcash (ZEC) tokens at press time, worth about $95 million, according to ZecStats.

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The Fisher Transform indicator produced a rare crossover for only the fourth time in Bitcoin’s history.

Bitcoin (BTC) is showing strong signs that its latest long-term floor is already in, according to a classic trading indicator.

Key points:

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Dtcpay plans to expand its merchant network and payment products after completing a $25 million Series A backed by Japan’s SBI Group.

Singapore-based stablecoin payments company Dtcpay has completed a $25 million Series A funding round after securing backing from Japanese conglomerate SBI Group.&

On Friday, SBI Holdings said it invested through SBI Ventures Asset and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund, two Singapore-based investment vehicles managed by the group. Neither SBI nor dtcpay disclosed the size of SBI’s contribution or the company’s valuation.

Dtcpay said the investment completed its $25 million Series A, which began with a $10 million tranche led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India in April. Genedant Capital and existing investor Kwee Liong Tek also participated in the round. Dtcpay previously raised $16.5 million in pre-Series A funding in June 2023.

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Binance declined to address reports of ECB intervention in its Greek MiCA bid, saying it remains committed to securing authorization in Europe.

Binance declined to address a report that European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde intervened in its failed Greek crypto license bid and said it continues seeking authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that a vice chair of Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) told Binance that Lagarde had asked Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis not to approve its application.

Greek officials informed the European Securities and Markets Authority in early June that the regulator intended to approve the license, according to the report.

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Onchain analyst James Check says Bitcoin may have bottomed near $58,000 after two capitulations and warns against anchoring to an October low.

James Check, founder and lead analyst at Checkonchain, said Bitcoin may have already established its cycle bottom after undergoing two capitulation events, arguing that shifts in holder behavior indicate the market has absorbed much of its selling pressure.

Bitcoin (BTC) reached a record of just over $126,000 in October 2025 and traded around $77,400 at the time of writing, nearly 39% below its peak. Some traders expect BTC to establish another low in October 2026 based on its historical four-year cycle. In July, analyst Benjamin Cowen said that cycle-duration data and the US midterm-election calendar pointed toward a fourth-quarter bottoming window.

In an interview on Cointelegraph’s Proof of Thesis show, Check described Bitcoin’s February decline toward $60,000 as a “price-pain capitulation,” when investors who bought near the top sold at substantial losses. He identified a second “time-pain capitulation” around $58,000 in June and July, following months of sideways price action that caused holders to question whether Bitcoin would recover.&

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NU7 will cut Zcash block times to 25 seconds and preserve its halving schedule, with testnet activation planned for Oct. 6.

Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 for NU7 mainnet activation after organizations and engineering teams reached “unanimous agreement” on its contents and estimated timeline.&

On Thursday, Zcash developer Sean Bowe said the upgrade is scheduled to activate on the testnet on Oct. 6. A final decision on the mainnet upgrade and its activation height is scheduled for Oct. 20, after an assessment of NU7’s testnet performance.&

The upgrade would reduce Zcash’s target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, disabling version 4 transactions and integrating the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM). The chosen NSM configuration would preserve Zcash’s halving schedule, with the reintroduction of previously removed supply beginning in February 2031.&

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Input Output Group told users to avoid its YouTube channel after it began livestreaming a suspected AI-manipulated Charles Hoskinson video promising to “double your wealth.”

Input Output Group has urged users to avoid its YouTube channel, with the channel on Friday livestreaming a suspected AI-manipulated video of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson promoting a crypto giveaway.

The livestream purported to be a town hall for Project Catalyst, a decentralized community innovation fund and grant program. It was live for nearly two hours.

Source: YouTube

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World Money is rolling out across more than 150 countries, combining stablecoin payments, digital asset rewards and trading in a self-custodial app.

World has launched World Money, a self-custody financial “super app” combining stablecoin payments, digital asset rewards and trading.

The rollout began Thursday in more than 150 countries, World said, with features varying by location. Users can send supported digital assets, including stablecoins, to a recipient’s World username, deposit eligible assets to earn rewards, and buy and sell digital assets through exchanges.

The app lets users access “Mini Apps” such as Kalshi, Credit and Morpho. A partnership with Stripe allows users to fund their accounts and buy stablecoins with Apple Pay, starting with users in the US.&

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US Treasury says the Iranian exchange processed payments received through Iran’s Strait of Hormuz maritime scheme and helped move hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the IRGC.

US authorities on Thursday announced sanctions against Iranian crypto exchange BitBank, accusing it of processing Bitcoin paid by ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that as of June, the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority used BitBank to transfer payments it received to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury alleged it is part of the architecture used by Iranian financier Babak Zanjani to move hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the IRGC.

Treasury has previously alleged Hormuz Safe is part of an IRGC-backed scheme forcing vessels to buy maritime insurance for passage, including coverage against seizures by Iran itself.

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North Korea and Iran account for the majority of onchain malware, while Malaysia has been named among the most crypto curious Islamic nations.

North Korean and Iran linked hackers were responsible for the majority of the 420% increase this year in malware on public blockchains according to a Chainalysis report.&

State-linked hackers accounted for roughly two-thirds of new activity whereby attackers stored malware instructions or infrastructure information on public blockchains.

Chainalysis also identified UNC5342, a North Korea linked group, to previously unattributed activity spanning Tron, Aptos and BNB Smart Chain.

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The US regulator’s move could make it easier for crypto wallets and other apps to offer access to regulated derivatives and prediction markets without registering as introducing brokers.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has expanded regulatory relief for “passive software” providers that connect users to regulated derivatives firms and exchanges.

In a no-action position issued Thursday, the agency’s Market Participants Division said it would not recommend enforcement against qualifying providers or their personnel for failing to register as introducing brokers or associated persons when facilitating trading with CFTC-registered firms and exchanges.

The position could make it easier for crypto wallets and other apps to offer access to regulated derivatives, including perpetual contracts and prediction markets, without becoming CFTC-regulated introducing brokers themselves.

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MoonPay plans to use WisdomTree’s $1.2 billion WTGXX tokenized fund as part of its stablecoin reserves while helping expand access to US investors.

WisdomTree and MoonPay are partnering to expand US investor access to a tokenized Treasury money market fund, which MoonPay also plans to use as part of its stablecoin reserves.

According to a Thursday announcement from the companies, the fund issuer is using MoonPay’s technology to develop an access point for its WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX), a tokenized money market mutual fund that seeks to maintain a $1 share price. The companies said the arrangement would give WisdomTree access to MoonPay’s network of more than 35 million accounts.

MoonPay, a financial technology company that provides infrastructure for moving between fiat and digital assets, plans to use WTGXX as part of its stablecoin reserve management stack.

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CLARITY isn’t dead after failing a key Senate vote, but with time running short and Democrats still demanding changes, its path forward is narrowing.

[Disclaimer: This article was updated on Sept. 18, 2026, at UTC 3 pm to include a response from US Senator Thom Tillis.]

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink may be the sentiment of the crypto industry, lobbyists and lawmakers who’ve spent the last year trying to get the CLARITY Act over the line.

No shortage of negotiations, amendments or political wrangling; yet not enough to get the bill moving through the Senate.

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Bitcoin made modest daily gains as US stocks saw upside in the aftermath of the US Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate hike since July 2023.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $76,500 after Thursday’s Wall Street open as investors snapped up US stocks following their recent dip.

Key points:

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Former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton will take the helm at Fortitude as the Zcash-focused miner expands its operations and moves toward a planned public listing.

Fortitude Mining has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as chief executive as the Zcash-focused miner prepares to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton will& succeed Andrea Childs as CEO& on Sept. 21, with Childs moving to chief operating officer.

Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, accounting for about 28% of the network’s total production during the period. The company reported revenue of $20.9 million for the second quarter.

It operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York, and in July agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate. Shipments are expected in the fourth quarter.

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Crypto.com’s CEO said its sister exchange was cleared to offer US access to single-stock perpetual futures, as the latest platform to bridge TradFi and digital assets.

OG.com has received authorization from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer single-stock futures in the US.

Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of crypto.com, made the announcement its sister futures exchange in a Thursday X post that received regulatory approval to list single-stock futures in the US.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has acknowledged OG.com’s 1-N filing, authorizing the platform to offer single-stock futures in the US, .

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The SEC’s Innovation Exemption allows limited tokenized US stock trading on onchain venues with trading caps and transparency requirements.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved a temporary exemption allowing limited trading of tokenized US stocks on certain onchain venues.

Under the innovation exemption approved Thursday, Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) can offer permissioned trading of tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks.

The exemption covers trading through automated market makers and liquidity pools, subject to requirements including transaction transparency, recordkeeping and technology safeguards, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said. TSVs must also regularly publish US dollar-denominated transaction data, including prices, trade sizes, timestamps, pool addresses, end-of-day pool sizes and daily volumes.

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Bitcoin treasury companies promise to amplify returns over investing in Bitcoin alone, but does the potential upside outweigh the risks to the downside?

There are now 179 listed companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets, all following variations of the same simple formula:

Raise capital on traditional markets, buy Bitcoin and attempt to increase the amount of BTC that backs each share faster than the company dilutes shareholders.

According to Mark Palmer, managing director and senior equity research analyst at StoneX, that’s how treasury companies attempt to “beat” Bitcoin’s returns.

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S&P Global agreed to buy OpenZeppelin, which says its smart contracts have facilitated more than $37 trillion in value transfers.

S&P Global is set to acquire the blockchain security company OpenZeppelin, expanding the financial data, ratings and benchmark provider’s digital asset capabilities.

The deal announced on Thursday is aimed at complementing S&P Global’s risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in the digital asset market, it said. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to closing conditions.

“Our digital assets strategy centers on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move onchain,” S&P Global ratings president Yann Le Pallec said. He added that OpenZeppelin would expand his company’s smart contract and onchain technology risk assessment capabilities.

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German crypto adoption is progressing through family offices and wealth managers, while the UK’s retail-facing cryptocurrency market remains “nascent,” according to the researcher.

Cryptocurrency adoption is advancing in Germany, particularly among younger investors, while the UK is gradually falling behind, largely due to lagging regulations, according to CoinShares crypto researcher Luke Nolan.

German cryptocurrency adoption is showing “very good progress” through “family offices, wealth managers, individual advisors” and younger generations looking to invest inherited wealth in digital assets, Nolan told Cointelegraph on the Chain Reaction show on Thursday.

In contrast, the UK is “still very much behind,” said Nolan, adding that the country’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) only lifted its ban on crypto exchange-traded products less than a year ago, making its digital asset market “nascent.” The regulator previously banned these products from retail participants in January 2021.

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North Korea-linked hackers used Tron, Aptos and BNB Chain to maintain malware infrastructure, while suspected Iran-linked actors embedded directions in Bitcoin transactions.

State-linked hackers accounted for roughly two-thirds of new activity each quarter as the number of times attackers stored malware instructions or infrastructure information on public blockchains rose 420% over the past 12 months, according to a Chainalysis report.&

Chainalysis identified North Korea and Iran-linked operators among the state actors adopting the technique. In one of the report’s findings, the analytics firm connected previously unattributed activity spanning Tron, Aptos and BNB Smart Chain (BSC) to UNC5342, a North Korea-linked group tracked by Google Threat Intelligence.&

Encoded pointers in Tron and Aptos transactions directed infected devices to the same BSC transaction, with Tron serving as the first route and Aptos as a fallback, Chainalysis reported. The BSC transaction contained encrypted server addresses and configuration data that connected compromised devices to offchain infrastructure used for remote access and data theft.&

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Zcash rose about 20% in 24 hours as Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed that the firm invested in ZEC amid a broader crypto market rally.

Zcash gained about 20% over the past 24 hours as Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed that the crypto investment firm made an unspecified purchase of ZEC, the privacy-focused token that has been outperforming a broader rise across crypto markets.

Zcash (ZEC), a cryptocurrency that enables users to make shielded transactions that conceal addresses and transaction amounts using zero-knowledge proofs, traded around $1,338 at last look on Thursday. Its surge came in the wake of Huang’s Wednesday post revealing that Paradigm is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) as well as a ZEC token holder.&

Today’s more than 10% rise extends ZEC’s one-month increase to roughly 160%, compared to Bitcoin’s (BTC) 18.2% rise in the same period, according to Coingecko data.

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Revolut says it received no direct contact despite separate ransom demands for $3 million in Monero and 10,000 Bitcoin from competing breach claimants.

Revolut said Thursday it had received no direct contact from those claiming responsibility for a customer data breach despite multiple public ransom demands.

A group calling itself “IAmNotAVillain” publicly demanded 6,000 Monero (XMR), worth about $3 million, from Revolut within 24 hours, threatening to sell the customer records to other criminal groups, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

“Revolut has not received any direct contact or demand from the individuals or group making these claims,” a Revolut spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

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South Korean police reportedly referred 18 Polymarket users to prosecutors in a gambling probe involving 26 people and $12.7 million in bets.

South Korean police have reportedly referred 18 Polymarket users to prosecutors in an illegal gambling investigation involving 26 people who collectively wagered about 17.6 billion won (worth $12.7 million).&

According to Asia Economy, data submitted by the National Police Agency to the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Yoon Kun-young showed that the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency had placed 26 people under investigation as of Tuesday and sent 18 of them to prosecutors. The report said the largest amount wagered by a single user was about 5.7 billion won ($4.1 million).

Police identified users by analyzing publicly available blockchain transactions, the report said. Polymarket lets users buy and sell contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events and operates on a noncustodial, peer-to-peer structure with automated settlement. It does not maintain a conventional list of users by their real names, the report said.&

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Bitcoin corporate treasuries remained at an unrealized loss on their holdings as the price fell below $80,000 and fresh capital inflows dwindled.

Bitcoin (BTC) is no longer a target for corporate treasuries as current buyers sit on unrealized losses, new research shows.

Key points:

Onchain analytics platform Glassnode reveals that in 2026, listed companies bought around 5,900 BTC — less than 7% of their purchases in July 2025 alone. During that month, companies bought 89,000 BTC, even as BTC/USD traded above $100,000.

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The Celsius estate alleges BitMEX wrongfully liquidated and seized 6,360 BTC, worth nearly $490 million, during the March 2020 market crash.

The Celsius bankruptcy estate sued five BitMEX-linked companies, alleging fraud, market manipulation and wrongful liquidations during the March 2020 market crash.&

The complaint was filed on Sept. 12 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York by Celsius entities acting through estate representative Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium (BRIC). Defendants include HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings and HDR Global Services.

The estate alleged that BitMEX wrongfully liquidated and seized 1,325.84 BTC in collateral from Celsius on March 12, 2020, and 5,034.33 BTC from investment fund JST the following day. JST subsequently assigned the related claims to the estate, according to the filing.

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The six cases are separate from July’s incident, when OpenAI models escaped containment and hacked Hugging Face during a security evaluation.

OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed another six cases of “unexpected or concerning” model behavior over the last six months.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the cases illustrate a range of different behaviors it classifies as “misaligned behavior,” such as concealing information from the user and taking “unsanctioned actions” to overcome obstacles.&

The disclosures add to concerns among AI developers and researchers about whether safeguards are keeping pace with increasingly capable models. Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in frontier AI development, warning that unchecked AI advancement may “outrun our ability to understand and control these systems.”&

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Bitcoin showed little immediate reaction to the Fed’s first rate increase since 2023, but 16 of 18 officials expect at least one more hike before the end of the year.

Bitcoin held near its pre-Fed announcement levels of around $76,000 on Wednesday despite the US Federal Reserve raising its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2023 to address persistently high inflation.&

The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to raise rates by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75% to 4%, a move that typically puts pressure on stocks and other risk assets. However, Bitcoin showed little immediate reaction to the announcement and was trading at $76,663 at the time of writing, up 1.35% in 24 hours.

“The initial reaction suggests the Fed’s decision was largely anticipated by crypto markets. Bitcoin has remained relatively resilient, holding broadly around pre-announcement levels even as equities moved lower,” said Cooper Duschang, research analyst at Talos in comments shared with Cointelegraph.&

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The legislation seeks to codify Trump’s Bitcoin reserve policy, locking up Bitcoin acquired through civil and criminal forfeiture for 20 years.

US lawmakers took a step on Wednesday to put US President Donald Trump’s executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve into law.&

The American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (H.R. 8957) passed the US House Committee on Financial Services in a 28-21 vote. The bill would establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile within the Department of the Treasury for federally held Bitcoin and other digital assets acquired through criminal or civil forfeiture.

“We cannot allow Bitcoin to be held by the federal government to languish in fragmented and inconsistent custody,” said US Representative Nicholas Begich, who introduced the bill on May 21. “It poses unacceptable cybersecurity risks and fails to give an adequate accounting of what the federal government actually owns.”&

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Digital Sovereignty Alliance managing director Adrian Wall said senators from both parties are considering another attempt to advance the crypto market structure bill before the current Congress ends.

The CLARITY Act could get another chance in Congress during the post-election lame-duck session despite failing to advance in the Senate this week, according to Digital Sovereignty Alliance managing director Adrian Wall.

Wall said Wednesday that he has spoken directly with senators from both parties who are considering another attempt to advance the crypto market structure legislation before the current Congress ends.

“There is an appetite to put this forward even during the lame duck period of Congress,” Wall said during Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show on X. “Is it easy? No. It’s going to be very complicated. It’s a long shot.”

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The FCA’s new guidance outlines which crypto activities may require authorization as firms prepare for the UK’s incoming digital asset regulatory regime.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has issued& final guidance outlining when& crypto activities may require authorization under the country’s incoming regulatory regime.

The& guidance& covers activities such as issuing qualifying stablecoins, operating crypto trading platforms, dealing and arranging transactions, safeguarding cryptoassets and arranging crypto staking. It is intended to help firms determine whether their activities fall within the regulatory perimeter and which permissions they will need to operate under the new framework.

Existing registrations and permissions will not automatically convert under the new regime, meaning firms will need to determine whether they require FCA authorization or a variation of permission.

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A bipartisan House committee vote advanced legislation that would reshape federal tax rules for stablecoins, staking, crypto lending and digital asset transactions.

The US House Ways and Means Committee passed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act with bipartisan support on Wednesday, advancing legislation aimed at reshaping the federal tax treatment of digital assets.

The bill advanced in a 38-5 vote and covers stablecoins, mining and staking, digital asset lending, transaction fees and other crypto-related activity.

Among its provisions, the bill would establish special tax treatment for qualifying dollar-pegged stablecoins and certain crypto lending agreements, extend wash-sale rules to widely traded digital assets and establish new rules for mining and staking income.

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Anchorage Digital Bank added custody support for Etherlink and several Etherlink-based assets, including xU3O8, a token representing physical uranium.

Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US, has added custody support for Etherlink and seven assets on the Tezos layer-2 network, including xU3O8, a token representing physical uranium.

The other supported assets include wrapped XTZ (WXTZ), liquid staking token stXTZ, stablecoins USDT, USDC and USDSM, and wrapped Ether (WETH), according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

The integration allows Anchorage’s institutional clients to custody assets issued on Etherlink, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible layer-2 network that settles on Tezos, through segregated accounts at the federally chartered bank.

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A strategist at the Danish bank said Coinbase has more at stake in the CLARITY setback because its trading business is directly exposed to US market-structure rules.

While Bitcoin and crypto-linked stocks fell sharply after the US Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity, or CLARITY, Act, Saxo Bank believes exchanges like Coinbase have more at stake than most because clearer rules could directly affect their trading businesses.

In a Wednesday note, Saxo strategist Ruben Dalfovo said Coinbase (COIN) is the most directly exposed to developments around CLARITY because market-structure rules could determine registration requirements, which assets can trade and who can participate in US crypto markets.

“Coinbase is most exposed to clearer market rules because trading and crypto participation directly affect its business,” Dalfovo wrote.

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Bitcoin price support materialized around $68,000 as markets saw a 93% chance of the Fed hiking rates by 0.25% on Wednesday.

Bitcoin (BTC) stayed near monthly lows at Wednesday’s Wall Street open as markets awaited the US Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates.

Key points:

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Zero-knowledge technology could let companies verify who you are without storing your identity documents. So why isn’t it already standard practice?

The massive theft of more than 153 million US and Canadian driver’s licenses earlier this month should make one thing abundantly clear: the safest place for a copy of your driver’s license is nowhere at all.

The leaked IDs, which appear to have come from an identity verification provider, ended up on a dark web identity service dubbed Nexus, alongside millions of other stolen identity and travel documents.

The danger was underscored this week after fintech Revolut revealed it had been tricked by a hacker into handing over reams of sensitive customer data, including copies of passports and verification selfies. The hacker is now drip feeding the identification documents of 680 customers onto the web in an attempt to secure a $3 million ransom in Monero.

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Bernstein said the federal agencies will publish new regulations to compensate for the time lost negotiating the CLARITY Act, after its cloture vote failed on Tuesday.

Bernstein analysts expect “aggressive and swift” rulemaking from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), after the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote on Tuesday.

Bernstein analysts said the regulatory agencies will publish new regulations to “make up for the time lost negotiating the CLARITY Act,” in a Wednesday note shared with Cointelegraph.

The analysts said they expect agency regulations including token taxonomy for raising capital, developer protection measures concerning decentralized finance and self-custodial protocols, innovation exemptions for equity tokenization, faster approval times for real-world asset perpetual futures, and amendments to rules around federal sports even contracts and their classification as swaps.

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Nearly 99% of ZEC holders voted to reduce block times to 25 seconds, while keeping ZEC issuance and halving schedules unchanged.

Zcash token holders backed cutting the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and preserving its existing halving schedule in a poll on the next major upgrade.

The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote, while 98.9% supported keeping halvings, according to results published Monday. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings, with both percentages including abstentions.

The shorter interval would reduce the expected wait for a transaction’s first confirmation, according to the proposal. The amount of new ZEC issued per block would fall to keep scheduled daily issuance unchanged.

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Circle’s Arc mainnet is live with USDC for transaction fees, support for more than 20 fiat stablecoins and links to over 20 blockchains.

USDC issuer Circle has launched the mainnet of Arc, a layer-1 (L1) blockchain targeting stablecoin payments and financial markets, particularly agentic transactions.

Arc uses USDC as its native gas asset and offers Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and deterministic sub-second settlement finality, according to an Arc blog post on Wednesday.

The network supports more than 20 fiat stablecoins, including USDC, EURC, JPYC, KRW1 and TRYB, while tokenized assets including BlackRock’s BUIDL and Circle’s USYC are available natively on Arc. Arc also offers interoperability with more than 20 blockchains through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) and Gateway.

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Germany’s largest bank is awaiting regulatory approval to launch institutional custody solutions for Bitcoin, Ether and select stablecoins before expanding into tokenized assets.

Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, is awaiting regulatory approval to launch digital asset custody solutions for institutional clients and corporations in Europe.&

Deutsche Bank plans to go live with the offering for its first clients this year, subject to completion of the applicable regulatory timeline, the bank announced on Wednesday.

The bank plans to offer initial support for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and select stablecoins, including Circle USDC (USDC), EURC (EURC) and AllUnity EUR (EURAU). It also plans to include support for tokenized financial instruments at a later point.

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Bitcoin miners generated 35% of the state-owned power producer’s revenue last year, but declining reservoir inflows led the utility to prioritize households and manufacturers.

Ethiopia has reportedly reduced electricity delivered to Bitcoin miners to 23% of contracted levels as lower water inflows strain the country’s hydroelectric reservoirs.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that El Niño intensified dry conditions in the east African country, reducing water inflows into its reservoirs by 20%. Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) CEO Ashebir Balcha said the company cut power to miners to prioritize households and manufacturers.

Balcha said EEP initially reduced deliveries to 75% of contracted levels, easing to 50% and then 23%. The company will reassess conditions in October and could impose further reductions or even restrict electricity exports to neighboring countries, according to the report.

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Italy is probing the Revolut-linked breach after its cyber agency reported more than 650 cases involving abused or illicit certified email accounts.

Italian authorities are investigating a government email breach linked to the leak of Revolut customer data after hackers allegedly used the compromised account to obtain sensitive customer information.

Polizia Postale, Italy’s cybercrime police, is investigating the incident for alleged unauthorized access to a computer system and computer fraud, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Tuesday.

Some Italian media reports identified the compromised account as belonging to the Prefecture of Reggio Calabria. The agency later denied sending requests to Revolut, according to ANSA.

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Bitcoin exchange demand on Coinbase declined after the US Senate voted against the CLARITY Act, while traders sent BTC to exchanges at an unrealized loss.

Bitcoin (BTC) demand is under pressure in the US as investors react to the failure of the CLARITY Act to advance in the Senate.

Key points:

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Euro-area online and mobile merchants can apply until Oct. 27 to test beta digital euro payments in a 12-month pilot.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is seeking online and mobile merchants to participate in a 12-month digital euro pilot expected to begin in the second half of 2027.&

On Tuesday, the ECB said e-commerce and mobile-commerce merchants operating in the euro area can apply until Oct. 27. Selected businesses will enable beta digital euro payments in remote commerce environments and test how the currency could fit into checkout processes.&

The pilot will assess user experience, technical functionality and operational processes of the digital euro. The ECB said the beta version will be close to the currency described by the draft legislation but will not have legal tender status.&

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Federico Variola says AI has diverted capital from crypto and is empowering attackers, while rising cybersecurity costs could push the industry toward greater centralization.

Phemex CEO Federico Variola says AI has been a ‘net negative’ for crypto, despite the crypto exchange announcing an AI-focused transformation earlier this year.&

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, Variola said AI has diverted capital away from the industry, while empowering attackers and driving up cybersecurity costs for smaller teams — pressures that risk pushing crypto toward greater centralization.&

“It’s difficult to be bullish about AI in crypto,” he said. “Liquidity have been significantly diverted to to that industry on one side. On the other hand, AI has empowered a lot of bad actors that have been exploiting protocols.”

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The former employees allegedly earned more than $50,000 each by trading Hyperliquid perpetuals ahead of Robinhood token listings.

US prosecutors on Tuesday charged two former Robinhood engineers with commodities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly using confidential information about upcoming cryptocurrency listings to profit from perpetual futures trades on Hyperliquid.&

According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Hefu Chai and Huaisong “Jerry” Xiang bought perpetual contracts linked to tokens ahead of Robinhood Crypto listings. The DOJ alleged each profited more than $50,000 from the trades between 2025 and 2026.&

The DOJ said Chai and Xiang had access to a private company Slack channel containing information about planned listings. Prosecutors allege they used that information to open long positions on Hyperliquid, closing them when their value increased after their debut on Robinhood.&

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The $450 million withdrawal came as Bitcoin fell 2.5% and the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate, with Fidelity and BlackRock funds leading the outflows.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded their largest day of outflows since late June after a major crypto bill stalled in the Senate.

The 13 US-listed funds saw a net $450.4 million outflow on Tuesday, after attracting $159.9 million on Monday, according to data from Farside. It marks the largest outflow since June 24, when Bitcoin ETFs lost $469 million as a tech stock sell-off pressured risk assets.

Data shows Fidelity’s FBTC saw the biggest outflows, shedding $214.8 million, followed by $161.7 million from the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust, $44.1 million from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), $17.4 million from ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and $12.4 million from Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB).

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The CLARITY Act still has a procedural path after Senator Thom Tillis moved to reconsider the failed cloture vote, though industry executives are divided over whether Congress has enough time left.

Crypto industry leaders are looking to US financial regulators to fill the regulatory gap after a major crypto bill establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets stalled in the Senate on Tuesday.

The Senate voted 49-50 on a motion to invoke cloture and advance the CLARITY Act, short of the 60 votes needed as Democrats raised concerns over US President Donald Trump’s crypto investments. Industry executives said the result was a disappointment, but pointed to potential rulemaking from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the next best source of regulatory clarity.&

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A BIS study found widely used crypto metrics can obscure economic activity, with measurement challenges spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins.

Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that estimates of Bitcoin onchain transfer values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.

The finding concerns onchain Bitcoin transfer values, rather than trading volume on crypto exchanges. The sixfold gap reflects differences between measurement methods, including how change outputs and other transfers back to the sender are treated.

The discrepancy stems largely from Bitcoin’s transaction structure. When users spend Bitcoin, unspent funds are often returned to the sender as change, which can be counted as another output even though it does not represent funds being transferred to another party.

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Circle and Coinbase shares fell about 10% as the failed Senate vote weighed on crypto-linked equities, with Bitcoin miners and treasury companies also declining.

Crypto-linked stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after the US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, with shares of Circle and Coinbase dropping about 10%.

Bitcoin treasury companies were also hit, with American Bitcoin falling around 8%, while Strategy and Strive each declined about 5%, according to Yahoo Finance& data.& Bitcoin miners joined the selloff, with Riot Platforms falling about 6%, CleanSpark nearly 5%, Hut 8 more than 4% and IREN almost 4%.

Coinbase (COIN) shares fell 9.9% on Tuesday. Source: Yahoo Finance

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The failed procedural vote leaves the CLARITY Act facing an uncertain future after months of negotiations over crypto oversight and ethics provisions.

The US Senate on Tuesday failed to pass a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act that would have established the country’s first regulatory framework for digital assets.

The motion received 49 votes in favor and 50 against, short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation to debate on the Senate floor.

With less than 36 days of business before 2027, when a new session of Congress is scheduled to be sworn in after November’s midterm elections, the bill will likely not see further action for the rest of the year.

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A Bank of England policy maker said digital dollars could expand access to the US currency while turning stablecoin issuers into bigger buyers of government debt.

Carolyn Wilkins, a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, says the rise of stablecoins could reinforce the US dollar’s global dominance and increase demand for US Treasurys, underscoring how the growing market for digital dollars could have consequences well beyond crypto.

In a Tuesday speech at Queen’s University Belfast, Wilkins said dollar-denominated stablecoins could strengthen the greenback by making cross-border settlement easier, expanding access to dollar-linked assets outside the US and increasing demand for Treasurys held as reserves.

The largest stablecoin issuers are already significant buyers of US government debt. Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) held nearly $150 billion in Treasury bills at the end of 2025 and bought roughly $33 billion during the year, according to data cited by Wilkins.

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The crypto exchange is expanding its traditional finance offerings with 11 US-listed exchange-traded funds focused on US Treasurys and investment-grade bonds.

Binance has launched a wealth management service offering access to 11 US-listed exchange-traded funds focused on short-term US Treasurys and investment-grade bonds.

The new Binance Earn offering groups the ETFs into cash management, steady income and yield enhancement products based on investment horizons ranging from less than six months to more than a year.

Users can browse the available ETFs and place orders through Binance Earn, with purchases processed through the exchange’s stock trading service. Binance said investors receive the economic benefits of the shares, including price movements and cash distributions.

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Bitcoin price action weakened over market nerves prior to the Senate CLARITY Act vote, while surging bond yields pressured risk assets across the board.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw month-to-date lows at Tuesday’s Wall Street open as global bond yields spiked and crypto markets awaited a key US Senate vote on the CLARITY Act.

Key points:

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Standard Chartered sees Robinhood Chain as an early sign that tokenization could transform Arbitrum’s economics and drive ARB sharply higher by 2030.

Standard Chartered says layer-2 network Arbitrum could emerge as one of the digital asset industry’s top performers through 2030 as traditional financial firms move more assets onchain, giving the network a potentially lucrative revenue source beyond crypto-native activity.

In a note shared with Cointelegraph, Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, said Arbitrum’s economics offer considerable upside because the network receives 10% of the net protocol revenue generated by companies building on it. Robinhood Chain, developed by the online brokerage, is the first major example.

According to Kendrick, Robinhood Chain has already materially changed Arbitrum’s economics. At its current run rate, Arbitrum is expected to generate $5 million in revenue in September, more than five times its level before Robinhood Chain launched in July.

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An MEV bot known as “Yoink” front-ran an attacker attempting to exploit a custom Safe module, capturing the stolen rsETH before Kelp temporarily froze the receiving address.

An attacker exploited a custom module connected to an Ethereum Safe wallet in an attempt to extract roughly $7.7 million in rsETH, only to have the funds intercepted by an MEV bot.

According to blockchain security firm Blockaid, the attacker used a public keeper multicall to direct a custom Uniswap v4 liquidity module into an attacker-created hooked pool, where aEthrsETH was unwrapped into rsETH.

Blockaid identified the affected wallet as a Safe belonging to an unidentified user and said about $7.73 million in rsETH had been lost at the time of its initial report.

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Tether’s USDT stablecoin was part of a failed oil trade that reportedly cost a Polish energy giant $230 million in late 2023.

Update, Sept.17, 1:17 pm UTC: This article has been updated to include comments from an Orlen spokesperson.

The world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, Tether’s USDt, was reportedly used in a failed Venezuelan oil trade that cost Poland’s largest energy giant $230 million in late 2023, according to the Financial Times.

That was after the Caracas-based state oil company, PDVSA, began demanding partial payments in USDT as a workaround to US financial sanctions.

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The 114-page bill would change the tax treatment of crypto fees, stablecoins and lending while leaving existing reward-tax timing unchanged.

The US House Ways and Means Committee will consider a 114-page crypto tax package on Wednesday that leaves out a provision that would have allowed miners and stakers to defer taxation of rewards until the tokens are sold.

The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, was published alongside the committee’s markup notice on Monday. The package does not include the reward-timing provision contained in Representative Mike Carey’s Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, introduced in June.

The provision would have allowed taxpayers to choose between recognizing newly created tokens as income when received or treating them similarly to self-created property and paying tax when sold.

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Ethereum and Base are pursuing different account abstraction designs after talks failed, according to Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang.

Ethereum and Base are set to implement different account abstraction standards after efforts to agree on a shared account abstraction standard broke down last week.

Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain’s core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and “putting the burden on wallets,” Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs, as well as a co-author of Ethereum’s EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post.

The divergence could require wallet developers to support separate transaction formats to provide a consistent experience across networks. Account abstraction allows programmable rules for authorizing transactions and paying fees.

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Bitcoin short-term holders approached a full month in partial profit as analysis saw improving odds of an enduring bullish BTC price reversal.

Bitcoin (BTC) speculators have held onto profits for nearly a month in what new analysis sees as a key sign of market strength.

Key points:

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Tether froze $61.19 million across 10 Tron addresses in 2025 that prosecutors allege were connected to black-market Iranian oil proceeds.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking forfeiture of more than $61 million in Tether’s USDT stablecoin, alleging the funds came from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian oil and were intended to finance Iran’s government and military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).&

On Monday, the DOJ alleged that Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, both incorporated in Hong Kong, used Binance accounts to move proceeds from oil sold to buyers in China. A network of related addresses allegedly received and distributed more than $1.5 billion, including transfers to IRGC-linked money-transfer businesses, cryptocurrency addresses and an Iranian exchange.

A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that Binance did not permit transactions with sanctioned individuals and would continue cooperating with law enforcement, including by investigating, restricting or freezing accounts where appropriate. The spokesperson said the case was not filed against the exchange and did not allege wrongdoing by Binance.&

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Solana raised its transaction size limit to 4,096 bytes, giving developers more room for zero-knowledge proofs and transactions with multiple signatures.

Solana raised its maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes to allow developers to fit more complex operations into a single transaction, including zero-knowledge proofs and new onchain signature schemes.

The upgrade was activated on mainnet on Tuesday at the start of epoch 1,035 around 1:00 am UTC, according to blockchain data shared by the Solana Foundation.

The upgrade also introduced the v1 transaction format, which maintains full backward compatibility with legacy transactions. Existing transaction formats continue working for applications and wallet providers, but protocols that want to benefit from the size increase need to update to v1 transactions.

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Banking groups also said the GOP’s final text leaves stablecoin reward loopholes, while tribal gaming interests warn that its prediction market provisions threaten tribal sovereignty.

Odds of the CLARITY Act becoming law this year on Polymarket fell sharply again on Monday after spiking the day before, as key Senate Democrats reportedly said they had not been swayed by Republicans’ “final” crypto bill proposal.& &

Polymarket traders initially saw a newly revised Republican proposal with expanded ethics provisions as a positive sign, sending the odds to 35%. However, their confidence was dashed as reservations about the revised text began mounting, with the odds falling back as low as 16% on Monday.&

US Senator Mark Warner, one of the Democrats involved in negotiations, reportedly said the revised ethics provision was not “near enough,” while Democrats involved in negotiations began preparing a counterproposal on Monday.&

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CoinEx said falling trading volumes and liquidity, along with rising regulatory and compliance costs, had exceeded “reasonable boundaries,” with withdrawals remaining open until Dec. 22.

Crypto exchange CoinEx said it is winding down operations, citing a prolonged crypto market downturn, sinking trading volumes and liquidity, and rising regulatory and compliance costs, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

As part of the wind-down, CoinEx will halt new user registrations, referral commissions and other rewards. Futures contracts will enter a “Reduce-Only” mode. CoinEx will also stop accepting new orders or subscriptions across its fiat, margin trading, lending, earn, staking and strategic trading services.

“After much reflection, I have come to accept a hard truth. CoinEx did not become one of the industry’s leading exchanges, and the security and compliance risks of running a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain,” CoinEx CEO Haipo Yang said in a post on X.

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Balancer cut costs and shipped new products after restructuring, but Marcus Hardt says v3 failed to replace legacy revenue as November’s $128 million exploit continued to weigh on adoption.

Balancer, a decentralized exchange and automated market maker, has proposed winding down the protocol after its post-exploit restructuring failed to generate enough revenue, with its leader saying he underestimated how much a $128 million exploit in November would continue to weigh on adoption.&

The proposal was authored by Balancer Labs CEO Marcus Hardt and published on the Balancer governance forum on Monday. It calls for an orderly wind-down of the protocol and the distribution of its remaining treasury, currently worth more than $9 million, to BAL tokenholders.

The proposal comes after Balancer Labs shut down in March, when executives opted to continue operating the protocol under a leaner structure. Hardt said Monday that while the restructuring succeeded in cutting costs and delivering the products promised to tokenholders, the revenue side of the plan fell short, echoing profitability challenges faced by several other DeFi protocols this year.&

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Some Democrats remain dissatisfied with the bill’s crypto ethics provisions and will be sending a counterproposal just hours before a key procedural vote.

Senate Democrats working on the crypto market structure bill are reportedly preparing a counterproposal to the Republicans’ latest revised CLARITY Act text, despite GOP lawmakers describing it as their “last, best and final offer” to Democrats when they released it Sunday.&

Democrats working on the bill met in Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office on Monday, according to Politico. It is understood that some Democrats remain unsatisfied with crypto ethics language in the latest bill text.&

“The Democrats who’ve been working on this in good faith are sending a counterproposal,” Senator Mark Warner told Politico as he exited the meeting.

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Kraken’s new xStocks vaults let investors earn yield on tokenized versions of Nvidia and major US stock market ETFs by lending the assets in DeFi markets.

Crypto exchange Kraken has launched onchain yield vaults for select tokenized stocks and ETFs, allowing clients to earn returns by lending the assets through decentralized finance protocols, according to a Monday announcement.

The new xStocks vaults support tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPYx), Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQx) and Nvidia (NVDAx), with yield generated by lending the assets through onchain markets. Yield is paid in the deposited xStocks, while withdrawal requests are processed within three days.

The vaults use the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, which launched in January and has since attracted more than $800 million in deposits, according to the company.

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Bitcoin’s price rose toward $80,000 after US President Donald Trump hinted that the US-Iran war would end, pushing oil prices lower.

Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $79,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as markets dissected mixed signals over the US-Iran war.

Key points:

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD erasing its weekend losses and gaining around 3% on the day.

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Strive’s latest Bitcoin purchase was funded entirely through its SATA preferred stock as the company continues its rapid climb among corporate BTC holders.

Strive, a top-five Bitcoin treasury company and asset manager, purchased 469 Bitcoin for about $36.6 million last week, bringing its holdings to 25,000 BTC.

According to a Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Strive acquired the Bitcoin between Sept. 8 and Sept. 11 at an average price of $77,954 per BTC, including fees and expenses.

The biggest crypto by market cap was last trading at $78,823, according to Coingecko data.

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Trump’s ethics concession addresses one hurdle for the crypto bill, but 18 state attorneys general say the revised legislation would weaken state oversight.

The CLARITY Act is heading for a crucial US Senate procedural vote on Tuesday after President Donald Trump agreed to most of a bipartisan proposal to strengthen ethics restrictions around public officials’ crypto interests, according to various reports.

However, the latest compromise hasn’t resolved all of the opposition, with a bipartisan group of state attorneys general now urging senators to reject the bill over concerns that it would weaken state oversight of the crypto industry.

A coalition of 18 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, argued in a letter to Senate Banking committee leaders that the CLARITY Act would make it harder for states to take action against crypto companies accused of fraud or other misconduct.

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The investment brings together major financial institutions as Kaiko expands its data infrastructure for tokenized securities and onchain financial markets.

S&P Global has led a strategic investment in Kaiko, extending the Paris-based crypto market data provider’s Series B funding to $110 million as it expands its data infrastructure for tokenized financial markets.

The round also included BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Stellar and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments.

Kaiko said the funding will support its core digital asset market data business and its push into onchain financial infrastructure, including data services for tokenized Treasury bills, money market funds, equities and bonds.

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Bitmine now has more than 5 million ETH staked, turning most of its Ether holdings into a recurring income stream as it continues to accumulate.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies added to its Ether holdings last week while projecting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual staking revenue, highlighting how its massive ETH treasury could generate income even during volatile market conditions.

In a Monday announcement, Bitmine said it acquired 27,180 ETH last week, bringing its holdings to more than 5.95 million ETH, worth roughly $15.4 billion and representing about 4.9% of Ether’s circulating supply. Including cash and other crypto assets, Bitmine reported total holdings of approximately $15.8 billion.

Bitmine said more than 5.06 million ETH is now staked, generating an estimated $334 million in annualized staking revenue at current rates.

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AI’s biggest labs are suddenly calling for a slower pace of development. Is it because AI risks are catching up with the technology, or because the economics of the race are getting harder to justify?

For years, the defining characteristic of the artificial intelligence race has been speed.

Build a bigger model. Spend more on compute. Release it. Rinse and repeat, with litte regard for the unknown unknowns.

The average “p/doom” (probability of AI eventually going catastrophically wrong) among AI researchers was estimated to be between 15% and 20% in 2024.

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Stablecoins may reduce trade finance friction, fragmented regulatory regimes limit their adoption to just 3% of global payments, according to the World Trade Organization.

Fragmented regulatory regimes are limiting stablecoin adoption in international trade, according to Juan Marchetti, director of the trade in services and investment division at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“The constraint is not technology. It is actually regulation and the lack of development of regulatory frameworks,” said Marchetti during a Monday speech in Geneva, at the launch of WTO’s study on stablecoins in world trade.

He cited an October 2025 report from the Financial Stability Board which found that only 39%, or 11 out of 28 surveyed jurisdictions, have finalized their stablecoin regulatory frameworks.

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Token buybacks have pushed Hyperliquid to all time highs, but Alice Liu from CoinMarketCap warns that Binance poses a threat to the revenue stream it depends on to pay for them.

Despite Bitcoin failing to hold above $80,000 following the recent rally, the cryptocurrency is unlikely to revisit the lower price levels it has hovered near for much of this year, according to CoinMarketCap Head of Research Alice Liu.

“I think we might have already touched the bottom,” Liu tells Cointelegraph on Trade Secrets, referring to Bitcoin falling to around $59,000 in June this year, approximately 53% below its October all-time high of $126,100.&

Bitcoin recently tapped $81,600 at the start of September, an approximate 28% rally since mid-August. It pushed the CoinMarketCap Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall sentiment in the crypto market, back up to Greed after posting Fear scores for most of the year.

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Crypto wallet providers must submit an early vulnerability report within 24 hours and a full notification within 72 hours of exploits, or risk administrative fines of as much as $17.3 million.

The EU is telling cryptocurrency hardware and software wallet providers that they have 24 hours from awareness to report actively exploited bugs or severe security vulnerabilities affecting their products.

The measure is part of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which took effect on Friday, according to an announcement from the European Commission.

Manufacturers must submit an early warning for severe vulnerabilities within 24 hours, followed by a full notification within 72 hours. A final report will be required 14 days after corrective or mitigating measures are available and within one month for severe incidents.

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Bitcoin traders brace for volatility as the CLARITY Act awaits a Senate vote to move forward and the Fed is due to announce its latest rate decision.

Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the third week of September below key weekly support levels as traders eye volatility cues.

The Federal Reserve takes the spotlight for risk-asset traders this week as Wednesday’s decision on interest rates dictates the mood.

On the back of high inflation and cautious words from chair Kevin Warsh, the Fed is widely expected to hike benchmark rates by 25 basis points to 3.75-4% despite several dissenting officials in favor of holding them at current levels. The setup echoes that of the Fed’s July rate decision, when policymakers held rates while several voices argued for a hike.& Now, Warsh faces pressure from US president Donald Trump not only to avoid a hike but to enact rate cuts.

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Symbiosis is offering a 20% bounty for information leading to asset recovery after the hacker refused to return the stolen funds for the same white-hat bounty.

Cross-chain liquidity protocol Symbiosis said it recovered 15 Bitcoin, worth around $1.1 million, from a Bitcoin bridge exploit it suffered Friday.

Symbiosis said it recovered 15 Bitcoin (BTC) into a team-controlled multi-sig wallet and clarified that all routes remain operational, according to a Friday X post. The exploit affected Symbiosis’ native Bitcoin bridge, which remains paused.

The attacker’s address minted 46.1 billion unbacked tokens from the protocol’s Bitcoin bridge but realized net proceeds of 4.3 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), worth $336,000, according to blockchain security company Blockaid, which flagged the exploit on Friday. The protocol has not specified how the recovered Bitcoin relates to the $336,000 in proceeds attributed to the attacker.

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