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Analysis

The eleventh trust-through-defaults incident in 21 days hit SAP's enterprise SDK layer. A regression in six later releases shows how fragile the fix class really is.

An attacker can hijack OAuth2 token requests in the SAP Cloud SDK for Python by manipulating the tenant_subdomain parameter, a flaw that exposes application client IDs and secrets without requiring authentication. This Server-Side Request Forgery (CWE-918) vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-89111, carries a CVSS score of 10.0 out of 10.

The SDK handles authentication for multi-tenant SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) applications using client credentials — a client ID and a client secret. When an application passes a tenant subdomain, the SDK takes the token URL from the application’s configuration, replaces part of it with the subdomain value, and sends the credentials to the resulting URL to request an access token. Releases without a validation check used whatever value they were given. An attacker who controls the subdomain can point that request at their own server and capture the credentials in transit.

This is the eleventh trust-through-defaults incident on this desk since September 26. The predecessors include Keycloak masked-secret reuse (Post 131948), Better Auth OAuth state reuse (Post 132071), Frontegg SAML validation failure (Post 132087), Citrix SAML patch issues (Post 132019), AD FS spoofing CVEs (Post 132106), Budibase OIDC invite hijacking (Post 132121), OAuth2 Proxy header bypass (Post 132161), the agent vulnerability trend synthesis (Post 132155), the OAuth/SAML bypass wave retrospective (Post 132164), Microsoft Entra CSP enforcement (Post 132185), WorkOS SAML dual-view XML gap (Post 132192), the nine-layer progression synthesis (Post 132204), and ConnectWise Cloud Backup credential abuse (Post 132229).

CVE-2026-89111 is the first CVSS 10.0 in the sequence. The earlier ten incidents scored lower because they involved misconfigured defaults, framework-level logic flaws, or credential abuse at the supply chain layer. This one hits the foundational tooling — the SDK developers use to build applications on SAP BTP. The vulnerability existed from the SDK’s first release on PyPI, on March 16, 2026. Version 0.45.2, released August 21, added a check that rejects any tenant subdomain that is not a simple name — a single label made of letters, digits, and hyphens, up to 63 characters long, per RFC 1123. The August release notes listed the fix under “Bug Fixes” without mentioning security. The formal advisory followed 53 days later, on the October 13 SAP Security Patch Day.

The fix did not hold across every code path. Testing by The Hacker News on October 13 found that six releases between version 0.53.0 and 0.55.0 fail the validation check when an application calls the SDK’s Destination service module. Version 0.53.0 moved that module onto new shared code for requesting tokens, and the shared code did not include the check. Those six releases failed 9 of the 11 tests SAP added with version 0.55.1. Version 0.55.1, released September 18, restored the check to the shared code. Two older releases on the 0.36 line — 0.36.1 and 0.36.2 — also lack the check and fall within the advisory’s affected range.

The regression reveals something specific about the fix class. The validation was added to three modules in August but not to the shared code that later absorbed one of them. When the Destination module migrated, the security invariant migrated with it only partially. This is the same structural pattern the trust-through-defaults sequence documents at the identity-layer level — a system trusting an assertion without verifying that the assertion means what the system assumes — now appearing inside the SDK’s own codebase. The SDK trusted that its modules carried the check. They did not.

Version 0.58.4, the newest release on PyPI as of October 13, contains the check. Applications that cannot upgrade immediately can validate the tenant subdomain against a known allowlist of registered tenants before passing it to the SDK. The flaw matters only where an application passes a tenant subdomain — the August fix covered three modules: Agent Gateway, Destination, and Document Management Service. The advisory does not say whether applications that ran a release without the check should replace their client credentials. No exploitation beyond security testing has been confirmed.

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The suspected attacker behind South Korea’s recent bank breaches asked an AI coding tool where breach data sells. CrowdStrike found the request in session logs stored in open directories on attacker-controlled servers.

Several South Korean banks have disclosed customer data leaks over the past week. CrowdStrike’s October 7 report says the campaign used a Chinese-built AI penetration testing tool and several language models.

What Is Known So Far About the Korean Bank BreachesA string of attacks hit several Korean lenders in succession between late September and early October. Shinhan Bank confirmed its breach on September 30 and said a day later that about 25,000 customers were affected. The intruder slipped past identity checks on a mobile service loan agents use to track applications.

The exposed records covered names, phone numbers, annual income, and calculated loan limits. They also included 66 resident registration numbers, South Korea’s national ID numbers.

KB Kookmin Bank followed on October 2, saying data on 119 customers leaked through a mobile system its employees use. Hana Bank disclosed 89 affected customers, while BNK said records on 11 outsourced workers were taken.

President Lee Jae Myung then raised the AI question at a Cabinet meeting. Police have since opened a full-scale investigation.

“In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety,” he said.

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An Open Server Exposed the Attacker’s AI ConversationsCrowdStrike published its findings on October 7. Open directories on attacker-controlled servers held histories from Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding assistant, along with configuration files.

“Analysis of threat actor-controlled open directories uncovered Claude Code session histories, ARTEX configuration files, and Claude memory files, providing direct insight into the threat actor’s operational methodology and tooling,” the report read.

According to the report, the attacker worked with ARTEX, an open-source agentic penetration testing (pentesting) tool developed in China.

A Hong Kong-based server acted as the attacker’s main infrastructure. An IP address ran the ARTEX instance that CrowdStrike says was likely behind the Korean attacks.

CrowdStrike said the ARTEX instance used DeepSeek v4.1-flash as its main AI model. The attacker also used Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.3 and xAI’s Grok 4.6 in other Claude Code sessions.

DeepSeek also featured in an August TeamT5 report on Chinese hackers. The Taiwanese firm found state-linked groups doubled their attack volume after adopting DeepSeek and open-source AI.

The Attacker Asked About Telegram MarketsAlongside the ARTEX operation, the attacker asked Claude where threat actors typically sell Korean breach data. The same user wanted help finding Korean Telegram groups that sell such data.

CrowdStrike has not named any group behind the campaign. It assessed with moderate confidence that the actor is likely a financially motivated Chinese speaker. That view rests on ARTEX and the Chinese-language prompts.

A Résumé Request May Point to the HackerIn another session, the user asked Claude to write a security researcher résumé showcasing the ARTEX results. The prompt listed a Telegram handle, an age of 26, and a location in Maoming, Guangdong.

CrowdStrike said the details likely belong to the attacker but cannot be definitively linked to them. The firm also noted the attacker first entered a 2007 birth date.

The same Telegram handle appeared in Claude Code sessions probing a Telegram-based NFT gift marketplace for flaws.

“While this activity has not been attributed to a named adversary, the threat actor is likely a Chinese speaker and financially motivated,” CrowdStrike added.

CrowdStrike said AI tooling can help a financially motivated actor run multiple intrusions in a short span. Previously, Anthropic also said that AI now performs advanced attack tasks for low-skill hackers.

CrowdStrike expects attackers to keep experimenting with AI tools. It was among more than 100 companies that signed an August letter warning that AI-enabled cyberattacks will surge.

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5 hours ago

Crypto venture firm Multicoin Capital’s co-head of venture investments, Spencer Applebaum, has published a lengthy article titled “DeFi 2.0”. In the piece, Applebaum notes that early DeFi primitives—automated market makers (AMMs), overcollateralized lending, variable-rate liquidity pools, and perpetual swaps—were designed for high-volatility crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). However, real-world assets (RWAs) such as government bonds, stocks, and commodities have lower volatility, generate cash flows, and feature identifiable borrowers. Institutional players prioritize execution quality, tenure, and credit, so the same set of primitives cannot be rigidly applied to RWA use cases. Applebaum argues that DeFi 2.0 needs to add capabilities including order books or Request for Quote (RFQ) systems, fixed-rate and term lending, interest rate derivatives, options and structured products, repos and dark pools, portfolio margin, and revenue splitting. Tokenization is only the first step; value will accrue to public blockchain block space, core primitive fees, brokerage aggregation layers, and application order flow. As RWA scales, these primitives—“long-existing but ill-suited for the asset types”—will finally gain genuine market traction.

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2 hours ago

Beating AI Express News: AI agents are writing code faster than ever, but code review has emerged as a new bottleneck. In the past, a single Pull Request (PR) typically represented hours or even days of a developer’s work. Now, agents can modify dozens of files in one go, leaving reviewers with a massive code diff that offers little insight into the original requirements driving the changes or the iterations the agent went through. Zed’s newly launched open beta feature Delta aims to fill this gap. It integrates agent conversations, every code modification, and subsequent comments into a single history. When reviewing problematic code, users can trace back directly to see the original request and how the agent iteratively arrived at the current code. Code review no longer has to wait until development is complete: developers can open a separate thread at any time to have a human or another agent review the current code, and continue modifying in an independent copy. Zed has already tested Delta internally. The Delta repository has disabled GitHub Pull Requests, and 33 team members have merged 570 changes to the main branch via Delta. Git remains intact, with commit, push, and build workflows unaffected. Zed’s core goal with Delta is to revamp the code review layer: as more code is generated by agents, relying solely on the final diff is no longer sufficient. Delta currently supports macOS, Linux, Windows, and web versions, and is free during its open beta. Features like MCP and remote runtime environments are still in development.

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Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.

Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.

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In brief Revolut disclosed sensitive customer data—including passport copies, verification selfies and full Bitcoin transaction histories—after fulfilling a fraudulent request sent from a government agency's legitimate email domain. A Revolut spokesperson confirmed it was "a sophisticated external impersonation scam," said a "limited" number of customers were affected, and stated systems and funds were unaffected, but declined to give numbers or name the agency. ZachXBT said the breach appeared to target high-net-worth users, raising "wrench attack" concerns amid a wave of similar leaks. Fintech giant Revolut handed sensitive customer data, including passport copies and full Bitcoin transaction histories, to a malicious actor after falling for a fraudulent request disguised as a legitimate government inquiry.

According to a customer notification circulated by crypto investigator ZachXBT, Revolut received a request for customer information that appeared to come from a government agency, sent from an unauthorized email account using the agency's official domain.

Myriad: Bitcoin's next move? Click to make your prediction.Because the message carried valid domain authentication credentials, Revolut fulfilled it in the belief it was genuine.

The exposed data was extensive. Per the notice, it spanned identity details such as full name, date of birth and occupation; contact information including postal address, email and phone number; and document and verification data, including a copy of the victim's passport or driver's license and the selfie provided for verification.

Most alarming for crypto holders, the financial data included account statements with IBAN and wallet reference numbers, withdrawal records and full transaction history, including Bitcoin. Revolut said no biometric facial telemetry data was involved.

A Revolut spokesperson confirmed the breach to TechCrunch, describing it as "a sophisticated external impersonation scam where an unauthorised third party utilised a legitimate government agency domain email to submit fraudulent requests for information."

The company said a "limited" number of customers were affected, that it had blocked the email address and alerted the agency, law enforcement and regulators, and that its systems and customer funds were unaffected. Revolut declined to say how many people were hit or which agency was impersonated.

ZachXBT said the incident appeared to target high-net-worth users, a concern given the surge in violent "wrench attacks" against known crypto holders. The leak drew sharp criticism, with several users on social media arguing the episode shows know-your-customer rules have created risk without meaningful benefit.

The breach lands amid a rough stretch for firms holding crypto users' personal data. Hardware wallet maker Trezor recently saw a support-vendor breach widen to expose tens of thousands more customers, while X appeared to suffer a data breach of its own that flooded users with password resets.

Revolut, which launched its euro-pegged EURR stablecoin this year, is currently weighing an IPO.

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Analysis

A single HTTP POST to the commits API bypasses all security controls and reads arbitrary files from a GitLab server. CISA gave agencies until September 14 to patch. watchTowr saw exploitation attempts starting six hours after disclosure.

A single HTTP POST request to the /api/v4/projects/{id}/repository/commits/ endpoint is sufficient to bypass security controls and read arbitrary files from a GitLab server. This path traversal vulnerability, designated CVE-2026-85706, carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It stems from a failure in path confinement combined with a complete lack of authentication enforcement. To trigger the exploit, an attacker only needs to target a GitLab instance that hosts at least one public project.

The vulnerability was reported by s3ntago via the HackerOne bug bounty program. GitLab released patches for affected versions – CE/EE versions from 18.7 before 19.1.8, 19.2 before 19.2.6, and 19.3 before 19.3.2 – on September 10, 2026. While GitLab.com is patched, the risk remains for the estimated 20,000-plus self-managed instances globally.

Probing activity began shortly after disclosure. The watchTowr honeypot network observed in-the-wild exploitation attempts at 06:00 UTC on September 11, 2026. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on the same day, mandating remediation by September 14 under BOD 26-04.

Jake Knott, head of threat intelligence at watchTowr, notes that this is the second critical-severity GitLab vulnerability in recent weeks, following the GraphQL code injection (CVE-2026-19478) that saw near-immediate active exploitation. Regarding the current threat, Knott states: “The appeal to attackers of GitLab is obvious, as unauthorized access allows an attacker to gain access to source code, CI/CD secrets, credentials, and the ability to inject code into build pipelines, gaining access or poisoning anything downstream of it.”

The blast radius extends beyond the immediate server filesystem. Because GitLab functions as the backbone for enterprise CI/CD pipelines, a compromise provides an entry point for supply-chain attacks. The integration of agentic AI coding agents – such as Cursor, Copilot, and Claude – compounds this risk. These agents operate within repositories and pipelines, often inheriting the credentials of the environment. If a GitLab instance is compromised, these agents may inadvertently expose those credentials, allowing an attacker to move laterally or poison build pipelines, creating downstream effects that are difficult to detect.

This is the second CVSS 10 path traversal vulnerability in GitLab within three years. The previous instance, CVE-2023-2825, involved the uploads endpoint in nested public projects and was patched in May 2023. While the specific API endpoints differ, the root cause – a failure in path confinement – is consistent. Two maximum-severity path traversals in three years, each in a different API surface, suggests a structural problem in how the platform handles untrusted file paths.

CVE-2026-85706 was part of a larger batch of 17 vulnerabilities addressed on September 10. Other notable flaws include CVE-2026-87719, an insecure deserialization issue in the GraphQL subscription serializer (CVSS 9.9) that could expose Advanced Search configurations and credentials through Duo Chat, and CVE-2026-88765, a buffer overflow in the Unicode conversion wrapper (CVSS 8.5) enabling remote code execution via crafted Git project exports. CVE-2026-12910, a SAML SSO bypass allowing authenticated users to circumvent sign-in restrictions, was also included.

Security teams should hunt for HTTP POST requests to /api/v4/projects/{id}/repository/commits/ URIs containing file.Path parameters – a strong indicator of exploitation attempts. Given the speed of weaponization observed by watchTowr’s honeypot network, patching self-managed instances to 19.3.2, 19.2.6, or 19.1.8 is the only reliable mitigation before the September 14 CISA deadline.

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As oil prices top $100, the BRICS Summit has centered on Iran, yet divisions among its members have deepened.

The BRICS Leaders' Summit was held in New Delhi, India. As the ongoing conflict involving Iran continues to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea, and international oil prices have topped $100, Iran emerged as one of the core topics at this year's summit. Member states including China, Russia and India have direct communication channels with Iran, a diplomatic advantage the U.S. currently lacks. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called on member states ahead of the summit to establish alternative financial instruments to reduce reliance on the Western-led financial system, and criticized the U.S.-dominated global order. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, advocated for advancing the establishment of a BRICS platform more independent from Western rules, with a focus on strengthening cooperation in payments, investment, technology and infrastructure. However, it will not be easy for BRICS to position itself as a mediator in the Middle East crisis. Iran is on opposing sides of a conflict with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), another BRICS member, which has previously suspended trade and financial exchanges with Iran; India, meanwhile, must balance its relations with the U.S., Gulf states, Russia and Iran. Divergences among member states previously led to the foreign ministers' meeting failing to issue a joint statement. What the market is currently more focused on is whether BRICS can reach a minimal consensus on energy security, cross-border payments and the Middle East situation. With ongoing disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, whether the summit can ultimately deliver a unified stance will also serve as an important window for observing global energy and geopolitical trends.

32 minutes ago

Viewpoint: The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are fundamentally unnecessary, and the overall economy is stable.

Liz Miller, founder and president of U.S. wealth management firm Summit Place Financial Advisors, said that while markets widely expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next week, further policy tightening is "fundamentally unnecessary" given the overall economic stability. Miller noted, "I think most investors believe the Fed will raise rates next week, and I also think that’s highly probable. But it’s fundamentally unnecessary. I’d be interested to hear the discussions at the policy meeting, as some Fed officials firmly believe action is needed before overall inflation picks up to push it back to the 2% target. However, if we take a patient view of other parts of the economy, they are actually performing quite stably. I’m not sure a broad rate hike is truly necessary. We can continue to monitor whether rising oil prices will spill over and watch core inflation gradually fall."

32 minutes ago

US August inflation approaches the threshold for interest rate hikes; China International Capital Corporation (CICC) says it may resume interest rate hikes in September.

US August inflation data heats up again. China International Capital Corporation (CICC) research report shows that US August CPI rose 0.4% month-on-month, core CPI rose 0.3% month-on-month, both indicators accelerated compared to the previous period; core CPI rose 2.4% year-on-year, slightly above market expectations. CICC believes that August inflation has reached the threshold for the Federal Reserve to resume rate hikes, and expects the Fed may raise interest rates by 25 basis points at its September 16 policy meeting, lifting the federal funds rate target range to 3.75% to 4%. In terms of structure, rising energy prices and resilient service prices remain key drivers of inflation, while some AI-related price pressures have also begun to emerge. CICC forecasts that the Fed may lower its unemployment rate forecast, raise its inflation forecast, and lift its 2027 and 2028 interest rate paths at this meeting, signaling a more hawkish policy stance. CICC also warns that a bigger risk is the Fed may raise rates further this year or next, meaning the market’s current pricing for a rate-cut cycle still has room for readjustment.

32 minutes ago

WSJ: U.S. stocks rebound as market prices in Fed rate hike expectations, 10-year U.S. Treasury yield nears 5%.

After US August CPI data came in slightly above expectations, markets largely confirmed the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates next week — a development that instead sparked a Friday rebound in US stocks. Investors view the clear rate hike path as helping reduce policy uncertainty and avoiding more aggressive rate hike expectations down the line. The S&P 500 rose 0.9% on Friday, the Dow Jones gained around 1%, and the Nasdaq climbed 1%, though all three major indexes ended the week lower overall. Meanwhile, the 10-year US Treasury yield closed at 4.974%, near the 5% threshold, a notable jump from 4.783% a week earlier. Markets now expect the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points at next week’s meeting. RBC Capital Markets has even shifted its forecast for rate cuts this year to three rate hikes, noting that high interest rates could further weigh on corporate earnings and stock valuations. The energy market also remained under pressure: Brent crude closed at $104.61 per barrel on Friday, up more than 8% for the week. Houthi attacks on Saudi energy facilities, shipping risks in the Strait of Hormuz, and Saudi Arabia’s shutdown of east-west oil pipelines have all amplified supply concerns. While market sentiment improved somewhat on Friday, the simultaneous presence of high oil prices and elevated interest rates means US stocks could remain highly volatile going forward. Wall Street’s core question has now shifted from “whether the Fed will raise rates” to “how long high interest rates will persist, and whether they can curb inflation without harming the economy and corporate earnings.”

32 minutes ago

Astra's failure cause identified: outdated Skill is the bottleneck, OpenAI to roll out another reset after completing fixes.

Beating AI Express: OpenAI has fixed a series of quality issues following the launch of Astra. The most notable problem stemmed from legacy Skills: some Skills written for previous models were triggering incorrectly on Astra, even preventing the model from auditing its own work. Another issue related to context management experiments, which caused Astra to terminate responses early or revert to replying to earlier messages. OpenAI has shut down these experiments, affecting an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 users. The team also decommissioned a batch of misconfigured inference engines that degraded model quality. Post-fixes, Astra is expected to be more stable in following the latest instructions and performing self-checks. OpenAI also announced an additional user reset.

32 minutes ago

Sequoia Capital led Mecka AI's latest financing round, with the startup's valuation approaching $500 million.

Beating AI Express: According to two people familiar with the matter, humanoid robot data startup Mecka AI is nearing the completion of a new financing round led by Sequoia Capital, with a valuation of approximately $500 million. The round’s size and specific terms have not yet been finalized and remain subject to change. Mecka AI primarily collects data on human daily movements via body sensors and smartphones, then uses this data to train humanoid robots and other robotic systems. Founded in 2024, the company just closed a $60 million funding round in June this year, led by Framework Ventures with participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures. Notably, Mecka AI’s founding team previously worked primarily in food and beverage fintech and crypto startups, and has no prior background in the robotics sector.

32 minutes ago

The Biden Meme coin has cooled the crypto market, with investors fearing it may repeat the same fate as the TRUMP Meme coin.

According to HTX market data, since Hunter Biden announced the launch of meme coin LAPTOP, Bitcoin has fallen approximately 0.7%, Ethereum has dropped around 0.85%, and SOL has declined about 1.17%. Several previously high-profile meme coins also saw declines: MEME fell 19%, PONS dropped 9%, BONER declined 17%, Basecat fell 10%, and ZCAT dropped 13%. Notably, this market reaction may stem from a "precedent". Trump’s TRUMP coin was launched on January 17, 2025. While it saw continuous gains on its launch day, sparking FOMO in the community, its price has since plummeted, leaving behind a "mess" for the crypto space and drawing criticism from mainstream media. Data shows Bitcoin hit a high of $103,000 on January 17, 2025, but fell roughly 25% over the subsequent 54 days. At that time, the Solana network was also in a meme coin boom, with an average daily trading volume of around $4.53 billion, and a single-day peak of $5.86 billion (its current 24-hour volume is approximately $1.915 billion). Some of the most popular meme coin projects at that time peaked either before the launch of TRUMP coin or in recent days, including the once-hot ai16z (market cap of $2.74 billion), FARTCOIN ($2.84 billion), GRIFFAIN ($640 million), and pippin (phase peak of $370 million), among others.

2 minutes ago

Hunter Biden-related Meme coin siphons market before launch, popular Meme coins in Robinhood ecosystem fall across the board.

Popular meme coins in the Robinhood ecosystem have fallen broadly, likely impacted by news that Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, is set to launch a meme coin $LAPTOP named after the "laptop incident". Specific declines: · PONS dropped nearly 9% following its coin announcement, with its market cap falling to $726 million; · CASHCAT fell nearly 10% after its announcement, hitting a $190 million market cap; · AI dropped over 10% post its announcement, with its market cap standing at $179 million; · MEME once plunged over 20% after its announcement, dropping to a $91 million market cap; · microduck once fell over 25% post its announcement, hitting $17 million in market cap. BlockBeats Note: Price calculations are based on data released after the coin announcement at 22:50 Beijing Time today. Reminder: Most meme coins lack real use cases, feature highly volatile prices, and carry significant investment risks—invest with caution.

2 minutes ago

Former US President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden confirmed via a tweet that he is teasing the release of 'LAPTOP'.

While The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, will launch a meme coin named LAPTOP, Hunter Biden himself posted a teaser tweet and video on his official Twitter account, confirming the meme coin will be released on September 9. The name LAPTOP directly references the high-profile 2019-2020 Hunter Biden laptop scandal, in which his MacBook Pro was left at a computer repair shop in Delaware, and the shop owner later uncovered extensive private content stored on the device. That content was subsequently published by the New York Post ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, serving as a core tool for Republicans to attack the Biden family and a major, long-running controversy in US politics for years.

2 minutes ago

CZ responds to "account hacked" allegations: Unfollowed some accounts solely because they had been inactive for over 30 days.

Binance founder CZ has posted a statement explaining the reason for unfollowing certain accounts, stating it was solely due to those accounts being inactive for more than 30 days. Earlier, CZ’s official Twitter account unfollowed several Binance Europe-related service accounts, which was initially interpreted by the crypto community as CZ’s Twitter account being hacked. The incident also spurred the emergence of some meme coin hype.

2 minutes ago

The crypto community is abuzz over the resurgence of "political meme coins", with community sentiment leaning heavily toward satire and risk warnings.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported today that Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, is launching a meme coin called $LAPTOP, named after his high-profile "laptop incident," with a planned launch on Coinbase’s Base network on September 9. The crypto community is abuzz over the resurgence of political meme coins. Current community discussions center on three main angles: mainstream coverage, satire, and risk warnings. Mainstream reports highlight the token’s tie to the "laptop scandal," noting a portion will be allocated to those who suffered losses from $TRUMP, a move interpreted as a "counter-response" to the Trump family’s crypto projects. Analytical posts point out this is no ordinary celebrity coin—it turns one of the most politically weaponized symbols of the past decade into a tradable asset. The controversy itself acts as viral fuel, likely attracting three groups: supporters, opponents, and pure speculators, mirroring the attention rotation and liquidity battles seen earlier with $TRUMP and $MELANIA. Cautious traders warn that all tokens bearing the same name before the official launch are copies, advising against purchasing them. Some have already rushed to trade unofficial contracts to capitalize on early gains. Overall sentiment leans toward playfulness and caution: some joke that "the laptop ended a presidency, now it’s providing exit liquidity for others," while others argue political controversy has become a tradable asset class. History shows, however, that celebrity and political meme coins often "peak at launch," with subsequent attention fading rapidly. The event remains in the preview stage; official contracts and launch details will be confirmed via official channels. The crypto community’s interest in political meme coins has reignited, and its future trajectory will depend on the actual launch and market sentiment.

2 minutes ago

Official Twitter account and smart contract of alleged Hunter Biden-linked new meme coin project $LAPTOP revealed

According to data from X platform pages, the official Twitter account and contract for a new meme coin project "$LAPTOP" allegedly linked to Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, have been revealed. The account, named Laptop (@Laptoptoken), has also been followed by Hunter Biden’s official Twitter account. The project’s bio states “Coming to @base September 9” and includes the relevant token contract address, matching earlier reports. BlockBeats reminds users: All disclosed information is community speculation and has not been officially confirmed. Do not interact with any unfamiliar links to protect your asset security. Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hunter Biden would launch a meme coin themed around his “laptop affair”, with the token ticker “$LAPTOP”, scheduled to launch on Coinbase’s Base network on September 9. According to sources, $LAPTOP has a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The founding team, including Hunter Biden, will hold 30% of the tokens, which are locked for six months and will vest over two years. Another 20% will be distributed in two batches to investors who previously lost money buying Trump’s meme coin $TRUMP, Hunter Biden’s Substack subscribers, and other groups. Additionally, the project team plans to burn up to 30% of the tokens based on the outcomes of 30 preset events, including the Democratic Party winning the 2028 US presidential election, Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high, and $LAPTOP’s fully diluted valuation exceeding $TRUMP, among others. If the relevant events do not meet their targets, the corresponding proportion of tokens will be donated to charity.

2 minutes ago

48 minutes ago

Circle and decentralized perpetual contract trading platform edgeX jointly announced that on September 16, coinciding with the launch of the Arc mainnet, edgeX will serve as Arc’s flagship perpetual product, offering 24/7 forex trading on the mainnet’s first day. The two parties will collaborate to advance Arc’s on-chain foreign exchange and global asset trading markets. On the mainnet launch day, edgeX will debut a 24/7 tradable USD/JPY perpetual contract, alongside over 150 perpetual contract markets covering U.S. stocks, commodities, and crypto assets. All markets use Arc’s native USDC as margin and settlement asset. Arc is Circle’s Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for stablecoin finance, featuring a built-in FX engine (StableFX), institutional-grade RFQ (Request for Quote) system, and 24/7 on-chain PvP (peer-to-peer) settlement, with USDC as its native gas token. Backed by Circle Ventures, edgeX will be the exclusive launch partner for Arc’s FX perpetual market. A globally leading centralized perpetual contract exchange, edgeX has recorded over $900 billion in trading volume since its launch, enabling users to trade perpetual contracts for U.S. stocks, commodities, forex, and crypto assets around the clock. Prior to this, Circle and edgeX teams had collaborated on EDGE Chain’s native USDC issuance and CCTP integration. This partnership will combine Circle’s expertise in stablecoin financial infrastructure with edgeX’s on-chain trading experience to expand 24/7 global asset trading use cases. Looking ahead, the two sides plan to gradually add more major forex pairs based on market demand and liquidity, and explore non-U.S. dollar stablecoin margin and on-chain FX spot markets.

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Serenity: GoPro's stock surges over 80%, its foray into optical communications surprises the market.

Serenity published a post stating that action camera maker GoPro ($GPRO) plans to merge with photonics firm Starman Optical to enter the AI data center 800G/1.6T optical module market. Following the announcement, GoPro’s share price surged over 80%. Serenity commented, “GoPro competing against AAOI is absolutely outside my expectations.” It noted that GoPro’s shift from action cameras to the AI data center optical communications sector is quite unexpected, and the market has reacted strongly to this transformation plan.

1 minutes ago

US stocks open September with a dismal start: Oil prices and US Treasury yields rise in tandem, weighing on high-risk assets.

On the first trading day of September, the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower across the board: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.64%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.71%, the Nasdaq slid 1.31%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index once plunged more than 3%. Intel and Qualcomm declined nearly 3%, AMD and Meta fell over 2%, while Tesla, Alibaba, and Nvidia dropped nearly 2%. The core factor pressuring the market is the simultaneous rise in oil prices and global bond yields. Brent crude oil broke above $92 per barrel during the session; market concerns over Middle East tensions and shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz are expected to push up energy prices and inflation, further strengthening expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike. Currently, CME’s FedWatch Tool shows the probability of a 25-basis-point Fed rate hike in September to a range of 3.75%-4.00% has risen to 66%. Paul Ciana, technical strategist at Bank of America, stated the S&P 500’s upward breakout starting in August remains intact, provided it holds above 7,500 points. Meanwhile, neither the RSI nor MACD has confirmed the recent price highs, indicating upward momentum is weakening. Ciana noted seasonal headwinds, election uncertainty, and rising front-end U.S. Treasury yields are posing greater challenges to the market, with higher yields increasing the risk that stocks will enter a consolidation phase rather than rallying at an accelerated pace. Matt Maley, strategist at Miller Tabak, also warned the stock market has so far been able to ignore rising yields, but this does not mean the pressure from high yields will not eventually surface. JPMorgan Chase, meanwhile, argues rising yields may not be an insurmountable obstacle for the bull market, as they could reflect stronger economic activity momentum.

1 minutes ago

Firelight Protocol completes $8 million funding round, led by Gumi Cryptos Capital.

DeFi protocol Firelight Protocol has secured an $8 million funding round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Maven 11, Metalayer, Joint Effects, Tribe Capital, and other investors. The project aims to build an on-chain risk protection layer for DeFi, planning to launch its protocol and first set of coverage products in September, while expanding its insured asset base from XRP to include Bitcoin (BTC) and Stellar (XLM). Incubated by DeFi infrastructure provider Sentora, Firelight targets the smart contract vulnerability risks that fintech companies face when entering the on-chain yield market. It has developed an on-chain protection mechanism where users’ insured positions are represented as NFTs. In the event of a vulnerability exploit, an alliance of independent risk firms—GFX Labs, Hypernative, Credora, Native, and Cyfrin—will evaluate claim eligibility, with a goal of completing reviews in 3–4 days and payouts within 10 days. Firelight CEO Anthony DeMartino stated that the product is not geared toward crypto-native speculators, but rather intends to act as a "protective layer" to drive the next wave of capital into on-chain spaces. Currently, roughly $80 billion is locked in DeFi, yet less than 1% of that total has on-chain risk coverage. Firelight identifies fintech firms, digital banks, and payment platforms as its core potential clients.

1 minutes ago

Injective: No Attack Occurred, Partial Validators Temporarily Jailed Due to Accelerated Upgrade

Injective officials announced that community contributors coordinated an accelerated network upgrade yesterday. As the time required for all validators and ecosystem infrastructure to complete the upgrade exceeded expectations, some validators were temporarily jailed, leading to a temporary dip in the network’s staked amount. Several exchanges also temporarily suspended INJ deposits and withdrawals. Injective stressed that its blockchain network and INJ token remained fully secure throughout the process: the underlying protocol and consensus mechanism were not compromised, user and staked funds suffered no losses or risks, and the network continued processing transactions without any downtime. The official noted that the accelerated upgrade was triggered by attacks on a small number of binary options market applications within the Injective ecosystem. The incident only impacted those applications, and did not exploit the Injective blockchain, protocol, native assets, or consensus mechanism. The attack vector has since been contained and repaired. Injective added that its team is deploying enhanced security mechanisms, real-time monitoring systems, and additional protective measures to identify abnormal activities earlier and reduce the risk of similar incidents recurring.

1 minutes ago

US job openings saw a slight uptick in July, with overall labor demand remaining stable.

U.S. job openings rose slightly in July, signaling that overall labor demand has remained stable in recent months. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed that July job openings climbed from June’s downwardly revised 7.18 million to 7.27 million, versus economists’ median estimate of 7.31 million. The report notes the U.S. labor market is still in the "low hiring, low layoffs" pattern that has prevailed for most of the past few years. Amid geopolitical uncertainty and persistent inflation, employers are cautious about expanding their headcount but reluctant to cut staff easily. The increase in job openings was driven mainly by manufacturing, state and local governments (excluding education), healthcare and social assistance sectors. Meanwhile, layoffs hit their lowest level since January this year, while the quits rate — a measure of the share of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs each month — edged down to 1.9%. Source: Jinshi

1 minutes ago

Bessent: The Strait of Hormuz will achieve "alternative shipping routes" within two years, and the US will continue to step up sanctions on Iran.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted during a fireside chat at the G20 summit that the U.S. energy sector’s “3-3-3” plan targets crude oil equivalent. Since Trump took office, U.S. daily oil production has risen by 1.6 million to 2.2 million barrels, he added, emphasizing that risks must be mitigated. Bessent also said bypassing the Strait of Hormuz will be achievable within two years, at which point the strait will become “worthless waters” as oil will be transported via onshore pipelines instead of through the strait. When discussing the Iran issue, he pointed out that 85% to 90% of Iranian factories have reconstruction capacity, and Iran may hold the world’s third-largest energy resources. Additionally, the U.S. may announce bank sanctions this week and next, having secured strong support from the European Union, European Central Bank, the U.K., the U.A.E., and Bahrain. The U.S. has adopted a zero-tolerance stance toward Iran, aiming to strangle its economic development, and will also focus on Iran-related aircraft leasing firms. Bessent stated: “We are aware of Iran-related accounts in the British Virgin Islands. Funds stolen from the Iranian people can be returned to them, or Iranian funds can be used to assist terrorism victims.” (Jinshi)

1 minutes ago

Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.

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Elon Musk Says OpenAI Can’t Be Trusted as Apple Seeks Forensic Oversight

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Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.

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At Base, our goal is to build the secure, trusted infrastructure for global finance: an economy that runs 24/7 with deep liquidity to power any transaction at scale. But infrastructure is only as powerful as the applications built on top of it. It is the entrepreneurs and founders, the builders creating real-world use cases, who ultimately make the difference.

The Base Ecosystem Fund exists to find and enable these exceptional builders. We provide pre-seed and seed-stage capital, combined with dedicated, hands-on support from the Base team, to give the best founders the resources they need to succeed.

The Base Ecosystem Fund believes that global finance is the defining, killer use case for blockchains. This spans the full spectrum of financial activity, including payments, stablecoins, credit, trading, tokenization, derivatives, prediction markets, agents, and more.

Rather than keep our theses behind closed doors, we are sharing the active areas we are most excited about right now. These represent the specific ideas we want to see emerge, scale, and fundamentally grow within the Base economy.

Alternative Yield-Bearing Assets
As tokenization proliferates and asset coverage expands, we are particularly excited about bringing productive, yield-bearing assets onchain. This includes short-duration working capital instruments such as stablecoin pre-funding, invoice financing, trade finance, and revenue-based financing, as well as longer-duration assets such as REITs, royalties, licensing income, and private credit funds. Delivery models can span from wrapped off-chain funds and native onchain issuance to stablecoin vaults that deploy into targeted opportunities. What matters most is partnering with deep domain experts who possess the vertical-specific underwriting capabilities to originate and manage these assets responsibly. These alternative assets introduce genuinely uncorrelated, productive yield for holders while unlocking the full structural benefits of composability, liquidity, and distribution.

Tokenized Portfolios as Collateral
Most brokerages offer margin lending, but far fewer offer Securities-Backed Lines of Credit (SBLOCs). This is because many brokerages aren't banks, and funding loans at scale is expensive, making SBLOCs historically a high-net-worth product. This leaves tens of millions of everyday brokerage users with no access to non-margin credit against assets they already own. Tokenizing these portfolios and moving them onchain bypasses those traditional hurdles. With programmatic credit drawn against customer holdings via DeFi lending protocols, we can remove the balance sheet constraints that have historically made SBLOCs uneconomical at scale. The ideal model is B2B2C: an end-to-end solution handling everything from asset tokenization to credit deployment, giving brokerages a way to embed credit they couldn't otherwise fund, and giving their customers liquidity they've never had access to before.

Stablecoins & Emerging MarketsStablecoin Distribution in Cash-Centric Emerging Markets
In under-financialized emerging markets with de jure or de facto dollarization—such as Argentina, Cambodia, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Venezuela—the US dollar serves as the primary unit of account for capital. Yet, this wealth remains structurally trapped in physical cash with little to no access to yield or credit. A large opportunity exists to make this capital productive by connecting local physical cash networks to stablecoins. By meeting end users where they are and building directly on existing cash-centric behaviors, these distribution networks can serve as a highly defensible wedge to leapfrog subpar legacy banking solutions with direct flows between paper currency and stablecoins, setting the stage for frictionless access to noncustodial yield and financial services.

Local Stablecoins
Despite the dominance of USD stablecoins today, there remains a large opportunity to drive adoption of local stablecoins as first-class assets. Many local fiat rails remain slow, costly, and, in some jurisdictions, subject to burdensome taxes. Savers who prefer to hold local currency are typically locked out of competitive rates unless they hold large balances at traditional banks. Enterprises and merchants operating in corridors where sender and recipient share the same currency face unnecessary FX intermediation steps, and merchants remain dependent on third-party payment solutions. Moreover, tokenizing local assets remains highly constrained until the corresponding local currency liquidity exists onchain. Local stablecoins address this by enabling faster, cheaper onchain payments that can pass yield directly to end users while allowing merchants to settle natively. They also eliminate FX friction by enabling direct currency pairs and serving as the essential quote pair for tokenized local assets.

Unsecured Consumer Credit
Punitively high costs of capital and rigid legacy underwriting metrics continue to lock millions out of the global credit market. Unlocking broader access and lowering the cost to borrow requires a shift from basic credit scoring to a comprehensive, verifiable, multi-signal underwriting framework. Utilizing zkTLS enables secure verification of offchain data—such as salary, bank accounts, and assets—to be paired alongside onchain collateralized credit histories. To scale safely, this stack can integrate localized collections partnerships and legal or credit-reporting recourse. Capitalizing on this market means building the underlying underwriting engine and capital aggregation infrastructure to sell into existing wallets, fintechs, and neobanks, meeting users where they already transact to structurally drive down capital costs across the board.

Multi-Party Credit
Merging multiple credit histories into a single, unified profile unlocks massive, historically untapped lending opportunities like intra-family lending and remittance-backed credit. By leveraging smart contract vaults, stablecoins, and zkTLS, lenders can make multi-party underwriting automated, secure, and frictionless. This enables them to safely service lower-credit borrowers by enforcing joint recourse through a high-credit guarantor, such as a parent backing an entrepreneur or an international remittance sender backing a local recipient. To make this a reality, we are looking for teams building the infrastructure and consumer applications for merged-profile credit rails, multi-party debt, and programmable shared recourse.

Conditional Asset Markets
Conditional asset markets have the potential to achieve significant scale by enabling the trading of state-contingent outcomes, where participants trade positions across potential future states, with only one market realized upon settlement. By isolating how specific events impact particular assets, this mechanism enables precise hedging across liquid assets of all kinds, rather than forcing investors to speculate on raw event probabilities. Crucially, this structure produces highly valuable information, revealing exactly how the market values the future of those assets across different circumstances.

Verticalized Prediction Markets
Verticalized prediction markets represent the move beyond generic platforms toward domain-specific information and execution hubs. While this shift to date has largely been concentrated in sports, other sectors remain underdeveloped. We see strong potential in dedicated platforms for politics, where real-time data and social mechanics can improve forecasting accuracy; culture & media, where embedded tools can turn passive audiences into financially engaged participants; institutional risk & insurance, where programmatic hedging can help underwriters manage tail risks through market-driven pricing; and clinical trials, where specialists use market mechanisms to surface the most effective therapies and techniques. By attracting domain-specific market participants, these venues can achieve a quality of price discovery that generalist platforms cannot replicate.

Legacy & Institutional MarketsForeign Exchange Markets
Traditional FX markets heavily favor large institutional players, leaving cross-border enterprises and SMEs to face high costs, opaque pricing, and restrictive capital requirements when trading major, minor, or exotic currency pairs. Using programmable rails, stablecoins, and derivatives, the status quo can be disrupted by rebuilding the entire suite of global currency markets. These can span spot, forwards, NDFs, futures, and options—all natively onchain. Creating 24/7 liquid FX markets can enable advanced, composable use cases built directly on top, such as seamless and accessible hedging and structured cross-currency products.

Onchain Bilateral Agreements
Traditional bilateral OTC agreements, including repos, total return swaps (TRS), and credit default swaps (CDS), are vital for institutional funding and risk transfer, but private execution breeds opacity, friction, and counterparty risk. Onchain bilateral agreements transform this model by recording contract terms, collateral, and lifecycle events on a shared ledger to enable real-time transparency and programmability. To ensure these digital contracts are structured for integration into existing legal frameworks and eventual regulatory standardization, an orchestration protocol can facilitate agreements via smart contracts on a permissionless rail, bypassing public DeFi's shared liquidity risks while keeping structures easy to underwrite, audit, and legally validate. Ultimately, this offers a transparent alternative to legacy infrastructure, creating a compliant pathway to migrate institutional-grade instruments onchain without sacrificing established risk frameworks or legal certainty.

Agents for Everyday Commerce
As agent infrastructure outpaces real consumer use cases, the open problem is shifting from building agents to making them compelling enough for everyday consumers to actually rely on. There is a large opportunity in agents that take user intent and see it through to a completed transaction, rather than bolting AI on to existing commerce flows. Areas with potential for disruption include agentic shopping and checkout, booking and reservation assistants, event ticket purchasing, and coupon and discount agents. We are looking for founders building in these segments that can translate consumer demand into stablecoin and ERC-7496 / onchain checkout volumes.

SKU Tokenization
Today, merchant catalogues live in fragmented, proprietary Web2 databases, siloed and inaccessible to AI agents, fundamentally constraining agentic commerce. SKU Tokenization solves this by migrating catalogue inventory onchain as composable, programmable assets, making products universally discoverable across any wallet, aggregator, or distribution channel. This gives any agent the lowest friction path to find, evaluate, and purchase in a single atomic flow. Beyond discoverability, liquid onchain markets for tokenized SKUs unlock a new commercial primitive: the separation of selling from delivery. Merchants can sell inventory before demand materializes. Market makers (i.e., resellers) can intermediate supply. And end users can redeem purchased assets for physical delivery on their own timeline. Static product inventory becomes a tradeable, liquid asset class.

While these are some of our current areas of interest, we know the strongest signal ultimately comes from high-quality founders and where they see the most significant opportunities.

If you are building in these categories or in an adjacent space you are excited about, please reach out and apply here.

Hyperliquid Meets SEC Crypto Task Force in Landmark Talks

Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.

Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.

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Music streaming platform Spotify has reached out to Kalshi and Polymarket, requesting that they remove its logo from their platforms. This follows a scandal involving artificial streams used to settle a prediction market on Kalshi.

Spotify Request Removal of Logo From Kalshi and Polymarket According to a Bloomberg report, the music streaming platform has asked Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its logo and clarify that neither has a partnership with it. This comes after the company identified manipulation of music rankings tied to prediction markets.

Spotify reportedly identified and removed over 500,000 artificial streams that had made Malcolm Todd’s song “Earrings” one of the most popular on its charts. Kalshi notably settled a prediction market based on these artificial streams. The market in question was for the most frequently streamed Spotify song in the U.S. for last month.

This comes amid increased scrutiny of prediction markets, with concerns of market manipulation and insider trading. As CoinGape reported, prediction market Polymarket is facing a broad CFTC probe amid allegations that the platform paid online creators to create fake bets and winnings.

Meanwhile, state regulators continue to crack down on these prediction markets, claiming that they operate as unlicensed sports betting platforms. At the same time, the CFTC has sued several states to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over the platforms.

Top Kalshi Trader Calls Out Kalshi Top Kalshi trader Caleb Davies called out the prediction market platform for settling the market based on artificial streams, despite urging them to investigate, as there were many plausible reasons Malcolm Todd’s timely surge on Spotify was not due to artificial boosting.

Kalshi did pay out the market based on fraudulent results right after sending me an email stating that there are many plausible reasons that Malcolm Todd’s timely surge was not due to artificial boosting. This is, of course, total bullshit. pic.twitter.com/vnbFCnfzJN

— Gaeten Dugas (@GaetenD) July 1, 2026

The trader, who estimates to have made over $1 million on Kalshi, accused the prediction market platform of being well aware of the fraud taking place in the Spotify market. “Yet they continue to provide liquidity rewards, including in one of the targeted strikes. Is it so important to Kalshi to collect fees that they provide an incentive in fraudulent markets?” he said.

It is worth noting that the top prediction market platform, Polymarket, also offers Spotify markets. This explains why the streaming platform reached out to both prediction markets, as these markets may incentivize traders to artificially boost the streams in a bid to win their bets.

Amid this development, the CFTC is proposing new rules for prediction markets to address concerns about insider trading and market manipulation. The regulator has already requested comment on these proposed rules, with a deadline of July 31.

OpenAI will reportedly stagger the GPT-5.6 release after the US government raised security concerns, limiting who can reach the model first.

Federal officials would gain a say over which customers receive early preview access, according to a new report.

What the GPT-5.6 Release Report SaysThe Information reported that the Trump administration asked OpenAI to phase the launch rather than open it widely at once. The outlet said federal reviewers would approve preview access one customer at a time during the early window.

Staggered launches already sit in OpenAI’s playbook. The company withheld the full GPT-2 model for roughly nine months in 2019 over misuse fears. Its GPT-5.5 model launch on April 23 reached paid tiers before free users.

More directly, OpenAI shipped a cyber-focused version of GPT-5.5 only to vetted defenders under a trusted-access program. The GPT-5.6 plan would extend that template to Washington itself.

A Federal Review Framework Takes ShapeThe reported request maps onto Executive Order 14409, which President Donald Trump signed on June 2. It asks developers to give the government up to 30 days of access to their most capable models before release.

Federal officials would also help choose which trusted partners get early access.

A classified benchmark led by the National Security Agency would decide which systems count as covered frontier models. The threshold turns on a model’s advanced cyber capabilities.

A separate Treasury-run clearinghouse would hunt and patch software flaws, extending the administration’s cyber defense doctrine.

The framework is voluntary and bars any licensing regime, part of a wider federal AI policy push. Officials cast it as a way to test frontier models for cyber risks. Some former advisers have criticized that case as overblown.

OpenAI has not officially confirmed GPT-5.6 or a firm launch date, and earlier timing has slipped toward July. How tightly Washington shapes early access could set a template for the next frontier releases from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Zug, Switzerland, June 25th, 2026, Chainwire

Anyone can now execute mass payouts across EVM chains and Tron from a single platform and can choose between multiple wallet screening providers.

Just three weeks after releasing major upgrades for crypto payment collection, the Request Network Foundation today announced another expansion of its stablecoin payment platform. The release introduces one-click mass payouts on both EVM and Tron, alongside built-in bridging and token swapping across EVM chains. The update also expands compliance capabilities through the integration of Merkle Science as an additional wallet screening provider.

Together, these capabilities reinforce Request Network's vision of providing businesses with a simpler, more scalable, and more resilient way to operate stablecoin payments globally.

Users Can Now Disburse at Scale in One Click From a Single Wallet Without Bridging or Swapping

Stablecoins are already widely used to disburse salaries, commissions, affiliate rewards, bug bounties, supplier payments, and customer refunds or withdrawals across the world. While settlements are now faster and cheaper in stablecoins compared to fiat, the operational processes needed to send funds remain complex as recipients usually require payments on multiple chains and in multiple currencies. This has forced finance teams to initiate multiple transactions in separate currencies and from multiple wallets.

Request Network now abstracts away this fragmentation, allowing anyone to initiate mass payouts from a single wallet in a single currency to pay recipients across the top 6 EVM chains (Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and BNB Chain) in USDC and USDT.

Through a single signature, a mass payout can now be initiated even if the individual transactions need to be bridged and swapped to reach their recipient. Request Network protocol automatically retrieves and batches bridge and swap quotes in order to funnel every payment of a batch to its correct destination in just one approval.

To simplify the process further, Request Network also allows any recipient to set and update their payment preferences so payments are always routed to where they should go.

This represents one of the biggest breakthroughs in cross-chain and swapping abstraction, bringing payers and recipients closer than ever before, regardless of the blockchain or currency they trust.

Mass Payouts Now Available on Tron

Alongside EVM mass payouts, Request Network also announced the support of mass payouts on Tron, becoming the first protocol to combine both capabilities.

Thanks to this release, anyone can now send USDT to multiple recipients on Tron in a single transaction, unlocking large-scale payouts on one of the most used chains in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

With this release, anyone can now manage all stablecoin payouts globally from the Request Network protocol.

More Choice for Wallet Screening

Alongside mass payouts, Request Network also announced a partnership with Merkle Science to offer additional wallet screening providers on the protocol.

As a reminder, Request Network offers built-in wallet screening to protect its users from high-risk wallet interactions. When enabled, this feature allows payments to be executed only if the payer or recipient satisfies the preset screening policies, helping businesses to avoid exposure to high-risk wallets which may lead to asset freezing or difficulties off-ramping to fiat.

By expanding its integration of Merkle Science, Request Network just became one of the safest ways to receive crypto onchain, while accommodating for recipients’ preferences.

Tristan Wallaert, CEO of the Request Network Foundation, said: "Stablecoins allowed money to move globally without the usual fiat constraints, but executing payments at scale remains a bottleneck and is forcing users to rely on payment service providers. Anyone should be able to pay by himself hundreds of payments across chains in just a single operation.High risk wallets exposure has tarnished the crypto reputation recently, if we want to provide the best protection to blockchain users they need to be able to use the best screening providers. Sending and receiving payments must become intuitive and safe if we want stablecoins to be a real alternative to fiat."

Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of Merkle Science, said: “As stablecoin payments become more global and cross-chain, compliance needs to become just as seamless as the payment experience itself. Our integration with Request Network helps businesses screen wallets with greater confidence, reduce exposure to high-risk activity, and scale onchain payments without compromising trust or operational efficiency”.

About Request Network

Since 2017, Request Network has developed, educated about, and promoted the use of open-source, decentralized and permissionless protocols that provide infrastructure for on-chain payments and related financial flows.

Request Network allows anyone to send and receive crypto at scale, across chains, without custodial intermediaries. The protocol is developed by a community-funded foundation whose mission is to make crypto payments accessible while protecting its participants.

To date, more than $2 billion has moved thanks to Request Network technology.

Press kit

About Merkle Science

Merkle Science provides blockchain analytics and crypto compliance solutions that help businesses detect, investigate, and prevent financial crime across digital assets. Its platform supports wallet screening, transaction monitoring, risk intelligence, and investigations, enabling crypto platforms, financial institutions, and payment providers to manage onchain risk and meet compliance requirements at scale.

ContactsCEO
Tristan Wallaert
Request Network Foundation
[email protected]
Director of Business Operations
Álvaro García
[email protected]

Disclaimer: Press release sponsored by our commercial partners.

Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

[PRESS RELEASE – Zug, Switzerland, June 25th, 2026]

Anyone can now execute mass payouts across EVM chains and Tron from a single platform and can choose between multiple wallet screening providers.

Just three weeks after releasing major upgrades for crypto payment collection, the Request Network Foundation today announced another expansion of its stablecoin payment platform. The release introduces one-click mass payouts on both EVM and Tron, alongside built-in bridging and token swapping across EVM chains. The update also expands compliance capabilities through the integration of Merkle Science as an additional wallet screening provider.

Together, these capabilities reinforce Request Network’s vision of providing businesses with a simpler, more scalable, and more resilient way to operate stablecoin payments globally.

Users Can Now Disburse at Scale in One Click From a Single Wallet Without Bridging or Swapping

Stablecoins are already widely used to disburse salaries, commissions, affiliate rewards, bug bounties, supplier payments, and customer refunds or withdrawals across the world. While settlements are now faster and cheaper in stablecoins compared to fiat, the operational processes needed to send funds remain complex as recipients usually require payments on multiple chains and in multiple currencies. This has forced finance teams to initiate multiple transactions in separate currencies and from multiple wallets.

Request Network now abstracts away this fragmentation, allowing anyone to initiate mass payouts from a single wallet in a single currency to pay recipients across the top 6 EVM chains (Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and BNB Chain) in USDC and USDT.

Through a single signature, a mass payout can now be initiated even if the individual transactions need to be bridged and swapped to reach their recipient. Request Network protocol automatically retrieves and batches bridge and swap quotes in order to funnel every payment of a batch to its correct destination in just one approval.

To simplify the process further, Request Network also allows any recipient to set and update their payment preferences so payments are always routed to where they should go.

This represents one of the biggest breakthroughs in cross-chain and swapping abstraction, bringing payers and recipients closer than ever before, regardless of the blockchain or currency they trust.

Mass Payouts Now Available on Tron

Alongside EVM mass payouts, Request Network also announced the support of mass payouts on Tron, becoming the first protocol to combine both capabilities.

Thanks to this release, anyone can now send USDT to multiple recipients on Tron in a single transaction, unlocking large-scale payouts on one of the most used chains in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

With this release, anyone can now manage all stablecoin payouts globally from the Request Network protocol.

More Choice for Wallet Screening

Alongside mass payouts, Request Network also announced a partnership with Merkle Science to offer additional wallet screening providers on the protocol.

As a reminder, Request Network offers built-in wallet screening to protect its users from high-risk wallet interactions. When enabled, this feature allows payments to be executed only if the payer or recipient satisfies the preset screening policies, helping businesses to avoid exposure to high-risk wallets which may lead to asset freezing or difficulties off-ramping to fiat.

By expanding its integration of Merkle Science, Request Network just became one of the safest ways to receive crypto onchain, while accommodating for recipients’ preferences.

Tristan Wallaert, CEO of the Request Network Foundation, said: “Stablecoins allowed money to move globally without the usual fiat constraints, but executing payments at scale remains a bottleneck and is forcing users to rely on payment service providers. Anyone should be able to pay by himself hundreds of payments across chains in just a single operation.High risk wallets exposure has tarnished the crypto reputation recently, if we want to provide the best protection to blockchain users they need to be able to use the best screening providers. Sending and receiving payments must become intuitive and safe if we want stablecoins to be a real alternative to fiat.”

Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of Merkle Science, said: “As stablecoin payments become more global and cross-chain, compliance needs to become just as seamless as the payment experience itself. Our integration with Request Network helps businesses screen wallets with greater confidence, reduce exposure to high-risk activity, and scale onchain payments without compromising trust or operational efficiency”.

About Request Network

Since 2017, Request Network has developed, educated about, and promoted the use of open-source, decentralized and permissionless protocols that provide infrastructure for on-chain payments and related financial flows.

Request Network allows anyone to send and receive crypto at scale, across chains, without custodial intermediaries. The protocol is developed by a community-funded foundation whose mission is to make crypto payments accessible while protecting its participants.

To date, more than $2 billion has moved thanks to Request Network technology.

Press kit

About Merkle Science

Merkle Science provides blockchain analytics and crypto compliance solutions that help businesses detect, investigate, and prevent financial crime across digital assets. Its platform supports wallet screening, transaction monitoring, risk intelligence, and investigations, enabling crypto platforms, financial institutions, and payment providers to manage onchain risk and meet compliance requirements at scale.

DA Davidson Raises Micron’s Price Target to $2,000, Retains Buy Rating

U.S. investment bank DA Davidson released a research note stating that Micron Technology has entered a new phase with one of the best performance visibility in the semiconductor industry, a stark contrast to its past standing in the sector. Driven by another quarter of results that handily exceeded expectations and positive forward guidance, Micron’s stock price surged sharply. These signals indicate that the current memory chip boom cycle is far from over. While the company is ramping up capacity investments (with capital expenditure (CAPEX) projected to hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, which will bring additional supply), management expects the memory market to remain tight on supply and demand at least through 2027. Against this backdrop, DA Davidson reiterated its "Buy" rating on Micron and raised its price target from $1,500 to $2,000, equivalent to a 20x price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio based on the company’s 2026 calendar year expected earnings per share (EPS).

8 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley raises Micron's price target to $1,200, maintains 'Overweight' rating.

Morgan Stanley released a report raising Micron Technology (MU.O)’s price target from $1,050 to $1,200, while maintaining an "Overweight" rating. The investment bank lifted its fiscal 2027 earnings per share (EPS) forecast for the chipmaker by roughly 40% to $168, and upgraded its free cash flow (FCF) projection from $104 billion to $140 billion. Aligning with Micron’s management, the bank holds that AI will push DRAM demand to consistently outpace supply significantly after 2027. Micron’s last fiscal quarter results matched this trend, with both its quarterly performance and outlook showing notable upside potential.

8 minutes ago

US officials: Israel has withdrawn troops from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

A U.S. State Department official said Israel has withdrawn from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon, describing the move as a "goodwill gesture" toward the Lebanese government.

8 minutes ago

CBRS trades below IPO price post-earnings: Erases all gains six weeks after listing, two smart money firms net $5.8 million from first-day IPO shorts.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, Cerebras (CBRS), the AI chip firm previously dubbed "Nvidia’s strongest challenger", saw its stock price fall in stages after reporting its first quarterly results since going public, as negative guidance overshadowed better-than-expected performance. The stock has dropped roughly 22% since the earnings release and officially broke below its IPO price today. On-chain whales are overall bearish. CBRS trades at $184 on the Hyperliquid platform, down 7.7% in 24 hours. Large-scale short positions (million-dollar level) total around $11.62 million, 2.39 times the long positions ($4.87 million). Two major short positions were placed precisely at high levels as early as the IPO day or even before the IPO: - Whale 0xe0ff: Shorted at $284.51 on May 14 with a 3x leveraged position of $6.13 million, generating an unrealized profit of $3.24 million (+104%); - Whale 0x9996: Shorted at $275.92 on May 11 with a 5x leveraged position of $5.48 million, generating an unrealized profit of $2.64 million (+162%). It is learned that both addresses currently hold short positions in both CBRS and SPCX, and have recorded substantial unrealized profits, preferring to place short positions at high levels before or on the day of major stock listings. With the realization of negative earnings news in this round, the combined unrealized profit of the two positions is around $5.88 million. Currently, the average entry price of CBRS short whales is around $275, and the current price is over 30% lower than that. The nearest short liquidation line is at $200.13, about 7% away from the current price.

8 minutes ago

Multiple high-performing domestic public mutual fund products have tightened their purchase restrictions.

E Fund Management announced in its latest filing that the E Fund Information Industry Select Fund, managed by Zheng Xi, has cut its purchase limit to 10,000 yuan. The same purchase limit reduction to 10,000 yuan applies to another fund under his management, E Fund Information Industry Fund, while E Fund Global Growth Select Hybrid Fund (QDII) has lowered its purchase limit to 10 yuan. In addition, Guolianan Preferred Industry Fund, Harvest Tech Innovation Fund, and Principal Performance-Driven Fund have also announced purchase limits or adjustments to their limits recently. Jin Zicai, a fund manager closely watched by the market, imposed additional purchase limits on multiple public offering funds under his management, with the four funds involved cutting their purchase limits to 500 yuan starting June 23. Purchase limits on high-performing funds likely stem from multiple considerations: they can avoid return dilution caused by short-term concentrated subscriptions, and proactive limits during overheated market conditions also send risk warning signals to the market. As the first half of the year draws to a close, such moves have become increasingly frequent. Overall, Wind data shows that since June alone, 19 funds with year-to-date net asset value returns exceeding 90% have suspended large subscriptions or adjusted their purchase caps. (Source: Cailian Press)

8 minutes ago

The US stock market's optical communication sector rises across the board in pre-market trading, with Corning up 9.28%.

According to Bitget market data, the U.S. stock market's optical communication sector saw broad pre-market gains, with MRVL rising 4.99%, LITE up 3.24%, Nokia up 3.11%, Corning up 9.28%, and AXTI up 6.69%.

8 minutes ago

Analyst: Micron's earnings boost overall market sentiment for the tech sector

Chris Strazzeri, Financial Trading Manager of Moomoo’s Australia and New Zealand branch, stated: “The targeted sell-off indicates that following a sustained, strong rally in AI-related and speculative growth stocks, investors are enforcing strict valuation discipline. This serves as a warning to the market that actual earnings levels must now rise to support the currently overvalued price-to-earnings ratio. Micron Technology’s post-market earnings results largely confirm this, and its robust performance has lifted overall market sentiment in the tech sector.”

4 minutes ago

2x Leveraged Long DRAM ETF (RAM) Records $383 Million in Trading Volume on Its First Day of Listing

According to Bitget market data, the Roundhill T-REX 2X Long DRAM Daily Target ETF (Nasdaq ticker: RAM) officially launched trading yesterday. On its first trading day, the fund recorded a total turnover of $383 million, and rose 29.47% in after-hours U.S. stock trading to hit $30.8. Note: RAM’s underlying exposure covers companies engaged in memory-related technologies, including DRAM, NAND and storage solutions, targeting active traders seeking leveraged exposure to the memory chip theme and artificial intelligence infrastructure development.

4 minutes ago

BCA Research raises its S&P 500 target to 8,100 points, with AI remaining a core variable.

BCA Research has become the latest strategy firm to raise its US stock market target, reflecting Wall Street’s growing optimism about earnings support for US equities in the second half of the year. The institution lifted its year-end S&P 500 target from 7,700 points to 8,100 points. BCA’s core view is that first-quarter corporate earnings exceeded expectations in both strength and breadth, and the US economy has re-entered an expansion phase. Similar to JPMorgan Chase, BCA believes this stock rally is not only driven by valuation expansion—earnings themselves are delivering the index’s gains. AI remains the core variable in this assessment. Large tech firms including Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Oracle continue to increase capital spending on data centers and AI infrastructure, driving growth in orders for chips, servers, construction, power and related industrial chains. This provides a clearer fundamental basis for upward revisions to 2026 and 2027 earnings. The institution points out that risks exist: the earnings expansion brought by AI investments has already been quickly priced into the market. If subsequent returns on capital spending are questioned, or interest rates remain elevated, further upside for the index will require more earnings confirmation rather than relying solely on investor risk appetite.

4 minutes ago

Tom Lee: Markets have nearly priced in two interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve this year, and the rise in US Treasury yields is weighing on market sentiment.

Tom Lee said the market is still digesting Kevin Warsh’s remarks from his first press conference last week and repricing the macro environment. Over the past week, oil prices have pulled back, with war premiums contracting. Current oil prices are not far from the roughly $65 level seen before the conflict, indicating the market views related war risks as declining. On the other hand, 10-year U.S. Treasury yields continue to rise, now around 4.5%, higher than the pre-conflict level of roughly 4.2%. The main headwind the market has faced recently has shifted from oil prices to yields. Tom Lee noted that the market is not only focused on 10-year U.S. Treasury yields but also starting to price in potential additional interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. According to federal funds futures, the market is currently pricing in nearly two rate hikes this year. Bank of America further projected today that the Fed will raise rates three times this year, in September, October, and December respectively. Jeffrey Gundlach often emphasizes the importance of monitoring 2-year U.S. Treasury yields, as they typically lead the Fed and signal the central bank’s policy direction. Between 2023 and 2025, the relationship between 2-year U.S. Treasury yields and the federal funds rate indicated that the Fed’s policy was overly tight, requiring interest rate cuts. However, this relationship has recently reversed, meaning the Fed would need two rate hikes to catch up with 2-year U.S. Treasury yields. He believes that, at least for now, yields have become a headwind for the market.

4 minutes ago

Japan and South Korea's stock markets closed higher across the board, with Japan's stock market hitting a new closing high.

According to Bitget market data, the Nikkei 225 index closed up 3,191.37 points, or 4.61%, at 72,366.34 points on Thursday, June 25, hitting a new all-time closing high. South Korea’s KOSPI index rose 459.76 points (5.43%) to end at 8,930.78 points; SK Hynix surged 13% while Samsung Electronics gained more than 5%.

4 minutes ago

A newly created wallet withdrew 17,675 ETH from Binance, valued at $28.58 million.

According to monitoring by Onchain Lens, a newly created wallet withdrew 17,675 ETH from Binance, valued at $28.58 million.

4 minutes ago

FEDERAL REGISTER: Self-Regulatory Organizations; LCH SA; Notice of an Application for an Exemption Pursuant to Section 36 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Relating to Rule Filing Requirements and Request for Comment