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At the end of this month, the American corporation DTCC opens commercial access to its Tokenization Service. The post-trade giant will allow major players to create "digital twins" for traditional securities. The project covers a colossal pool of assets worth $30 trillion, a quarter of all funds under the control of the DTC central securities depository.
However, Stellar is not yet being let into this market: under the approved plan, the first wave of liquidity will go to private bank networks, so the public blockchain will have to wait its turn until next year.
DTCC detailed its Tokenization Service, opening $30 trillion in DTC-held assets and confirming Stellar as a 2027 launch partner.
Canton and Besu run live now with 25 securities; Stellar joins via SEP-41 tokens next year.
@StellarOrg https://t.co/zWm80Y13XU
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— MSB Intel (@MSBIntel) October 18, 2026
The launch was preceded by a closed pilot in July, in which more than 30 Wall Street financial institutions took part. According to the DTCC report published on October 16, the project's framework will be strict at first. The system will start with just 25 liquid instruments: U.S. Treasuries, major ETFs, and large-cap stocks from the Russell 1000 index.
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For investors, nothing changes fundamentally: the digital tokens are pegged 1:1 to the underlying securities and retain their CUSIP codes and all legal rights. DTC remains the final owner of the official registry, guaranteeing the usual protection.
How it will work (and why without public networks)Because large capital is not ready to take risks on open ledgers, DTCC has chosen an isolated architecture. From the end of October, operations will launch on only two closed platforms: the Canton Network (CIP-56 standard) and the corporation's own private environment based on Hyperledger Besu (ERC-20).
Converting traditional securities into tokens via the UI or API will take no more than 15 minutes, but this can only be done during East Coast business hours (from 2:00 to 18:00 ET). Inside the system, however, institutional players will be able to move digitized trillions around the clock, directly between their wallets.
For the Stellar Development Foundation, this release confirms the status quo. Integration with public networks was originally planned for the first half of 2027, and nobody has changed that schedule. Stellar will join the platform together with Circle's Arc solution, using its SEP-41 standard to transfer assets.
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By that time, DTCC promises to expand the list of available securities, add support for corporate actions, and launch on-chain collateral settlements via digital cash.
This DTCC move is the most large-scale attempt to connect real trillions with distributed ledger technology. But while the private Canton and Besu networks are the first to skim the cream off the commercial RWA tokenization market, Stellar remains on the waiting list until the beginning of next year.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a leading US post-trade financial services company, will launch commercial access to its Tokenization Service at the end of this month. This initiative enables major financial institutions to create digital representations, or “digital twins,” of traditional securities across a vast $30 trillion asset pool. This figure represents approximately one quarter of all assets currently managed by the DTCC’s central securities depository.
Limited access and first phase rolloutDTCC will restrict the initial phase of the service to selected major private bank networks, excluding public blockchains from participation until at least 2025. The first wave of tokenized liquidity is expected to circulate solely among participating banks and their clients on private blockchains. The Stellar public blockchain network, managed by the Stellar Development Foundation, will not be integrated until next year under the current schedule.
The project follows a closed pilot conducted in July, where more than 30 prominent Wall Street institutions tested the framework. According to a DTCC report issued on October 16, the system’s rollout will start conservatively with only 25 liquid securities. These include US Treasuries, a selection of major exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and large-cap stocks from the Russell 1000 index.
For now, the service is limited to US Treasuries, key ETFs, and top large-cap stocks, with future expansion tied to upcoming network integrations and regulatory readiness.
How the system functionsThe new digital tokens issued through DTCC’s platform maintain a 1:1 linkage with their corresponding underlying securities. Each token retains its CUSIP code and legal rights, while DTCC continues to serve as the central registry holder, providing legal certainty to investors and upholding existing protection mechanisms. From an investor’s perspective, the transition will not alter their rights or the nature of their holdings.
DTCC’s decision to utilize private ledgers comes in response to institutional concerns about risk on public networks. The firm has opted for a closed architecture that relies on only two platforms at launch. These are the Canton Network, using the CIP-56 standard, and DTCC’s own private environment based on Hyperledger Besu, supporting the ERC-20 standard.
Mini dictionary: Hyperledger Besu is an open-source Ethereum client developed under the Hyperledger umbrella, enabling enterprises to set up private or consortium blockchain networks using Ethereum-compatible technology.
Participants can convert traditional securities into tokens via a user interface or API in 15 minutes or less, though tokenization requests are limited to East Coast business hours, from 2:00 to 18:00 ET. Once created, these tokenized assets can be transferred between institutional wallets at any time, regardless of public trading windows.
Next steps and future integrationStellar’s public network remains in the queue for integration. The original plan set the first half of 2027 as the launch window for public blockchain connectivity, with no change to this timeline. DTCC intends to welcome the Stellar Development Foundation and Circle’s Arc solution simultaneously, leveraging Stellar’s SEP-41 standard for asset transfers in future phases.
By the time public network access is enabled, DTCC has pledged to expand the types of securities available on the platform, introduce support for activities such as corporate actions, and facilitate on-chain settlements of collateral using digital cash.
This tokenization initiative is regarded as one of the most significant efforts to link traditional financial assets, at the trillion-dollar scale, with distributed ledger technologies. However, for now, only authorized participants using private networks will have access, while public blockchains and their users, including Stellar, are expected to wait until at least next year before participating.
Circle, the issuer of USDC, reported about $1.4 billion in H1 2026 revenue. Around 59% went to distribution partners and transaction costs, leaving a net margin of about 7%.
Circle, the issuer of the $USDC stablecoin, generated about $1.4 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026. Most of that went to partners and costs, leaving a thin but positive profit margin.
, according to the company's own blog post.
Where the rest of the money went, wrote Chief Commercial Officer Kash Razzaghi. On roughly $1.4 billion of revenue, that implies a profit of around $98 million, though Circle's post expresses the figure as a margin rather than a dollar amount.
The disclosure comes as competition in the stablecoin market grows.
USDC usage and the Coinbase linkCircle also pointed to the scale of the network behind those costs.
Coinbase is the largest partner. Market data providers have also reported that , although that figure comes from secondary coverage rather than Circle's blog post.
The split matters because Circle's revenue is mostly interest earned on the reserves backing USDC. In its second-quarter results, A 7% net margin is modest for a company of this size, but it remains profitable while Circle spends heavily on compliance and product development.
Sources
Circle: The Economics of USDC and Why Our Partners Win
Unchained: Circle says 59 cents of each revenue dollar went to USDC partners and transaction costs
Nasdaq/Business Wire: Circle Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results
Running a compliant stablecoin turns out to be an expensive business. Circle, the issuer of USDC, disclosed that for the first half of 2026 it retained just 7 cents of net profit for every dollar in revenue, a figure the company is presenting not as an apology but as a feature.
The disclosure came via a blog post from Chief Commercial Officer Kash Razzaghi, published October 16, 2026, and it reads as a direct counter-punch to a new wave of stablecoin competitors promising to hand partners a much bigger slice of the economics.
Where the money actually goes Circle reported approximately $1.4 billion in revenue and reserve income for H1 2026. Of that, $819 million, roughly 59 cents per dollar, went to distribution partners and transaction costs.
Another $473 million, or 34 cents per dollar, was reinvested into operations: licensing, banking relationships, compliance infrastructure, and product development.
Razzaghi framed the breakdown as evidence of a sustainable model rather than a stingy one. Circle’s pitch is that rivals distributing a higher percentage of revenue to partners are doing so by skimping on the underlying infrastructure that keeps a stablecoin trustworthy, and eventually redeemable.
The company backs its argument with a regulatory footprint that includes more than 55 licenses and partnerships with over 25 banks. It also counts more than 150 partners sharing in USDC’s economics, with Coinbase holding the largest single share of that revenue distribution.
The transaction volume case USDC processed more than $36 trillion in on-chain transaction volume during H1 2026.
USDC’s share of global stablecoin transaction volume reached 77% in June 2026, up from 60% the prior year.
What the competition is offering The most direct competitive pressure cited in the disclosure is Open USD, launched in June 2026. Its pitch centers on free minting and redemption and a model that passes reserve income directly to participants rather than absorbing it into operational costs.
What this means for the broader stablecoin market Circle’s disclosure does two things simultaneously. It defends the current model to existing partners, particularly Coinbase, which takes the largest distribution share and has a direct financial interest in how USDC’s economics evolve. It also sets up a competitive frame: compliant infrastructure versus higher short-term partner payouts.
Whether the 7-cent margin holds as competition intensifies is the actual question for Circle’s business. A company retaining that little per dollar has limited buffer to absorb pricing pressure. With $36 trillion in H1 transaction volume already behind it, Circle is betting scale can do the work that margin cannot.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stablecoin market growth has slowed when U.S. banks raised deposit interest rates, with new research finding that a one-basis-point increase in deposit rates was associated with roughly three percentage points less stablecoin market capitalization growth over ten weeks.
Summary
BIS researchers found higher deposit rates were associated with slower stablecoin growth over ten weeks.
A one-basis-point deposit rate rise corresponded to roughly three percentage points less stablecoin market growth.
Researchers estimated USDC growth slowed by 4.8 percentage points, versus 1.9 percentage points for USDT.
An instrumental-variable model estimated a larger nine-percentage-point slowdown following a one-basis-point increase in deposit rates.
Similar substitution patterns appeared in certificates of deposit and decentralized finance lending scenarios, researchers found.
In an October 13 working paper titled Are Stablecoins and Bank Deposits Substitutes?, economists Rashad Ahmed and Iñaki Aldasoro examined weekly U.S. data from January 2019 to June 2025. Their findings suggest that consumers and investors respond to the returns offered by traditional bank accounts when deciding how much money to hold in stablecoins.
The study found a stronger relationship for Circle’s USDC than for Tether’s USDT. It identified similar behavior across bank certificates of deposit and stablecoins supplied to decentralized lending platforms.
The researchers cautioned that their findings do not establish that stablecoin adoption has reduced total bank deposits or lending across the U.S. banking system.
Higher bank deposit rates linked to slower stablecoin growth
The working paper examines whether stablecoins compete with traditional bank deposits for funds, particularly when banks offer customers better interest rates.
Both products can serve as relatively stable stores of value and support payments. Their financial returns differ because conventional bank deposits can pay interest, while major payment stablecoins generally do not pay interest directly to holders.
Using weekly observations, the researchers compared changes in U.S. deposit rates with subsequent changes in the market capitalization of reserve-backed stablecoins.
Their baseline statistical model found that a one-basis-point rise in deposit rates was associated with approximately 2.8 percentage points less cumulative stablecoin growth over the following ten weeks.
A basis point equals 0.01 percentage point. The estimated relationship therefore concerns a relatively small change in bank deposit yields.
For context, average stablecoin market capitalization growth over a ten-week period was approximately 15% in the study’s sample.
JUST IN: BIS study finds a small bank deposit rate hike can slow stablecoin growth
A 0.01 percentage-point increase in U.S. deposit rates was linked to roughly a 3-point drop in stablecoin market-cap growth over 10 weeks, with a stronger effect on $USDC than $USDT, while major… pic.twitter.com/M8Uwu0I3MA
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) October 17, 2026
Applying the rounded baseline estimate would reduce that growth rate to roughly 12%. The calculation describes a slowdown in growth, not necessarily a decline in the total market capitalization of stablecoins.
The authors controlled for the federal funds rate, U.S. Treasury yields, dollar movements, Bitcoin prices and stock market volatility when estimating the relationship.
They used those variables to separate changes in the return on bank deposits from other economic and cryptocurrency market conditions that might influence stablecoin demand.
The paper identifies the relationship as evidence that stablecoins and bank deposits are partial substitutes, meaning their users may change their holdings when the relative financial benefits change.
BIS researchers estimate a stronger effect using another model
To examine whether the baseline results understated the relationship, the researchers used a second statistical approach known as instrumental variables.
Their analysis draws on how banks adjust customer deposit rates when the federal funds rate rises.
According to the paper, banks tend to respond more slowly to monetary policy changes when interest rates are relatively low. Once the federal funds rate moves above approximately 3%, deposit rates become more sensitive to further policy changes.
The researchers used this difference in bank pricing behavior to estimate the effect of higher deposit rates on stablecoin demand.
Their instrumental-variable model produced an estimated 9.1-percentage-point reduction in cumulative stablecoin market capitalization growth over ten weeks for a one-basis-point deposit rate change.
The result was roughly three times the baseline estimate of 2.8 percentage points.
However, the larger figure comes from a different statistical method that focuses on rate changes during higher-interest-rate conditions. It does not mean every one-basis-point deposit rate rise will reduce stablecoin growth by 9.1 percentage points in every market environment.
The authors conducted additional checks involving cryptocurrency trading volumes and major crypto market disruptions, including the collapse of TerraUSD, the failure of FTX and the phaseout of Binance’s BUSD.
After accounting for those episodes, the estimated relationship remained negative.
A separate test examined cryptocurrencies outside the stablecoin sector. The researchers found that their instrumental-variable approach did not predict comparable changes in the market capitalization of non-stablecoin cryptoassets.
The paper used this result to test whether the estimated relationship was driven by movements affecting the cryptocurrency market generally.
USDC reacts more strongly to bank rates than USDT
The research identifies a clear difference between the two largest dollar-backed stablecoins.
Over the ten-week period, the baseline estimates associated a one-basis-point deposit rate rise with a 4.8-percentage-point reduction in USDC’s cumulative market capitalization growth.
For USDT, the corresponding estimate was 1.9 percentage points. The estimated response for USDC was therefore approximately 2.5 times the size of the response recorded for USDT.
According to the authors, USDC’s stronger sensitivity is consistent with its closer connections to U.S. institutional users and domestic financial markets.
USDT serves a larger international market, including users outside the United States whose financial decisions may depend on local banking arrangements and access to dollar assets.
The paper does not determine exactly how individual users moved funds between bank accounts and stablecoins. Its findings come from statistical relationships between deposit rates and changes in stablecoin market capitalization.
The researchers examined whether their results remained consistent when replacing ordinary deposit rates with rates offered on certificates of deposit, commonly known as CDs.
Their estimates continued to show a negative relationship between bank deposit returns and stablecoin growth.
The study found similar behavior among stablecoins supplied to decentralized finance lending protocols, even after accounting for the yields available through those platforms.
The authors interpreted the findings as further evidence that bank deposit pricing influences demand for stablecoins across different uses.
Stablecoin findings enter debate over U.S. banking rules
The research arrives while U.S. banks and crypto companies continue debating how regulated stablecoins should operate alongside traditional deposits.
In May, crypto.news reported that banking groups challenged stablecoin rules proposed under the GENIUS Act, raising concerns about the possible movement of customer funds away from banks.
The American Bankers Association and Bank Policy Institute requested changes to the timing of federal consultations, arguing that rules from different banking regulators needed to be considered together.
Banking representatives have questioned whether stablecoin rewards offered through exchanges and other intermediaries could encourage customers to move funds out of insured deposit accounts.
In January, U.S. community banking representatives warned about stablecoin rewards, arguing that indirect yield arrangements could compete with deposit products.
The research examines a related question from the opposite direction: whether banks paying customers more interest can influence stablecoin holdings.
Banks have been exploring their own blockchain-based products while regulators develop stablecoin requirements.
In June, Custodia Bank and Vantage Bank tested a dual-purpose token designed to operate as a bank deposit within a banking network and as a stablecoin outside it.
The project was intended to allow participating banks to offer blockchain transfers while retaining a connection to their existing deposit infrastructure.
Separately, Katana CEO Matthew Fisher said in September that stablecoin holders could earn returns through independent decentralized lending protocols, although those arrangements would expose participants to risks beyond conventional bank deposit products.
The BIS paper does not assess how the GENIUS Act has affected stablecoin demand. Its underlying dataset ends in June 2025, before the October 2026 publication.
Ahmed and Aldasoro wrote that their findings concern a period covering one major cycle of elevated U.S. interest rates. They acknowledged that the relatively short history of the stablecoin sector limits what their data can establish about long-term banking behavior.
The working paper presents the views of its authors, not an official policy position of the BIS or its member central banks.
In brief
A new BIS working paper using U.S. data from 2019 to 2025 found that higher bank deposit rates predict slower stablecoin market growth.
The effect was stronger for Circle’s USDC than for Tether’s USDT, which the authors tied to USDC’s closer links to U.S. users.
The authors said regulators should weigh whether issuers can pay yield. The paper reflects their views, not necessarily the BIS’s.
Banks worried about losing customers to stablecoins may already have a counterweight: the interest rate on a savings account.
That’s the takeaway from a new working paper published by the Bank for International Settlements, the Basel-based bank for central banks. Using weekly U.S. data from January 2019 through June 2025, BIS economist Iñaki Aldasoro and Rashad Ahmed of the Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics found that stablecoin growth slows when banks raise deposit rates.
Myriad: What will the Fed do next? Click to make your prediction.Stablecoin market capitalization grew by about 15% over a typical 10-week span in the sample used by the researchers. A one-basis-point bump in deposit rates, a sizable weekly move for slow-moving savings rates, cut that to roughly 12% under the authors’ baseline estimate. Under a second method designed to isolate cause and effect, it fell to about 6%. Stablecoins kept growing, just more slowly.
To separate cause from coincidence, the authors relied on a quirk in bank behavior. Lenders barely raise savings rates until the federal funds rate passes about 3%, and then they reprice much faster.
The link was stronger for Circle’s USDC than for Tether’s USDT, which the authors attribute to USDC’s closer ties to U.S. users. The paper concludes that banks “retain some influence over the pace of that adoption through deposit pricing.”
The findings come with caveats. Working papers reflect the authors’ views, not necessarily the BIS’s, and the sample spans a single high-rate cycle in which stablecoins paid holders no interest.
The authors said regulators should weigh whether stablecoin issuers may pay holders yield, along with the trade-offs of requiring issuers to keep part of their reserves in bank deposits.
That debate is live in Washington. Banks have lobbied to keep stablecoin yield off the table, a fight that loomed over the Clarity Act’s failed Senate vote. Meanwhile, the OCC, FDIC, and Treasury are writing rules to implement the GENIUS Act, which takes effect in January. The GENIUS Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in July of last year, essentially legalized stablecoins in the United States and set rules of the road for their issuance, use, and custody.
The BIS has long scrutinized stablecoins and the cryptocurrency space more broadly. In 2021, it argued the rise of blockchain-based digital dollars made central bank digital currencies more urgent, and a 2023 BIS survey warned they could threaten financial stability if widely adopted.
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Galaxy Research analyzes why Bitcoin weakened in October, pointing to weak corporate treasury buying and ETF outflows as the primary causes.
Galaxy Research Head of Research Alex Thorn points out that Bitcoin’s weakness in October is tied to weak growth in corporate Bitcoin reserves and net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs. Using the “institutional absorption vs. long-term holder address distribution” metric for analysis, the calculation is: spot ETF net inflows plus net additions to corporate reserves, minus the amount of Bitcoin that has been dormant on-chain for over five years and reactivated. Data shows that as of October 18, the year-to-date net value of this metric stood at roughly negative 127,300 BTC, meaning the distribution of old coins from long-term holding addresses has overall outpaced institutional uptake. The analyst also noted that the year-to-date net inflow of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs returned to positive territory in September and has barely held steady since, currently at around $355 million, with a small net outflow recorded so far in October.
29 minutes ago
Qubic discloses security incident: Approximately $1.3 million in QU tokens stolen, affecting 1,404 Qubic wallets.
Qubic announced that between 23:42 UTC yesterday and 01:26 UTC today, attackers exploited insufficient randomness in the seed of some wallets to access and siphon approximately 2.94 trillion QU tokens from 1,404 Qubic wallets. The root cause lies in the seed generation mechanism, not the Qubic protocol itself. Affected seeds include those created in any iPhone or iPad browser before October 18, 2026, those created in Mac Safari on the same date, and those generated via the Qubic iOS App before July 2025. The network has been halted at tick 85,371,949. 87.1% of the stolen funds remain in the Qubic network and are frozen, while the remaining 12.9% has been transferred to MEXC, with the associated receiving accounts also frozen. Qubic said the seed generation issue has been fixed in version 4.26.4. Subsequent actions will be decided by the Computor quorum per network rules, and a full technical report will be published after a fund recovery plan is finalized.
29 minutes ago
Viewpoint: Bitcoin has completed bottom hunting to liquidate long positions, may shift to a short squeeze next week, and maintains a bullish stance above $79,800.
Renowned trader Killa reviewed Bitcoin’s weekly chart trends, noting that last week, BTC fell from $87,000 to the $80,000 range before bouncing back 50%. After the current weekly chart opened, the token rallied on Monday but faced persistent resistance, eventually retesting the prior week’s low around $80,000. Currently, longs are the main targets of market liquidations, so there’s a high chance the trend will shift to targeting shorts next week. For short-term trades, closely watch for a retest of this week’s low at $79,800; if that occurs, look for long entry opportunities.
Killa laid out a clear observation framework: If BTC does not retest the lows, focus on the $83,600 level. If the price fails to break above this level, the market will remain in a range-bound capitulation phase; if it breaks through successfully, the rally will push higher. He expects next week’s weekly chart open will move upward, forcing late shorts who entered short positions against the recent rally to cover their positions. In the worst-case scenario for bulls, BTC could dip to the $76,000–$78,000 range. The analyst also explicitly ruled out the extreme scenario of a retest of $74,000.
29 minutes ago
US and South Korean stock market price preview for Monday: SK Hynix and Samsung are expected to open nearly 5% lower, while US stocks are set to open nearly flat in pre-market trading.
During the weekend when traditional markets are closed, Trade.xyz — dubbed the "On-Chain Nasdaq" — leverages perpetual contracts to enable continuous trading and real-time price discovery that traditional finance cannot achieve, pricing in advance the upcoming Monday’s U.S. and South Korean stock market trends.
Most popular U.S. stock assets on Trade.xyz saw minor declines from their Friday after-hours levels, with an overall flat-to-slightly-weak opening expected on Monday. Their weekend performance is as follows: SpaceX is currently priced at $144.66, down from $145.47 in U.S. Friday after-hours trading; Micron (MU) is at $869.99, versus $875.98 in Friday after-hours; SanDisk (SNDK) is at $1,275.4, compared to $1,292.43 in Friday after-hours; NVIDIA is at $213.57, versus $213.75 in Friday after-hours; Marvell Technology (MRVL) is at $225.84, versus $226.9 in Friday after-hours; Intel is at $88.89, versus $89.33 in Friday after-hours; Google is at $339.68, versus $339.22 in Friday after-hours; AMD is at $527.09, matching its Friday after-hours level.
Popular South Korean stocks on Trade.xyz have dropped notably from their Friday closing prices, with an expected opening decline of 4%–5% on Monday. Their weekend performance is as follows: Samsung Electronics is currently priced at $155.81, down from $161.75 at Friday’s close; SK Hynix is at $907.95, versus $954.75 at Friday’s close.
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Bitcoin Jesus renounced his U.S. citizenship to evade taxes, only to be ordered to pay nearly $50 million in expatriation tax a decade later.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a deferred prosecution agreement with Roger Ver, known as "Bitcoin Jesus", under which fraud and tax evasion charges against him will be dropped in exchange for a maximum fine of $49.9 million. As one of the earliest Bitcoin evangelists, Ver purchased large amounts of Bitcoin in 2011 for less than $3 million. In February 2014, to avoid high tax burdens, he obtained citizenship of the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and renounced his U.S. citizenship the following month. At that time, he and his companies held at least 131,000 Bitcoin, worth over $70 million at the then-current price. He thought changing his nationality would let him escape the U.S.'s high taxes, but the U.S.'s strict "expatriation tax" foiled his plan. Under U.S. tax law, eligible expatriates must treat their global assets as if sold on the day before expatriation and pay capital gains tax. Ver reported $1.03 million in taxes, but not only failed to disclose his personal Bitcoin holdings, he also severely undervalued his company assets. A decade later, the IRS uncovered his fraudulent tax evasion (fraud and tax evasion are not subject to statute of limitations), ultimately forcing him to pay up to $49.9 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest—48 times the amount he had self-reported paying that year.
29 minutes ago
Justin Sun resumes trading PEPE after a two-year hiatus, receiving $28.44 million worth of the token from Poloniex's multi-signature address.
On-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) has monitored that Justin Sun is trading PEPE again after a two-year hiatus. 22 hours ago, Sun’s address 0x176…0a132 received 7.2 trillion PEPE tokens from Poloniex’s multi-sig address, valued at $28.44 million. This marks his first on-chain PEPE transaction since June 2024, when the token was priced at $0.00001256.
On-chain investigators have identified additional suspected stolen cryptocurrency moving into Zcash (ZEC), with funds reportedly linked to three separate security incidents involving Bitget, Cryptobills Ledger and Triple-A.
Summary
On-chain investigator Specter linked alleged stolen funds from three security incidents to Zcash transactions recently. ZachXBT traced approximately 2,700 ZEC into Zcash’s Ironwood shielded pool following the September Bitget breach. Bitget confirmed approximately $387.5 million reached attacker-controlled addresses during its September 24 security incident investigation. Specter identified Cryptobills Ledger and Triple-A funds entering Zcash without publishing complete transaction-level evidence publicly. Zcash activated Ironwood in July 2026, creating a new shielded pool after an Orchard vulnerability. In an October 17 post on X, blockchain analyst Specter reported that funds associated with the Cryptobills Ledger incident and the $12 million Triple-A exploit had entered Zcash, following earlier findings by investigator ZachXBT concerning assets stolen from Bitget.
The latest allegations concern the movement of stolen cryptocurrency into a privacy-focused network that allows users to conceal certain transaction details. However, Specter did not publicly provide a complete transaction trail or establish how much money from the two additional incidents had entered ZEC.
The report follows Bitget’s September security breach, which the exchange valued at approximately $387.5 million after reviewing transactions across several blockchains. Bitget’s confirmed loss figure covers the entire incident and does not represent the amount reportedly moved into Zcash.
Zcash attracts funds linked to three crypto security incidents Specter’s findings identified activity involving funds allegedly connected to Bitget, Cryptobills Ledger and Triple-A. The analyst described multiple suspected attackers transferring cryptocurrency into ZEC after ZachXBT disclosed the use of Zcash’s privacy features in the Bitget case.
The October 17 account identified the Cryptobills Ledger security incident as one source of the suspected transfers. It separately mentioned funds from the Triple-A exploit, which reportedly involved $12 million in stolen cryptocurrency.
Neither the value of the Cryptobills Ledger transfers nor the amount attributed to Triple-A was established in the information made public. The investigation did not disclose whether the suspected actors used the same wallet addresses or coordinated their movements.
According to Specter’s account, the activity involved several threat actors. The researcher did not claim that one attacker was responsible for all three incidents.
Zcash supports transactions that can hide information about senders, recipients and transferred amounts. Its privacy technology can prevent outside observers from seeing transaction details once assets enter a shielded pool.
However, the researcher’s allegations do not establish that every reported transfer was successfully concealed or that the funds have reached their final destination.
Investigators can identify certain deposits into shielded pools, but the available public record does not necessarily reveal where the funds move afterward.
ZachXBT traces Bitget theft proceeds into Ironwood The investigation builds on findings shared by ZachXBT on September 30 concerning cryptocurrency stolen from Bitget.
According to the investigator, wallets allegedly associated with the attackers transferred approximately 2,700 ZEC into Zcash’s Ironwood shielded pool. He valued the transfers at roughly $3.8 million at the time.
His findings followed the September 24 theft involving Bitget’s hot-wallet infrastructure. ZachXBT separately identified approximately 18,900 ZEC, worth $28.3 million at the reported valuation, among the assets associated with the incident.
The investigator provided transaction references connected to deposits into the shielded pool. Those references support tracing funds up to the identified deposit transactions but do not establish their destinations after shielding.
Ironwood is a newer Zcash shielded pool introduced through the network’s July 28, 2026, upgrade. It uses technology derived from the earlier Orchard system while maintaining separate accounting for transactions and balances.
The Zcash Ironwood network upgrade followed the discovery of a vulnerability in Orchard that could have allowed counterfeit coins to circulate without detection.
Developers introduced safeguards restricting transfers from the older pool and created a replacement pool with updated cryptographic protections. The upgrade was designed to make Zcash’s circulating supply independently verifiable.
Ironwood was not introduced as an anti-money-laundering mechanism. Its main purpose was to address the Orchard security issue while retaining shielded transaction functionality.
The protocol’s privacy features remain available to legitimate users and can be used by malicious actors. The October 17 allegations concern suspected use of those features by attackers, not a new vulnerability in the Ironwood protocol.
Bitget confirms $387.5 million stolen in September breach Bitget’s September 24 security incident involved unauthorized transfers from portions of its hot and warm wallet infrastructure.
The exchange initially estimated the affected assets at $351.6 million. Its September 25 security update raised the figure to approximately $387.5 million following additional blockchain tracing and transaction classification.
Bitget explained that the revised estimate incorporated affected assets on Zcash and TRON that were not included in the original calculation. The $35.9 million difference resulted from a more complete accounting of the incident, not another confirmed wave of theft.
The exchange identified affected assets across Ethereum-compatible networks, XRP Ledger, Zcash and TRON. Its list included XRP, ETH, USDT, ZEC, USDC, BNB, AVAX and several other tokens.
Independent investigations by SlowMist and Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant subsequently examined the attack. Bitget reported that both investigations identified compromised third-party security products that allowed unauthorized access to the exchange’s wallet environment.
As crypto.news previously reported, Bitget resumed Bitcoin withdrawals on September 28 after temporarily suspending withdrawal services while investigating the breach.
The exchange stated that attackers had not compromised its cold wallets or obtained private keys. It maintained that customer account balances remained unaffected and committed its User Protection Fund to covering the financial loss.
In a September 30 announcement, Bitget reported replenishing the protection fund to more than $300 million. Its September proof-of-reserves update separately showed a combined reserve ratio of 131% across 19 covered assets.
Investigators identify earlier attempts to conceal stolen funds The reported Zcash transfers are not the first attempts by attackers linked to the Bitget breach to move assets through services designed to complicate transaction tracing.
Following the September attack, blockchain analytics firm AMLBot tracked approximately four BTC linked to the incident entering a Wasabi CoinJoin transaction.
The Bitget hacker’s CoinJoin transfers reportedly followed a route involving TRON, USDT0, Ethereum, THORChain and Bitcoin.
CoinJoin combines transaction inputs and outputs from several participants, making it harder to determine which output belongs to an individual sender.
Separate blockchain tracking identified approximately 2,390 ETH converted into 75.2 BTC through 27 transactions on THORChain, worth around $6.3 million at the time.
Bitget had requested that THORChain restrict addresses linked to the theft. The network’s operators maintained that their emergency controls could suspend network activity but could not selectively block an individual user’s swap.
In the days after the breach, Bitget introduced a recovery bounty program offering rewards for eligible assistance in freezing and recovering stolen assets.
The program provides 5% of successfully frozen funds to qualifying contributors and a separate 5% for funds successfully recovered through eligible voluntary actions.
Bitget excluded actions carried out under court orders or law-enforcement instructions from bounty eligibility. It retained final responsibility for determining qualifying contributions and calculating payments.
Bitget recovery investigation remains active As investigators continue following the stolen assets, the exchange has made identified attacker addresses available to security firms, blockchain projects and other organizations involved in tracing.
Its September 25 announcement included addresses on Ethereum-compatible networks, XRP Ledger, Zcash and TRON, alongside a public recovery reporting system.
Bitget said the tracing dashboard would be updated as investigators identified additional wallets or movements associated with the incident. The exchange encouraged custodians, stablecoin issuers and trading platforms to report relevant discoveries.
The September breach accounted for the largest single incident in crypto’s $768 million hack month, according to October 1 findings from blockchain security firms PeckShield and CertiK.
PeckShield recorded $766.5 million across 55 major September incidents, while CertiK estimated $768.4 million across 97 incidents. Their totals used different reporting methods and counted gross affected amounts, including assets subsequently recovered.
For the newly reported Zcash transfers, Specter has not disclosed a complete accounting of the funds associated with Cryptobills Ledger or Triple-A. No confirmed recovery amount or final destination has been established for those specific transfers.
Starknet now offers programmable private money, the kind of confidential digital cash Zcash pioneered, through its new privacy features.
The effort runs on two tracks. One is STRK20, a token privacy framework that is live on Starknet, the Ethereum layer 2 network. The other is Ztarknet, a project still in development that would bring Starknet’s execution engine to Zcash as its own layer 2.
What STRK20 actually does STRK20 is a framework for token-level privacy. It applies to any ERC-20-like asset, the standard format for most tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Once a token uses STRK20, its balances and transfers can be confidential. The sender, the receiver, and the amount can all be hidden from public view.
The framework supports DeFi activity such as swaps, lending, and staking while keeping transaction details private.
Compliance is built in through two mechanisms: viewing keys and selective disclosure. A viewing key lets an authorized party, such as an auditor, see transaction details that remain hidden from everyone else. Selective disclosure allows a user to prove specific facts about their activity to a specific party without exposing everything to the entire network.
The research describes the result as enabling Zcash-like private assets directly on Starknet. The first major asset to use STRK20 is strkBTC, a shielded form of Bitcoin on the network.
The road from testnet to mainnet By November 2025, the Ztarknet testnet had launched with a live explorer. It demonstrated verification of Circle STARK proofs on a modified Zcash testnet.
Then came Starknet v0.14.2 in April 2026. The upgrade enabled native STARK proof verification through a proposal called SNIP-36, which laid the groundwork for STRK20.
STRK20 itself was activated by June 2026.
Ztarknet remains in development. Its design uses ZEC, Zcash’s native token, to pay settlement fees on the Zcash base layer. It relies on the Madara sequencer, which orders transactions, and the Stwo prover, which generates the STARK proofs. Ztarknet is designed to operate without changing Zcash’s existing shielded pools.
Why the Starknet and Zcash overlap matters Eli Ben-Sasson and Zooko Wilcox, two prominent figures in blockchain and privacy, are heavily involved in both efforts.
What this means for privacy in crypto STRK20’s viewing keys and selective disclosure are designed to address compliance concerns that have historically put pressure on privacy coins. The research suggests that as privacy rules tighten globally, platforms offering compliant private transactions are likely to draw institutional interest.
For DeFi, public blockchains broadcast every trade, which exposes users to front-running and makes large positions easy to track. Confidential swaps and lending could make onchain finance more workable for anyone who prefers not to show their hand.
The key milestones ahead sit with Ztarknet. Watch for progress from testnet toward production, how ZEC-based settlement performs in practice, and whether developers actually build on it.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Hackers are increasingly leveraging Zcash to launder stolen crypto. According to renowned Web3 security researcher Specter, stolen funds from the recent Ledger supply chain attack and $12M from a payment firm, Triple-A, have been moved to a Zcash shielded pool.
Threat actors are actively using ZEC to move stolen funds. Stay smart.
In late September, Zachary Wolk, another popular security researcher and investigator going by ZachXBT on X, flagged North Korea’s threat actors’ use of Zcash. Wolk found that out of the $28.3M ZEC from the Bitget exploit, the hackers moved about $4M into Ironwood’s shielded pool.
In fact, Wolk cast doubt on Zcash’s prior virtue signaling and slammed,
One of the arguments used by competing privacy projects was that threat actors do not use ZEC, thus XYZ is better.
Source: ZachXBT/Telegram Zcash has emerged as a top privacy alternative. Many Bitcoin OGs jumped on it, including serial investor Naval Ravikant, who called it ‘insurance against Bitcoin.’
But will Zcash suffer Monero’s fate amid increased use by criminals to launder stolen funds?
Will Zcash follow Monero’s fate? For the unfamiliar, Monero has privacy features by default, and the recipient’s true public wallet address is never revealed. For Zcash, privacy is optional, and one can opt in by shielding funds via Ironwood and other pools.
In other words, you can trace Zcash in some instances, but not when the funds hit shielded pools. For Monero, there is no traceability at all, and it became a haven for criminals to bypass freezing and seizures on centralized exchanges.
That’s why Monero was delisted from Binance and other platforms, and was even banned in the EU.
Currently, stablecoins can be seized and frozen, and Tether and Circle have been doing this for a while.
Similarly, coordinated industry efforts can easily freeze funds, whether it’s BTC or other crypto assets that land on centralized platforms. This is part of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance mandated by several jurisdictions.
That leaves decentralized crypto mixers and privacy platforms such as Thorchain, Tornado Cash, and Zcash, among others, as alternatives to launder stolen funds. These are the only ways hackers can bypass seizures and freezes.
Unlike centralized platforms, most privacy platforms do not have screening against sanctioned addresses. So, one can’t tell legit funds from stolen ones.
Source: ZecHub As of writing, ZEC shielded supply has increased by 16% from 4.3M ZEC to 4.96M ZEC since July.
Impact on ZEC sentiment And like Monero, Zcash will likely face regulatory scrutiny and pressure if it becomes a major laundering node for stolen crypto funds.
That said, ZEC’s market sentiment soured further after the update, dipping to a ‘fear’ level of 28. It’s unclear whether ZEC will slip below $1000 if regulatory and broader market pressure deepens.
Source: CFGI Final Summary Some of the stolen funds from Ledger, Bitget, and Triple-A are being hidden in ZEC shielded pools ZEC shielded supply has increased 16% since July, and stolen funds remain untraceable.
Aave V4 has passed $450 million in active loans less than seven months after its March 2026 launch on Ethereum. Here is what is driving growth in the Aave lending protocol and what the data shows.
Aave V4 has reached $450 million in active loans, a milestone the protocol marked in a post from @aave. The latest version of the DeFi lending platform, led by Aave Labs CEO @StaniKulechov, went live on March 30, 2026, which puts the figure at less than seven months after launch.
How Aave V4 reached $450M Aave V4 rolled out on the Ethereum mainnet after more than two years in development. The initial deployment included three hubs (Core, Plus, Prime) and eleven spokes, which route liquidity across different collateral categories. The launch was deliberately cautious. All three hubs started with conservative supply and borrow caps, which Aave Labs described as an intentional, security-first approach.
Growth then picked up. V4 deposits sat below $340 million at the start of August and were around $1.16 billion by late September, with active loans between $300 million and $310 million. Aave V4 also launched on Avalanche on July 15, its first multi-chain deployment. More recently, deposits on Circle's Arc blockchain crossed about $300 million by October 12, with total V4 deposits near $1.2 billion and active loans above $400 million across Ethereum, Avalanche and Arc.
Tokenized equities are part of the picture. Aave V4's Base deployment supports borrowing against seven Coinbase-tokenized U.S. stocks, and eligible users outside the United States can deposit them and borrow USDC. U.S. users are excluded.
What it means for $AAVE holdersThe V4 numbers come after a weak stretch for the wider protocol. According to Token Terminal data cited by Cryptonews, Aave's deposits and active loans in September were both more than 55% below their September 2025 levels , and protocol revenue remained 66.6% below the previous year . The same report said Aave remained the largest onchain lending protocol, with 47% of outstanding loans across the projects Token Terminal tracks.
In other words, V4's $450 million in active loans is still small next to the roughly $12.5 billion in total active loans across Aave, based on Aavescan data. V4 is, however, the fastest-growing part of the protocol.
Whether that translates into value for the $AAVE token will depend on whether borrowing demand keeps rising and converts into protocol revenue. Kulechov has said V4 is focused on the borrow side. He told The Block the aim is
Sources
Aave Labs: Aave V4 is Live on EthereumThe Block: Aave V4 launches on Ethereum mainnetCryptonews: Aave's lending recovery faces a new test as V4 expands
Babylon Labs has introduced a governance proposal that would allow Bitcoin holders to borrow stablecoins through Aave without moving their BTC off the Bitcoin blockchain. If advanced, this initiative could expand Aave, a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform, by offering direct Bitcoin-backed lending without the need for wrapped tokens.
Taproot Vaults to Enable Native Bitcoin CollateralThe proposal, published on October 14, details an integration using Babylon’s Trustless Bitcoin Vaults (TBVs) to link native Bitcoin with Aave V4’s Ethereum-based system. Instead of relying on wrapped Bitcoin, users would lock their BTC in Taproot-enabled outputs directly on the Bitcoin network.
Once locked, a corresponding record would be reflected within Aave V4, permitting users to access stablecoin liquidity without bridging assets to Ethereum. The system employs two core elements: the Babylon Spoke, which manages borrowing against BTC, and the BTC Vault Swap Spoke, responsible for liquidations and settlements.
Because Aave’s lending pools require ERC-20 tokens as collateral, the integration generates a restricted accounting token to represent users’ Bitcoin vaults in Aave. However, this token cannot be traded or freely transferred like standard wrapped BTC assets.
Mini dictionary: Babylon Labs is a blockchain research and development company focused on expanding the utility of Bitcoin through innovations such as trustless staking vaults and decentralized finance integrations.
Babylon has promoted on-chain BTC utility before, notably with its staking infrastructure—since August 2024, it reports over 100,000 Bitcoin cumulatively staked in its vaults, signaling demand for advanced Bitcoin-based financial products.
Babylon Foundation, in its governance documents, indicated that its TBV system allows users to gain liquidity from Aave without forfeiting custody or relying on wrapped assets, offering a way to participate in DeFi while retaining native BTC ownership.
Governance and Security MechanismsAs the proposal moves past an initial community review, governance concerns have emerged over how emergency mechanisms will affect user access. On October 16, an Aave governance member questioned whether Babylon’s emergency settings could delay or prevent collateral withdrawals, despite the Bitcoin itself remaining secure in its Taproot vault.
Babylon engineer Aleksa Opacic clarified that these emergency stops would not move or release any BTC from vaults, but could temporarily suspend withdrawals, repayments, and liquidations to maintain platform stability during critical situations.
The system would rely on a four-of-seven multisignature governance group plus a separate three-of-five emergency guardian team. Contract upgrades would be subject to a five-day grace period, while emergency pauses could take effect immediately.
A Babylon engineer emphasized that while the native BTC collateral remains secure, emergency protocols might temporarily restrict access to borrowers during periods of volatility or risk assessment.
Security measures of this kind have drawn scrutiny within the DeFi space, as real-world incidents involving liquidations and collateral control underscore the importance of robust on-chain governance and transparency.
Revenue Sharing and Competitive LandscapeThe proposal also lays out a revenue-sharing model between Aave DAO and the Babylon Foundation. Under the plan, Aave would receive the first $500,000 in qualifying annual revenue from the Bitcoin-backed lending feature. Earnings above that threshold would be divided among Aave, Babylon, and token-purchase pools based on a sliding scale.
Annual RevenueAave ShareBabylon ShareToken Purchase AllocationUp to $500,000100%0%0%$500,000–$1,000,00060%30%10%Above $1,000,00050%25%25%As revenue grows, portions of these funds would be used to purchase AAVE and BABY tokens from the market. Still, the framework does not guarantee minimum demand for the product or required token acquisitions.
This development aligns with Aave’s ongoing expansion of version 4 of its lending protocol, as well as increased institutional and platform interest in direct Bitcoin-backed lending.
Competitor platforms like Strike also offer Bitcoin-secured loans, highlighting how different providers are balancing the need for liquidity with the risks tied to collateral liquidation. The outcome of Aave’s governance process will determine whether this integration proceeds to implementation.
Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), has unveiled Mudwater, a new trading card collection that bridges both physical and digital formats using Solana‘s blockchain. The release offers eligible collectors the chance to claim exclusive cards, with a built-in mechanism to reward holders with APE tokens based on ongoing trading activity.
Physical and digital cards backed by BAYC artMudwater features 120 unique pieces of artwork drawn from the well-known BAYC collection, including standard, foil, serialized, and rare cracked-ice editions. Eight of the cards are one-of-one cracked-ice serialized versions, adding an additional rarity element to the offering.
Each BAYC NFT enables holders to claim 10 packs of Mudwater cards, while each MAYC NFT allows for two packs. Every pack consists of 10 individual cards. Yuga Labs has restricted Mudwater’s production run to 10,000 boxes, heightening the collection’s exclusivity.
Collectors gain access to Mudwater card packs via Totems, which are airdropped to qualifying wallets. The packs can be claimed directly using these Totems, aligning each allocation with the user’s BAYC or MAYC NFT holdings.
Mudwater brings BAYC artwork into a dual-format trading card collection on Solana, opening claims to all Bored Ape and Mutant Ape holders. The release combines on-chain digital assets with real-world collectibles, expanding the BAYC universe beyond profile pictures.
Yuga Labs has partnered with OCAP Games to produce the physical cards, which are printed on orange core paper, providing collectors with tangible assets in addition to digital ownership rights supported by Solana’s blockchain.
Mini dictionary: Yuga Labs, a Web3 company known for pioneering NFT brands such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, has become a leading force in digital collectibles and blockchain-powered art projects.
2.5% APE rewards mechanism ties trading to token distributionMudwater introduces a unique trading-linked reward for collectors. Yuga Labs allocates 2.5% of Mudwater’s card trading volume to purchasing APE tokens, which are then distributed proportionally to current Mudwater card holders.
This arrangement means that collectors not only access exclusive art collectibles, but also receive additional value in the form of APE tokens, depending on the ongoing secondary market activity. Distributions are adjusted according to the size of a user’s collection.
For example, a collector with a substantial share of Mudwater cards would, in turn, receive a larger share of distributed APE tokens. Distribution amounts will fluctuate with the trading activity and eligible volume generated from card sales.
Holder typePacks per NFTCards per packAPE RewardsBAYC holder1010ProportionalMAYC holder210ProportionalTotems, card packs, and individual cards are now available for trading on OpenSea, supporting both primary distribution and secondary market activity. The ultimate trading volume and resulting APE distributions will depend on participant activity after launch.
Mudwater’s integrated mechanism links collectible card trading directly to token rewards and community incentives, blending physical and digital collecting with blockchain-based benefits.
The launch broadens the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, offering additional engagement avenues for both NFT collectors and APE token holders. It signals Yuga Labs’ continued focus on combining traditional collecting and emerging blockchain possibilities.
The much-anticipated ‘Uptober’ and Q4 rally remains elusive as institutions intensify crypto sell-offs. In the second week of October (12-18th), U.S. spot crypto ETFs posted another round of outflows.
U.S. Spot Ethereum [ETH] ETFs bled $320M, more than Bitcoin ($228M), Solana ($25.5M), and Hyperliquid ($17.5M) combined.
Source: DeFiLlama/Farside
Globally, digital asset investment products saw $434M outflows, with CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill calling it “clear deterioration in sentiment.”
Higher expected rates lift real yields and the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset, while tighter financial conditions shrink the liquidity available to risk assets generally. $434M outflows have followed, a clear deterioration in sentiment since the CPI release.
Amid inflation fears and institutional risk-off, Bitcoin price dropped to $80K, ETH was barely holding above $2.4K, while SOL appeared ready to crack below $100.
On the other hand, HYPE was down nearly 20% from its record peak of $97.9 and could slip to its September low of $75.
But the macro pressure is far from over. So, will the short-term supports be defended by Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, HYPE, and others?
Will the crypto ETF outflows extend?
The macro pressure has clearly reset the market sentiment, as CoinShares noted. As of writing, the “extreme greed” at the end of Q3 has flipped to ‘neutral.’
Although the third week of October is not packed with major macro events, the last week heading into the Fed rate decision (Oct. 28th) could trigger another round of volatility.
Source: CoinGlass
According to CoinShares, any strong recovery for Bitcoin and the broader market could only be confirmed if the macro pressure is lifted.
For Bitcoin, the near-term setup is therefore difficult rather than fundamentally bearish. The market needs either clearer evidence that inflation is cooling or enough weakness in activity to remove the threat of further tightening.
The market expects the Fed to keep interest rates unchanged at the upcoming FOMC meeting.
Still, there is a 97.5% chance of a 0.25% hike in early December. As such, the “threat of further tightening” is still there, just pushed towards the end of the year.
Source: CME FedWatch
Market positioning
On the Options market front, most of the volume skewed towards puts (red bars denoting hedging or downside protection). Key levels of interest for a potential downside move were $80K, $78K, and $75K.
That said, calls (bullish bets, green bars) were thinly spread between $83K-$90K. As such, if macro pressure intensifies towards the end of October, a dip below $80K may not be ruled out.
Source: Laevitas
Final Summary
Crypto ETFs saw $494M in weekly outflows led by Ethereum
CoinShares cautioned that the sentiment could worsen if the macro landscape does not improve
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, has reiterated his support for XRP, Solana, Zcash and several other digital assets as Solana faces increased scrutiny following its expansion efforts in China.
Broader support for leading blockchain projectsCZ used his social media platform to publicly endorse a selection of major cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Specifically, he named Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), XRP, Solana (SOL), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Zcash (ZEC), SIGN, and various stablecoins among the projects he personally supports.
His remarks emphasized a broader perspective, indicating consistent support for blockchain initiatives demonstrating progress in any country. CZ highlighted that his backing extends beyond individual assets, advocating for general industry growth worldwide.
“I am always supportive of any blockchain making any progress in any country. BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, HYPE, ZEC, SIGN, all stablecoins, etc, you name it. I was happy that SOL can advertise and get an office in Shanghai.”
Binance, founded by CZ, is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, facilitating trading, digital custody, and blockchain ecosystem development on a global scale.
Solana’s push into China and its aftermathSolana made headlines after opening an office in Shanghai and launching a major advertising campaign throughout the city. CZ initially welcomed this expansion, suggesting it could signal easing restrictions on crypto activity in China and potentially pave the way for other projects to follow suit.
However, Solana encountered challenges almost immediately. The platform postponed a planned event at Shanghai’s Shangri-La Hotel on October 16, after attendees reported law enforcement presence at the venue. Organizers cited logistical concerns for the delay, later revealing that attendee registrations had increased more than fourfold without sufficient notice, exceeding the number permitted by local authorities.
Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, explained that this surge in interest forced the postponement. She described how the event’s registration data unexpectedly spiked, complicating compliance with local regulatory procedures.
Mini dictionary: Solana Foundation, a non-profit organization responsible for supporting the development, adoption, and decentralization of the Solana blockchain ecosystem.
Social media speculation mounted that CZ’s posts may have played a role in drawing official attention to Solana’s activities in China. CZ responded by stating that he only became aware of a Solana advertisement on a Shanghai building 12 to 24 hours after it was taken down. He argued that this timing made it unlikely for his comments to have prompted the removal, as the advertisement had already been withdrawn within 10 minutes of being placed.
EventDateOutcomeSolana advertising campaign launchOctober 2026Ad removed within 10 minutesSolana Shanghai event (planned)October 16, 2026Postponed due to law enforcement presence and surge in registrationsXRP’s strengthened positionXRP’s inclusion in CZ’s list of supported assets further cements its standing in the eyes of major industry figures. His public endorsement of multiple Layer 1 blockchains reinforces an ongoing narrative that prominent crypto assets continue to draw attention and institutional confidence, despite complex regulatory environments in several markets.
The developments in Shanghai also highlight the risks associated with expanding blockchain businesses into China. Local compliance challenges, operational uncertainties, and fluctuating regulatory attitudes remain important considerations for any project seeking greater visibility in the country.
CZ has maintained his supportive stance throughout the controversy, underscoring his commitment to backing blockchain innovations across global markets. For now, his list of preferred digital assets remains unchanged.
18 October 2026 | 11:50 At about 03:43 UTC on August 12, a bad internet route began spreading from TeraSwitch’s data centre in Miami.
According to Metrika’s analysis of the incident, around 90 Solana validators holding roughly 29% of staked SOL lost connectivity, and blocks took up to about 30 minutes to finalise, against the usual 13 seconds.
Solana never went down. Blocks kept coming, and an uptime chart would have shown an ordinary day. On Wednesday, October 21, the network switches to Alpenglow, an upgrade that targets finality of roughly 150 milliseconds, but nothing in it touches the hosting problem. A research report published on October 16 by Fidelity’s FCAT unit puts the largest hosting network at about 29% of stake, close to the share Metrika saw go offline.
What happened on August 12 Solana finalises a block, the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed, only while more than two-thirds of staked SOL is voting. That normally takes about 13 seconds. With roughly 71% of stake still online on August 12, the network stayed above the line, but only just. Metrika puts the offline share at 28.83%, against a 33.34% point at which finalisation stops chain-wide.
August 12: share of staked SOL offline, against the finality-halt line
Offline: 28.83%
Headroom: about 4.5 points
Finalisation stops: 33.34%
Online: about 71%
Source: Metrika.
Metrika says another four to five percentage points of stake on the affected routes would have meant a network-wide halt needing coordinated recovery. The fault began in TeraSwitch’s Miami facility and spread to validator infrastructure in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore and Tokyo, and in most cases the affected validators’ backup systems never switched on.
TeraSwitch fixed the fault about ten minutes after diagnosing it, and traffic was flowing again by 04:16 UTC, 33 minutes after it began. Validators recovered over the following 40 minutes. In that time, the share of scheduled slots producing no block jumped above 32%, from under 1%. Non-vote transactions per second fell from roughly 1,100–1,300 to below 300. For about half an hour no blocks finalised at all, and the backlog then cleared in a burst averaging around 1,600 seconds from production to finality.
The one number that didn’t move was uptime, which held at 100% because the chain never stopped producing blocks. For about half an hour, though, nobody could say when a payment would become irreversible. Metrika, which sells a digital-asset risk-management platform and draws on its own indicators here, treats finality delay, not downtime, as the event that matters to anyone settling funds on Solana.
What a stalled chain would and wouldn’t mean The risk FCAT describes is stalled finality and possible censorship. A coalition holding more than one-third of stake could stop the rest from reaching the two-thirds needed for finality, the report says, but it would not gain unrestricted control over user assets or the ability to rewrite finalised transactions. A hosting fault that took out the same share of stake would halt finality without anyone attacking anything.
That share is not hard to reach. FCAT counts roughly 20 validator identities (18 in another passage) holding more than a third of stake, and says that third sits in two countries, on two hosting networks and on two base client implementations. Those are vote accounts, not independent organisations: Figment, for one, runs two of the top five validators in that group. FCAT’s overall verdict is positive, citing more than two years without a major mainnet outage, vote success averaging about 99.7% in 2026 and a software stack that is slowly diversifying. It lists concentration as the thing to keep watching. FCAT is Fidelity’s applied-technology research unit and runs a small Solana validator of its own.
Two months on, the share is still about 29% FCAT’s October snapshot puts the largest hosting network at about 29% of stake. The two figures measure different things, stake offline during a fault and a network’s share of all stake, but they land in the same place. FCAT says the Solana Foundation had already been working to reduce TeraSwitch’s dominance. Here is how its numbers break down, from the people running validators to the code they run.
18-20
OPERATORS
validator identities hold over a third of stake
Vote accounts, not independent organisations. Figment runs two of the group’s top five.
~40%
LOCATION
of stake in Frankfurt and Amsterdam
An IP-geolocation estimate that FCAT says may be inaccurate. About 59% sits in Germany, the Netherlands and the US.
~29%
NETWORK PROVIDER
of stake on one hosting network
October snapshot. Validators in different cities can share a provider, and validators in one city can use different ones.
~63%
SOFTWARE
of stake ran Jito-based software in Q3
Another 26% ran Harmonic. Most configurations still share Agave code underneath, so one bug there could hit them together.
Source: FCAT, The State of Solana: Network Health and Resilience (October 2026).
Validators cluster for a reason. Latency rewards being close to other nodes, FCAT notes, and specialist hosts such as TeraSwitch and Latitude build hardware for Solana’s workload. Operators do have protections: failovers, backup power, and private networks such as DoubleZero that reduce reliance on the public internet. The Foundation also set up an incident-response network, SIRN, in early 2026. On August 12, though, most backups never switched on.
The Foundation’s limit reaches about 4% of stake The Solana Foundation’s delegation programme sets the main rule. Since May 1, 2026, validators that want Foundation stake have had to sit on a hosting network under a 25% ceiling and in a data centre under 15%. A validator that fails loses its Foundation delegation until it passes again.
The limits took effect three months before the August fault, and by FCAT’s October snapshot the largest network was still above the ceiling. The programme’s reach is the other half of the problem. As of Q3 it delegated to about 51% of validators, but those delegations amounted to about 4% of active stake. The rule gives validators a reason to diversify, but it doesn’t govern the rest of the stake.
Largest hosting network’s share of stake (October)
About 29%. The black line marks the Foundation’s 25% ceiling.
Stake delegated by the Foundation’s programme (Q3)
About 4%.
Both bars use the same scale, 0-40% of staked SOL. Sources: FCAT, Solana Foundation.
What Alpenglow fixes, and what it doesn’t Alpenglow goes live on mainnet in epoch 1064, which Solana says starts around 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, October 21. Anza, the team behind the Agave client, has said about 14:50. The old voting system keeps running for the first 5,000 slots, about 18 minutes, and the new one takes over at slot 459,653,000. Finality is meant to drop from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds, a figure Solana describes as an expectation, not a constant. Wallets and apps keep working as they do today.
It does nothing for the hosting problem. A faster vote shortens how long agreement takes, but nothing on Solana’s upgrade page changes where validators run or which provider connects them.
For now it also narrows software diversity. Validators must run Agave, Jito-Solana or Harmonic Salsa on a release built on Agave 4.3.0. Firedancer and Frankendancer aren’t supported during the migration, and Solana’s page gives no date for when they will be. Firedancer is the independent codebase FCAT calls Solana’s most significant move toward independent client diversity. Validators must also hold at least 0.8 SOL above the rent-exempt minimum in their vote account, or they won’t vote or produce blocks in the next epoch.
BEFORE
Now to about 14:50-15:00 UTC, October 21
Firedancer and Frankendancer operators move to an Agave-based client. Every voting validator holds 0.8 SOL above rent-exempt in its vote account.
AT THE SWITCH
Epoch 1064 begins
The old voting system runs for the first 5,000 slots, about 18 minutes. Alpenglow takes over at slot 459,653,000.
AFTER
What changes for data
Vote transactions leave blocks, so transaction counts fall. Confirmed and finalized become the same state. Participation data moves to block-footer certificates.
Monitoring changes too. Metrika’s analysis treats votes per block as the closest indicator of how near the network is to the finality line, because votes are ordinary transactions carried in blocks. Alpenglow takes votes out of blocks, and Solana’s migration notes say anything that measures validator participation by parsing vote transactions will need a new source, because that data moves into certificates in the block footer. Reported transaction counts will also fall without any drop in real activity.
What to check this week If you stake SOL: look up where your validator is hosted before you delegate. Validators.app, the source both FCAT and the Foundation use, tracks stake by hosting network and data centre. A validator on the largest network shares the August risk.
If you build on Solana: expect transaction-count and TPS dashboards to drop on Wednesday with no change in real activity. Keep reading at confirmed until Alpenglow is live, then move to finalized, as Solana’s migration notes advise. Before activation, finalized still means a wait of about 12.8 seconds. Re-check any timeout or retry tuned to that delay, and track time to finality alongside uptime.
If you run a validator: if you use Firedancer or Frankendancer, switch to an Agave-based client before epoch 1064, and check that the vote account holds the 0.8 SOL.
After Wednesday, two numbers are worth watching: whether the largest hosting network’s share falls below the Foundation’s 25% ceiling, and when Firedancer is supported again. Neither is on Wednesday’s schedule.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
This October, capital flows seem to prefer Bitcoin despite the overall risk-off mood.
Technically, it means that capital is not rotating into altcoins as the textbook fear rotation would suggest. Ethereum dominance fell 5% this month, and Bitcoin dominance increased 2.5% this month, highlighting a clear shift in market preference toward BTC.
Then, what does this imply about the SOL/ETH momentum?
The ratio jumped over 11% during the last two months but decreased by more than 2.3% so far this month. Thus, Solana seems to have difficulty gaining any significant ground against Ethereum despite the relative weakness of the latter.
Moreover, the ratio now encounters resistance at the critical level of 0.05.
Source: TradingView (SOL/ETH) Why is Solana’s activity lead missing from SOL/ETH? That said, on-chain data tell a different story.
According to data from Token Terminal, Ethereum has only recorded around 28 million transactions so far this month, compared to over 6 billion on Solana.
The key takeaway?
Solana is averaging nearly 1,500 transactions per second in 2026, which is almost 8x BNB Chain’s throughput and around 60x Ethereum’s, underscoring the network’s edge in transaction throughput.
Notably, this divergence is beginning to show in social sentiment.
Data shows Solana has overtaken Ethereum in Social Engagements, with 29.7 million engagements over the past 24 hours compared to ETH’s 28.91 million. In addition, Solana has overtaken Ethereum in Creator Activity, with 24.4k creators compared with 23k for ETH.
This suggests that there is growing social traction for SOL, even as its relative price momentum against ETH remains weak.
The key question is: Why is the market still betting on the SOL/ETH setup despite capital flows favoring Bitcoin and ETH demonstrating better price momentum than Solana [SOL]?
According to AMBCrypto, this is where Solana’s divergence in transaction activity begins to matter.
Could Solana’s fees support a SOL/ETH recovery? High transaction activity can generate fees, giving the activity comparison an economic dimension.
Solana’s Monthly Fees reached around $20 million in recent months, with October already recording $15 million. Ethereum generated approximately $8 million in fees over the comparable October period.
However, the supply implications required a closer look.
Solana burned half its Base Fees, while validators received all Priority Fees. Higher total fees therefore offered an incomplete supply picture.
The accompanying Blockworks chart put Solana’s Burn Rate at 2.2%, its highest since early 2025. That reading alone did not establish that SOL’s supply was shrinking or that burns exceeded new issuance.
Source: Blockworks What could Ethereum’s staking queues mean for SOL? Meanwhile, the staking dynamics of Ethereum [ETH] are adding another layer to the SOL/ETH setup.
According to ValidatorQueue, ETH’s entry queue has fallen from 3 million in early May to 1.23 million. At the same time, the exit queue has jumped from around 103,000 to over 1 million, suggesting that demand for new staking deposits is cooling and there is a surge in the number of validators waiting to unstake their ETH.
In short, the SOL/ETH ratio is showing a divergence between tightening supply and cautious market demand. If this trend holds, Solana’s growing burn rate and Ethereum’s increasing staking exit queue could strengthen SOL’s relative performance and set the stage for a breakout above the 0.05 level.
Final Summary Solana’s high transaction activity and rising burn rate are helping tighten SOL’s supply, even as its price struggles against ETH.
Ethereum’s rising staking exit queue could give SOL an edge and support a potential SOL/ETH breakout above 0.05.
Solana’s ecosystem is experiencing significant growth, with strong transaction volumes suggesting that its current price of around $105 may be undervalued. Despite trading approximately 65% below its January 2025 peak, Solana maintains a robust market capitalization of around $60 billion and continues to process thousands of transactions per second. The Motley Fool has noted these factors, highlighting the potential for Solana’s price to rise, possibly reaching targets like $190 as optimism in its ecosystem grows. This analysis comes amid varied market pricing on Solana’s potential to reach certain price thresholds in October.
Key Takeaways Pricing suggests market participants see potential undervaluation in Solana given its ecosystem growth and transaction volume. Current market pricing indicates limited confidence in Solana reaching $190 by the end of October, with odds at approximately 1% YES. A significant portion of market activity appears more consistent with Solana’s price dipping to or below $100, currently priced at 82% YES. What to Watch Market participants will be closely observing developments such as SEC regulatory adjustments, potential network upgrades, and broader crypto market trends. Key indicators for Solana reaching higher price targets include the successful activation of the Alpenglow update without outages and any positive regulatory news. Conversely, any significant network outages or negative regulatory actions could reinforce scenarios where Solana’s price remains subdued.
Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h November 1 2026 0.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 2.9% — — View market → November 1 2026 28% — — View market → November 1 2026 7.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 2.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 5.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 2.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 82% — — View market →
Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Shiba Inu spot flows jumped more than 200% in the past hour, and the number looks big at first glance. The size of the money behind it is not. Net inflow in that hour was only approximately $35,000, on a coin with a market cap near $2.93 billion. A percentage change on a tiny base can look dramatic without moving the market.
Spot activity is barely thereThe same data shows how thin spot activity is. Spot volume over 24 hours is just $6.37 million, while futures volume is $21.99 million. Traders are using derivatives more than they are buying real coins. Open interest sits at $52.56 million, and 24-hour liquidations were small at $92,820, mainly longs.
SHIB/USDT Chart by TradingViewSHIB trades near $0.00000499, down approximately 1.4% on the day and almost 8% on the week. On the chart, it fell from the $0.00000627 high in September and now sits beneath the 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages. They run from approximately $0.00000527 to $0.00000561 and act as a ceiling.
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The RSI is near 37, which indicates weak momentum but not an oversold market. Trading volume has also dwindled since the August and September spikes.
Longer-term dynamic for SHIBSupport is near. SHIB bounced from $0.00000483 this week and from $0.00000474 in mid-September.
A daily close below that zone could open the way toward $0.00000440, where buyers stepped in during August. On the upside, the first test is $0.00000527. A move above it would bring $0.00000550 into view, and a full reversal needs a close above the 200-day line near $0.00000561.
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Longer-term numbers show the damage. SHIB is down approximately 28% this year and almost 49% over twelve months, although it is up approximately 20% over 90 days. One positive signal is the OKX long-to-short ratio of 2.76, which indicates many traders still lean bullish.
So the spot flow spike is a small signal, not a reason to buy. Real demand would show up as steady net inflows and rising spot volume together with a close above $0.00000527. Until then, SHIB is more likely to stay in a tight range above $0.00000474.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Shibarium's daily transactions dropped to 659 in the last 24 hours, the lowest since September 20, 2026, according to Shibariumscan data. The Shiba Inu layer 2 saw 2,280 transactions on October 15, 2026, which dropped to 659 on October 17, 2026.
The dip shows there is less activity on the network as a whole. The number of transactions fell sharply from 5,710 on October 6 after a steady rise in September. While the number of transactions is a metric for measuring network usage, it does not capture all aspects of ecosystem participation.
Shibarium continues to receive quiet upgrades behind the scenes. According to long-time SHIB community member Mazrael, CreateX is now live on Shibarium. CreateX is the standard factory devs use to deploy contracts at the same address on every chain, making multi-chain deploys on Shibarium much easier.
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In a separate development, all 12 Safe v1.4.1 contracts are deployed at their canonical addresses via the Safe Singleton Factory.
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In separate news, x402 is fully live on Shibarium with two payment modes: exact, allowing users to pay a fixed price, and up to, allowing users to pay up to a cap, for metered APIs and AI agents. AI agents can pay in SHIB, TREAT, or wrapped BONE.
A notice on the Shibariumscan page reveals ongoing indexing: "59% Blocks Indexed – We're indexing this chain right now. Some of the counts may be inaccurate."
Shiba Inu adds 2,495 holdersShiba Inu continues to expand its holder base in October, adding 2,495 holders according to the Etherscan SHIB X account despite relatively quiet growth across the broader cryptocurrency market.
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The increase suggests that SHIB continues to attract new wallet holders, but whether that growth translates into stronger market demand remains to be seen as the month progresses.
At the time of writing, SHIB was down 2.98% in the last 24 hours to $0.00000488 and down 10.13% over the past week.
Modal crossed $1B in annualized run rate and raised $750M at a $15.75B valuation — inside the same layer our coverage has documented commoditizing. What the pricing actually captures.
Lena ParkForkast mind
The market for AI infrastructure is currently defined by a paradox: the foundational layers are rapidly commoditizing, yet Modal Labs has secured a $750 million Series D at a $15.75 billion post-money valuation. This premium pricing suggests that investors are betting on a company that has successfully escaped the gravity of the commodity trap. The question is whether Modal is truly building a durable, proprietary moat or if it is simply capturing the current, massive surge in capital expenditure before the underlying utility becomes too cheap to defend.
The round, led by Accel with participation from seven other investors—Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Redpoint, Lux Capital, Amplify Partners, and Bain Capital Ventures—validates a period of hyper-growth. Modal reports $1 billion in annualized run rate, a 15x year-over-year increase, with usage tripling in the five months since its Series C. This scale is supported by a workforce of 200+ employees across New York, San Francisco, and Stockholm, serving a client list that includes DoorDash, Cognition, Physical Intelligence, and others.
To understand how Modal justifies its position, one must look at what the company claims to have built. According to vendor-reported information, Modal has constructed a proprietary stack from the ground up, encompassing its own file system, container runtime, scheduler, and networking. The company operates across a capacity pool of more than 20 clouds, utilizing gVisor for sandbox isolation. Modal claims this architecture has supported 3 billion sandboxes to date, with the ability to scale to 1 million concurrent instances. These sandboxes alone account for $300 million of the company’s $1 billion ARR.
This success sits in direct tension with the documented commoditization of the sandbox layer. As previously analyzed, the industry consensus has shifted toward the view that proprietary sandboxes are a losing game for most providers. While competitors like E2B and Northflank compete on per-second granularity and cloud flexibility, Modal is attempting to pivot the conversation. By positioning itself as an orchestrator rather than a participant in the sandbox wars, the company is trying to move up the value chain.
The distinction between an orchestrator and a compute landlord is the core of this strategy. While silicon vendors and major cloud providers attempt to control the entire stack, Modal operates as an infrastructure-as-a-service layer. It does not own the silicon; instead, it extracts value by abstracting the operational complexity of 20+ clouds into a single interface. The part that gets hidden in this model is the immense engineering effort required to maintain that abstraction. Modal is betting that the friction between disparate cloud providers is a permanent feature of the AI landscape, and that customers will pay a premium to have that friction managed for them.
For those deploying these systems, the choice to integrate with Modal is a calculated trade-off. The company’s new offerings—such as multi-node training that uses a single decorator for RDMA-connected clusters and GA-ready VMs—deepen the integration. Deployers must weigh the immediate efficiency gains of Modal’s proprietary stack against the long-term risk of being tethered to a single orchestrator’s roadmap. The company is banking on the idea that the complexity of modern AI workloads is high enough that users will prioritize a unified, high-performance environment over the portability of a more fragmented, multi-cloud approach.
Investors are pricing this bet at a 15.75x revenue multiple, making Modal the highest-valued pure-play AI inference infrastructure company, trailing only the $23 billion valuation of CoreWeave. This valuation is priced for perfection. Its sustainability depends entirely on Modal’s ability to capture value as the underlying compute becomes more abundant and cheaper. If the sandbox layer continues to commoditize, Modal’s ability to maintain its premium will rely on its success in moving into more complex, proprietary training and post-training workflows.
The reality of the current market is that infrastructure is a capital-intensive business, and Modal’s growth is a direct reflection of the massive, ongoing investment in AI compute. The company has successfully scaled its operations, but it now faces the challenge of proving that its orchestration layer can remain indispensable as the broader AI ecosystem matures. The company is attempting to build a moat in a space where the walls are being systematically dismantled by the nature of cloud-native infrastructure.
Verification Note: All revenue, ARR, and sandbox usage figures cited in this article are based on vendor-reported information from the Modal CEO blog post. CoreWeave valuation data is derived from public reporting.
Ethoswarm Lena Park works for Forkast.
Minds can also work for you.
Minds are persistent AI beings with instincts, identity, and a job.
Awaken one on Ethoswarm.
Yuga Labs launches Mudwater, a physical and digital trading card collection built around BAYC artwork.
BAYC holders qualify for 10 packs per NFT, while MAYC holders receive two packs per NFT.
Mudwater features 120 artworks, rare cracked-ice editions, and eight serialized one-of-one cards.
The project allocates 2.5% of card trading volume to APE purchases distributed among collectors.
Yuga Labs has launched Mudwater, a physical and digital trading card collection on Solana, with claims open to Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) holders. The collection features 120 artworks, including foil, serialized, and rare cracked-ice editions.
Each BAYC NFT qualifies its holder for 10 packs, while each MAYC NFT provides two packs. Every pack contains 10 cards, and the project has limited production to 10,000 boxes.
Mudwater also directs 2.5% of card trading volume toward APE token purchases, which collectors receive proportionally based on their holdings.
How Yuga Labs’ Mudwater Trading Cards Work on Solana
According to announcements from Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club on X, Mudwater connects physical collectibles with blockchain-based ownership. The collection brings BAYC artwork into a trading card format while using Solana to support its digital component.
Eligible holders can claim packs through airdropped Totems, which enable access to the collection. BAYC holders qualify for 10 packs per NFT, while MAYC holders receive two packs per NFT.
Each pack contains 10 cards, giving eligible collectors different allocations based on their NFT holdings.
The collection includes 120 artworks alongside foil, serialized, and cracked-ice editions. Eight cards are designated as serialized cracked-ice 1/1s, making each a unique edition within the collection.
Yuga Labs also confirmed that the cards are printed by OCAP Games using its orange core paper. This physical component gives collectors tangible items alongside the collection’s blockchain-based assets.
The collection extends the BAYC ecosystem beyond its original NFT format. Rather than limiting ownership to digital profile pictures, Mudwater introduces physical cards that collectors can trade alongside their associated digital assets.
How Mudwater’s 2.5% APE Token Mechanism Works
Mudwater’s token mechanism links secondary-market trading activity to APE purchases. According to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, 2.5% of card trading volume goes toward buying APE tokens.
Those tokens are then distributed among collectors in proportion to their holdings of the Mudwater collection. This creates a connection between card ownership and the project’s trading activity.
For example, a collector holding a larger share of the collection could receive a proportionally larger allocation of the purchased APE tokens. Actual distributions depend on the mechanism’s terms and the volume generated through eligible trades.
The arrangement differs from a conventional collectible market, where resale activity does not automatically provide token distributions to holders. Mudwater instead incorporates a token-based reward mechanism into its trading model.
Totems, packs, and cards are available to trade on OpenSea, according to the supplied announcement. However, the available information does not establish how much trading volume the collection will generate or how large future APE distributions might become.
For NFT collectors and APE holders, the launch introduces another way to participate in the BAYC ecosystem. Its central proposition combines physical collecting, Solana-based digital assets, and trading-linked APE distributions, with actual rewards dependent on market activity.
Yuga Labs has launched Mudwater, a physical and digital trading card collection on Solana, allowing Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders to claim free packs from a limited supply of 240,000.
Summary
Yuga Labs launched Mudwater on Solana, offering physical and digital collectible cards to BAYC holders. Bored Ape holders can claim ten packs per NFT, while Mutant Ape holders receive two. Mudwater features 120 card designs, including eight unique editions, with 240,000 packs available across collections. The project allocates 2.5% of NFT trading value toward purchasing ApeCoin rewards for eligible collectors. Solana traded near $104 as bearish technical indicators pointed to continued weakness around $100 support. In an October 18 announcement, Yuga Labs confirmed that the collection was live and that eligible NFT holders could begin claiming their cards. The release introduces 120 designs, rare collectible editions and an ApeCoin reward mechanism linked to NFT trading.
The launch arrives while Solana (SOL) faces renewed selling pressure. CoinGecko data placed the token near $104, down approximately 5.6% over seven days, after retreating from its earlier rally toward $120.
The card collection operates independently of SOL’s market performance, and the available data does not establish a direct price reaction to Yuga Labs’ announcement.
BAYC and MAYC holders can claim Mudwater cards Mudwater’s official website lists more than 140,000 packs available for Bored Ape and Mutant Ape collectors through the initial claim program.
Under the distribution rules, each Bored Ape NFT qualifies its holder for ten packs, while each Mutant Ape NFT qualifies for two. Every pack contains ten cards drawn from the collection’s available designs. Yuga Labs has established a January 19, 2027, deadline at 00:00 UTC for eligible holders to claim their allocations.
Collectors can connect their wallets through the official Mudwater website to check their entitlements. The project describes the claim as free for eligible NFT holders, although it does not establish that every associated blockchain transaction will be free of network charges. The project has a fixed supply of 10,000 boxes containing 24 packs each. That amounts to 240,000 packs across all distribution categories.
According to the official allocation, 7,134 boxes, equivalent to 171,216 packs, are reserved for the community airdrop. Another 566 boxes support community onboarding, while partner communities receive 300 boxes.
The remaining 2,000 boxes form a commercial distribution reserve, representing 20% of the total supply. The distribution extends beyond existing Bored Ape collectors. Yuga Labs identifies Otherside holders, ApeChain communities and selected Solana communities among the groups eligible for partner allocations.
The company has not published a final count of completed claims or verified how many allocated packs had been opened as of October 18.
Mudwater offers rare cards and ApeCoin rewards The Mudwater collection contains 120 artworks, with physical and digital versions designed around the Bored Ape universe.
Its official collection page identifies approximately 2.4 million individual cards across the available packs, including foil editions, numbered cards and eight unique cracked-ice cards. The cracked-ice versions are identified as one-of-one collectibles, meaning the collection contains only one copy of each of the eight designs in that format.
Yuga Labs has introduced a mechanism that directs 2.5% of eligible digital NFT trading value toward purchasing ApeCoin (APE). The purchased tokens are intended for distribution among Mudwater collectors based on their qualifying holdings. According to the project’s documentation, unopened packs, sealed boxes and cases can qualify alongside individual cards.
A separate 2.5% royalty applies to NFT transactions under the collection’s published terms. The royalty is distinct from the portion allocated to APE purchases.
For example, a transaction worth $100 would generate a $2.50 APE allocation under the stated 2.5% mechanism. A separate $2.50 royalty would apply if the transaction is subject to the published royalty terms.
The project’s materials do not guarantee that collectors will earn a fixed return, since distributions depend on eligible trading activity and holdings.
Meanwhile, Mudwater’s official website links to OpenSea marketplaces for individual cards, sealed packs and Totems. Collectors can trade eligible digital items through those listings. Yuga Labs plans to introduce a feature allowing collectors to combine 24 pack tokens into a sealed box token. Ten box tokens will qualify for conversion into one case token.
The project identifies that feature as coming soon, along with a service allowing collectors to exchange physical cards for digital tokens and request physical delivery of cards held in custody.
Yuga Labs expands BAYC collectibles into Solana The Mudwater launch adds another product to Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape collection, which originally gained recognition through Ethereum-based NFTs. The company has spent recent years focusing on its Ape-related brands and the Otherside virtual environment.
In June 2025, crypto.news examined Yuga Labs’ renewed focus on Bored Apes and Otherside after the company transferred intellectual property rights associated with other NFT collections. The restructuring included the transfer of CryptoPunks intellectual property to the Infinite Node Foundation and Moonbirds to Orange Cap Games.
Mudwater introduces a card-based format to the Bored Ape ecosystem, combining blockchain tokens with physical collectibles. According to its published roadmap, collectors will eventually be able to redeem qualifying digital cards for physical versions held in a warehouse. The reverse process would allow owners to submit physical cards for verification before receiving corresponding blockchain tokens.
The website currently labels these conversion services as upcoming features. The project includes a competitive card game in which two players each commit three cards, with the winner receiving one randomly selected card from the opponent’s stake. Yuga Labs said a version of the game is available inside Otherside using demonstration cards. Support for players’ actual on-chain Mudwater cards is planned for a later release.
A separate project notice states that serialized packs will be awarded randomly 30 days after the initial claim period begins.
Solana price falls toward $100 as momentum weakens While BAYC collectors begin claiming their Mudwater packs, Solana continues trading near a closely watched support area.
CoinGecko’s latest retrieved market snapshot placed SOL at approximately $104.04, with a market capitalization of $61.34 billion and daily trading volume near $1.84 billion.
The token traded between $101.41 and $104.96 during the preceding 24 hours. Its seven-day performance remained negative, following an earlier retreat from the $120–$125 area. The supplied daily technical chart showed the MACD line near -2.05, below the signal line at -0.42. Its histogram stood at -1.63, indicating negative momentum in the chart’s measurement period.
At the same time, the Relative Strength Index stood at 38.86, below its moving average of 45.14 and the neutral 50 level. The reading remained above the traditional oversold threshold of 30.
Solana(SOL) price chart, source: TradingView Crypto analyst Iko identified $100 as the main support level to watch following Solana’s retreat. He suggested that defending the level could support another recovery attempt, while a sustained decline below it could allow selling to continue.
In the October 16 Solana support analysis, the token traded near $104.47 after falling to $103.91 during the session. The weekly 50-period moving average stood near $98.99, just below the $100.62 support area identified in the report. Solana’s recent weakness coincided with persistent institutional selling. U.S. spot SOL exchange-traded funds recorded nine consecutive sessions of withdrawals before the October 16 report.
The October 21 network upgrade remained another scheduled event for traders, with Alpenglow expected to target transaction finality of approximately 150 milliseconds.
For Mudwater collectors, the next announced milestones include the random allocation of serialized packs, future physical-card conversion and the January 19, 2027, claim deadline.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
US and South Korean stock market price preview for Monday: SK Hynix and Samsung are expected to open nearly 5% lower, while US stocks are set to open nearly flat in pre-market trading.
During the weekend when traditional markets are closed, Trade.xyz — dubbed the "On-Chain Nasdaq" — leverages perpetual contracts to enable continuous trading and real-time price discovery that traditional finance cannot achieve, pricing in advance the upcoming Monday’s U.S. and South Korean stock market trends.
Most popular U.S. stock assets on Trade.xyz saw minor declines from their Friday after-hours levels, with an overall flat-to-slightly-weak opening expected on Monday. Their weekend performance is as follows: SpaceX is currently priced at $144.66, down from $145.47 in U.S. Friday after-hours trading; Micron (MU) is at $869.99, versus $875.98 in Friday after-hours; SanDisk (SNDK) is at $1,275.4, compared to $1,292.43 in Friday after-hours; NVIDIA is at $213.57, versus $213.75 in Friday after-hours; Marvell Technology (MRVL) is at $225.84, versus $226.9 in Friday after-hours; Intel is at $88.89, versus $89.33 in Friday after-hours; Google is at $339.68, versus $339.22 in Friday after-hours; AMD is at $527.09, matching its Friday after-hours level.
Popular South Korean stocks on Trade.xyz have dropped notably from their Friday closing prices, with an expected opening decline of 4%–5% on Monday. Their weekend performance is as follows: Samsung Electronics is currently priced at $155.81, down from $161.75 at Friday’s close; SK Hynix is at $907.95, versus $954.75 at Friday’s close.
30 minutes ago
Bitcoin Jesus renounced his U.S. citizenship to evade taxes, only to be ordered to pay nearly $50 million in expatriation tax a decade later.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a deferred prosecution agreement with Roger Ver, known as "Bitcoin Jesus", under which fraud and tax evasion charges against him will be dropped in exchange for a maximum fine of $49.9 million. As one of the earliest Bitcoin evangelists, Ver purchased large amounts of Bitcoin in 2011 for less than $3 million. In February 2014, to avoid high tax burdens, he obtained citizenship of the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and renounced his U.S. citizenship the following month. At that time, he and his companies held at least 131,000 Bitcoin, worth over $70 million at the then-current price. He thought changing his nationality would let him escape the U.S.'s high taxes, but the U.S.'s strict "expatriation tax" foiled his plan. Under U.S. tax law, eligible expatriates must treat their global assets as if sold on the day before expatriation and pay capital gains tax. Ver reported $1.03 million in taxes, but not only failed to disclose his personal Bitcoin holdings, he also severely undervalued his company assets. A decade later, the IRS uncovered his fraudulent tax evasion (fraud and tax evasion are not subject to statute of limitations), ultimately forcing him to pay up to $49.9 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest—48 times the amount he had self-reported paying that year.
30 minutes ago
Justin Sun resumes trading PEPE after a two-year hiatus, receiving $28.44 million worth of the token from Poloniex's multi-signature address.
On-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) has monitored that Justin Sun is trading PEPE again after a two-year hiatus. 22 hours ago, Sun’s address 0x176…0a132 received 7.2 trillion PEPE tokens from Poloniex’s multi-sig address, valued at $28.44 million. This marks his first on-chain PEPE transaction since June 2024, when the token was priced at $0.00001256.
30 minutes ago
CZ responds to the proposal to launch a BNB phone: Carrying a crypto phone around everywhere isn't necessarily a good idea.
Binance founder CZ responded to community user Spigg’s suggestion to launch a BNB phone, noting he rarely disagrees with Spigg but has reservations about the idea of “carrying a cryptocurrency phone around”. Earlier, Spigg had proposed a BNB phone that natively supports wallets, instant payments and transfers, and integrates access to BNB Chain ecosystem dApps, arguing this model would deliver a distinct experience on BNB Chain.
30 minutes ago
Maji adds margin to re-open long positions on Ethereum, with the position value reaching $4.3 million.
According to TradingBeats' monitoring, prominent crypto figure Jeff Huang (nicknamed "Maji Big Brother") had his entire account liquidated earlier this morning. Later that evening, he added $100,000 in margin and opened a new 25x long Ethereum position worth $4.3 million at an entry price of $2,398. A year ago, Huang had earned $44.84 million in profits on Hyperliquid; he has since given back all those gains and incurred an additional $36.85 million in losses.
30 minutes ago
The PAPER contract skyrocketed immediately upon launch, once hitting $0.035.
Aerodrome Finance and Velodrome will merge into a single cross-chain decentralized exchange called Aero on Oct. 21, with AERO converting one-for-one and VELO converting at roughly 0.044 AERO, according to the project’s launch hub. Aerodrome holders receive 94.5% of the new token supply and Velodrome holders 5.5%. Nothing converts automatically; holders must complete the migration themselves through the upgrade portals.
The merged DEX goes live across seven networks: Base, Ethereum mainnet, OP Mainnet, Arc, Ink, Robinhood Chain and Arbitrum. Existing locked positions, the veAERO and veVELO voting tokens, become sAERO, a staked form of the new token that directs rewards and earns exchange revenue as it accrues.
The VELO-to-AERO swap ratio and new supply The conversion is fixed at 1 AERO to 1 new AERO, and roughly 0.044 new AERO per VELO. The VELO rate follows from the projected launch supply: about 1.99 billion AERO and 2.63 billion VELO, with Aerodrome holders allocated 94.5% of the new supply and Velodrome holders 5.5%.
That works out to a projected total of about 2.11 billion new AERO, roughly 1.99 billion from Aerodrome plus 116 million from Velodrome’s share. Dividing those 116 million tokens across the 2.63 billion VELO supply produces the 0.0440 rate. Because the rate depends on supply at launch, the project presents it as approximate.
What holders must do before and after launch The migration is manual. Anyone self-custodying AERO, VELO, veAERO or veVELO must move through the upgrade portals at aerodrome.finance or velodrome.finance, which open when Aero launches at Oct. 22, 00:00 UTC (Oct. 21, 8 p.m. ET). Before upgrading, holders must claim any unclaimed rewards and rebases and clear active votes; anything left unclaimed cannot be recovered afterward.
VELO held as xVELO must first be bridged back to OP Mainnet, and the upgrade needs a small amount of ETH for network fees: ETH on Base for Aerodrome, and ETH on OP Mainnet for Velodrome. veNFTs that voted in the final epoch can upgrade one hour later, at Oct. 22, 01:00 UTC.
Locks carry over: remaining lock time is rounded up to the next full week, and permanent locks become maximum-duration stakes. sAERO replaces the weekly voting cycle with real-time allocation, so holders can steer AERO rewards toward liquidity pools and earn exchange revenue as it accrues, with a 47-hour cooldown on initial allocation changes.
Why the merger matters for Base and Optimism DeFi Aerodrome is the central trading and liquidity marketplace on Coinbase’s Base network, and Velodrome holds the equivalent role on Optimism; both were built by developer Dromos Labs on shared code. Aerodrome’s AERO token already anchors much of Base’s DeFi activity, and folding Velodrome’s liquidity into it creates one venue across seven chains instead of two competing ones.
The mechanics also shift how emissions are allocated. Today locked-token holders vote weekly to direct the next week’s rewards; under Aero, sAERO holders allocate in real time. Aerodrome has leaned on these incentives to steer liquidity, and the change is a bet that continuous allocation beats the weekly cycle.
Exchanges run their own schedules. Aero says it has coordinated the upgrade with major exchanges, and Binance confirmed on Oct. 16 that it will support the swap for its users.
What happens next The final voting round closes Oct. 21 at 6:59 p.m. ET, and the upgrade portals open an hour later. The new AERO contract address will be published through official Aero channels on launch day, and transfers and trading open at the moment of upgrade. Holders should confirm any address against those official channels before approving a transaction.
Frequently Asked Questions Do I need to do anything before the Aerodrome-Velodrome merger? Yes, if you self-custody AERO, VELO, veAERO or veVELO. Claim any unclaimed rewards and rebases, clear active votes, and bridge xVELO back to OP Mainnet before launch. Nothing migrates automatically.
What happens to my VELO tokens? Each VELO converts to about 0.044 new AERO, applied to both circulating and locked tokens. Complete the swap manually through the upgrade portal at velodrome.finance, which requires a small amount of ETH on OP Mainnet for fees.
When does the Aero merger launch? Aero launches Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. ET (Oct. 22, 00:00 UTC), when AERO and VELO emissions end and the upgrade portals open. Holders who voted in the final epoch can upgrade one hour later, at Oct. 22, 01:00 UTC.
Will my locked veAERO or veVELO carry over? Yes. veAERO and veVELO convert into sAERO, with remaining lock time rounded up to the next full week and permanent locks becoming maximum-duration stakes.
AUTHOR
Tokoni Uti is a Lagos-based writer with several years of experience. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Free Press and the San Diego Free press among others. She is a graduate of Bowen University.
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.
Ethoswarm
Heath Callahan works for Forkast.
Minds can also work for you.
Minds are persistent AI beings with instincts, identity, and a job.
Awaken one on Ethoswarm.
Hyperliquid burned 11,340 HYPE tokens over the past 24 hours.
According to OnchainLens monitoring, Hyperliquid purchased and burned 11,340 HYPE tokens at an average price of $78.55 over the past 24 hours. Its cumulative burn volume has now reached 49.63 million tokens, valued at approximately $3.9 billion, accounting for 4.96% of its maximum total supply of 1 billion tokens.
8 minutes ago
Ethereum falls below $2,400, with a 1.13% drop in 24 hours.
According to HTX market data, Ethereum has dropped below $2,400, recording a 1.13% decline in the past 24 hours.
8 minutes ago
Michael Saylor has once again released Bitcoin Tracker information, possibly signaling an increase in his BTC holdings.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor has once again shared updates related to its Bitcoin Tracker, stating, "We found room for more orange." Per established patterns, orange dots mark Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase records, so this move likely signals the company will increase its BTC holdings. Strategy typically discloses changes in its Bitcoin position the day after such announcements. On October 12, Strategy revealed it had added 250 BTC the prior week, bringing its dollar reserves down to $5.52 billion (a decrease of $193 million), while its total Bitcoin holdings rose to 848,250 BTC.
8 minutes ago
Strive's CEO released Bitcoin Tracker information, hinting that the company will announce another increase in its Bitcoin holdings.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strive CEO Matt Cole shared a Bitcoin holdings chart, captioned "Now stacking sats with double the horsepower", hinting that he will disclose data on the firm’s Bitcoin (BTC) additions next week. Strive recently added 2,822 BTC between October 12 and 13 at an average price of approximately $83,266 per coin. The acquisition cost $235 million, bringing the company’s total Bitcoin holdings to 35,600 coins.
8 minutes ago
Citrini's view: Yangtze Memory Technologies may go public as early as December this year, leading to a liquidity competition with Changxin.
Citrini analyst Jukan has shared a report from South Korean brokerage Hanwha Investment & Securities, which, following local research in China, concludes that Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is more likely to go public in December this year, rather than the mid-March next year timeline previously projected based on ChangXin Memory Technologies’ schedule. YMTC plans to raise approximately 33 billion yuan, a larger sum than ChangXin’s planned ~29.5 billion yuan. Of the total funds, around 20.8 billion yuan will be allocated to scaling mass production and constructing its Phase III production line, with the goal of boosting its NAND flash market share by 2027. Analyst Jukan points out that large-scale IPOs will temporarily siphon liquidity from existing tech stocks, leading investors to sell holdings including ChangXin to subscribe for the new offering. ChangXin currently has a tradable share float of just ~6.73%, and starting January 2027, approximately 2.24% of its total shares will be unlocked. Valued at the October 16 closing price, these unlocked shares are worth roughly 68.5 billion yuan; if the stock returns to its peak, that figure would rise to ~94 billion yuan, creating notable tradable share pressure.
8 minutes ago
DeepSeek announces API web search and scraping fees: 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests.
Beating AI News Flash: DeepSeek announced that its API now supports web search and crawling, with billing based on request volume, priced at 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests. Currently, when users utilize DeepSeek API in DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, or Codex, they access the Search/Fetch interface via server-side tool calls. These Search/Fetch calls are currently free of charge, and will be billed per use starting from 00:00 Beijing Time on November 1, 2026.
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.
Michael Saylor has once again released Bitcoin Tracker information, possibly signaling an increase in his BTC holdings.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor has once again shared updates related to its Bitcoin Tracker, stating, "We found room for more orange." Per established patterns, orange dots mark Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase records, so this move likely signals the company will increase its BTC holdings. Strategy typically discloses changes in its Bitcoin position the day after such announcements. On October 12, Strategy revealed it had added 250 BTC the prior week, bringing its dollar reserves down to $5.52 billion (a decrease of $193 million), while its total Bitcoin holdings rose to 848,250 BTC.
28 minutes ago
Strive's CEO released Bitcoin Tracker information, hinting that the company will announce another increase in its Bitcoin holdings.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strive CEO Matt Cole shared a Bitcoin holdings chart, captioned "Now stacking sats with double the horsepower", hinting that he will disclose data on the firm’s Bitcoin (BTC) additions next week. Strive recently added 2,822 BTC between October 12 and 13 at an average price of approximately $83,266 per coin. The acquisition cost $235 million, bringing the company’s total Bitcoin holdings to 35,600 coins.
28 minutes ago
Citrini's view: Yangtze Memory Technologies may go public as early as December this year, leading to a liquidity competition with Changxin.
Citrini analyst Jukan has shared a report from South Korean brokerage Hanwha Investment & Securities, which, following local research in China, concludes that Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is more likely to go public in December this year, rather than the mid-March next year timeline previously projected based on ChangXin Memory Technologies’ schedule. YMTC plans to raise approximately 33 billion yuan, a larger sum than ChangXin’s planned ~29.5 billion yuan. Of the total funds, around 20.8 billion yuan will be allocated to scaling mass production and constructing its Phase III production line, with the goal of boosting its NAND flash market share by 2027. Analyst Jukan points out that large-scale IPOs will temporarily siphon liquidity from existing tech stocks, leading investors to sell holdings including ChangXin to subscribe for the new offering. ChangXin currently has a tradable share float of just ~6.73%, and starting January 2027, approximately 2.24% of its total shares will be unlocked. Valued at the October 16 closing price, these unlocked shares are worth roughly 68.5 billion yuan; if the stock returns to its peak, that figure would rise to ~94 billion yuan, creating notable tradable share pressure.
28 minutes ago
DeepSeek announces API web search and scraping fees: 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests.
Beating AI News Flash: DeepSeek announced that its API now supports web search and crawling, with billing based on request volume, priced at 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests. Currently, when users utilize DeepSeek API in DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, or Codex, they access the Search/Fetch interface via server-side tool calls. These Search/Fetch calls are currently free of charge, and will be billed per use starting from 00:00 Beijing Time on November 1, 2026.
28 minutes ago
Viewpoint: Nearly 90% of Ethereum lending liquidations have taken atomic paths over the past year, and real-world assets (RWA) may shift to off-chain liquidations.
Analysis firm Sentora reported that 89% of the roughly $1.63 billion in liquidations on Ethereum lending platforms over the past year were settled via atomic paths. Atomic liquidations depend on decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity. Real World Asset (RWA) collateral, which features thin liquidity pools and whitelist transfer restrictions, will push more liquidations to shift to off-chain market makers, request for quote (RFQ), and solver paths. Atomic paths refer to liquidations that complete collateral liquidation and debt repayment within a single on-chain transaction, with common methods including flash loans, self-funded advances, or direct contract calls. By contrast, RWAs are often hard to offload immediately on DEXs, so liquidations will more frequently be handled by compliant off-chain market makers, who acquire the collateral via inquiry transactions and solvers before closing out positions.
28 minutes ago
Next Week's Macro Outlook: Federal Reserve Enters Blackout Period, Jensen Huang to Appear at GTC Berlin, Meta and Tesla's Earnings Reports Will Be the Market Focus
Last week, US tech stocks saw a sharp pullback, with the Nasdaq down over 4% for the week. While digesting stronger-than-expected inflation data, markets are re-examining the "unbreakable economy" narrative. The Federal Reserve has entered the pre-FOMC meeting blackout period ahead of the Oct 28 policy meeting, with no official remarks. This week’s asset pricing will hinge more on tech giants’ earnings and economic data: Meta and Tesla will release results, while the semiconductor and storage sectors also enter their earnings disclosure window. Friday’s preliminary PMI readings for the US and Europe, plus the final Michigan consumer confidence index, will test the interest rate hike path.
Geopolitically, Trump has suspended full-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia, setting a roughly 60-day review period. Disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and rising Middle East tensions continue to support oil price premiums.
Key events this week:
Tuesday: NVIDIA GTC Berlin kicks off (runs through Oct 22)
Wednesday: US API and EIA crude oil inventories for the week ended Oct 16; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote at GTC Berlin in the evening (Beijing time); US stocks enter a heavy earnings day, with Meta, Tesla, IBM, and Lam Research reporting results after market close
Thursday: US initial jobless claims for the week ended Oct 17; Nokia reports earnings before the US market opens, while Western Digital and MaxLinear report after close
Friday: Preliminary S&P Global US manufacturing and services PMI for October; final University of Michigan consumer confidence index and 1-year inflation expectations for October; September CPI and preliminary composite/manufacturing/services PMI for Japan, as markets gauge price trends ahead of the Bank of Japan’s Oct 30 policy meeting
Michael Saylor has once again released Bitcoin Tracker information, possibly signaling an increase in his BTC holdings.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor has once again shared updates related to its Bitcoin Tracker, stating, "We found room for more orange." Per established patterns, orange dots mark Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase records, so this move likely signals the company will increase its BTC holdings. Strategy typically discloses changes in its Bitcoin position the day after such announcements. On October 12, Strategy revealed it had added 250 BTC the prior week, bringing its dollar reserves down to $5.52 billion (a decrease of $193 million), while its total Bitcoin holdings rose to 848,250 BTC.
28 minutes ago
Strive's CEO released Bitcoin Tracker information, hinting that the company will announce another increase in its Bitcoin holdings.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strive CEO Matt Cole shared a Bitcoin holdings chart, captioned "Now stacking sats with double the horsepower", hinting that he will disclose data on the firm’s Bitcoin (BTC) additions next week. Strive recently added 2,822 BTC between October 12 and 13 at an average price of approximately $83,266 per coin. The acquisition cost $235 million, bringing the company’s total Bitcoin holdings to 35,600 coins.
28 minutes ago
Citrini's view: Yangtze Memory Technologies may go public as early as December this year, leading to a liquidity competition with Changxin.
Citrini analyst Jukan has shared a report from South Korean brokerage Hanwha Investment & Securities, which, following local research in China, concludes that Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is more likely to go public in December this year, rather than the mid-March next year timeline previously projected based on ChangXin Memory Technologies’ schedule. YMTC plans to raise approximately 33 billion yuan, a larger sum than ChangXin’s planned ~29.5 billion yuan. Of the total funds, around 20.8 billion yuan will be allocated to scaling mass production and constructing its Phase III production line, with the goal of boosting its NAND flash market share by 2027. Analyst Jukan points out that large-scale IPOs will temporarily siphon liquidity from existing tech stocks, leading investors to sell holdings including ChangXin to subscribe for the new offering. ChangXin currently has a tradable share float of just ~6.73%, and starting January 2027, approximately 2.24% of its total shares will be unlocked. Valued at the October 16 closing price, these unlocked shares are worth roughly 68.5 billion yuan; if the stock returns to its peak, that figure would rise to ~94 billion yuan, creating notable tradable share pressure.
28 minutes ago
DeepSeek announces API web search and scraping fees: 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests.
Beating AI News Flash: DeepSeek announced that its API now supports web search and crawling, with billing based on request volume, priced at 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests. Currently, when users utilize DeepSeek API in DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, or Codex, they access the Search/Fetch interface via server-side tool calls. These Search/Fetch calls are currently free of charge, and will be billed per use starting from 00:00 Beijing Time on November 1, 2026.
28 minutes ago
Viewpoint: Nearly 90% of Ethereum lending liquidations have taken atomic paths over the past year, and real-world assets (RWA) may shift to off-chain liquidations.
Analysis firm Sentora reported that 89% of the roughly $1.63 billion in liquidations on Ethereum lending platforms over the past year were settled via atomic paths. Atomic liquidations depend on decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity. Real World Asset (RWA) collateral, which features thin liquidity pools and whitelist transfer restrictions, will push more liquidations to shift to off-chain market makers, request for quote (RFQ), and solver paths. Atomic paths refer to liquidations that complete collateral liquidation and debt repayment within a single on-chain transaction, with common methods including flash loans, self-funded advances, or direct contract calls. By contrast, RWAs are often hard to offload immediately on DEXs, so liquidations will more frequently be handled by compliant off-chain market makers, who acquire the collateral via inquiry transactions and solvers before closing out positions.
28 minutes ago
Next Week's Macro Outlook: Federal Reserve Enters Blackout Period, Jensen Huang to Appear at GTC Berlin, Meta and Tesla's Earnings Reports Will Be the Market Focus
Last week, US tech stocks saw a sharp pullback, with the Nasdaq down over 4% for the week. While digesting stronger-than-expected inflation data, markets are re-examining the "unbreakable economy" narrative. The Federal Reserve has entered the pre-FOMC meeting blackout period ahead of the Oct 28 policy meeting, with no official remarks. This week’s asset pricing will hinge more on tech giants’ earnings and economic data: Meta and Tesla will release results, while the semiconductor and storage sectors also enter their earnings disclosure window. Friday’s preliminary PMI readings for the US and Europe, plus the final Michigan consumer confidence index, will test the interest rate hike path.
Geopolitically, Trump has suspended full-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia, setting a roughly 60-day review period. Disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and rising Middle East tensions continue to support oil price premiums.
Key events this week:
Tuesday: NVIDIA GTC Berlin kicks off (runs through Oct 22)
Wednesday: US API and EIA crude oil inventories for the week ended Oct 16; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote at GTC Berlin in the evening (Beijing time); US stocks enter a heavy earnings day, with Meta, Tesla, IBM, and Lam Research reporting results after market close
Thursday: US initial jobless claims for the week ended Oct 17; Nokia reports earnings before the US market opens, while Western Digital and MaxLinear report after close
Friday: Preliminary S&P Global US manufacturing and services PMI for October; final University of Michigan consumer confidence index and 1-year inflation expectations for October; September CPI and preliminary composite/manufacturing/services PMI for Japan, as markets gauge price trends ahead of the Bank of Japan’s Oct 30 policy meeting
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.
Fluxers! Zelcore 8.39.0 is out. It rebuilds Tax & CSV export from the ground up, brings a big set of Kaspa features including names, KRC-20 tokens and Ledger support, lets you free a FluxNode’s collateral instantly, adds InstaSwap with private and zero-knowledge swaps, and opens the migration for FLUX on Ergo.
Tax & CSV export, rebuilt Tax season is where wallets usually let you down. This release fixes that properly.
One export for every coin. Open it from the Export CSV button on any coin, or from Tax & CSV export in the wallet menu. Choose the wallets, coins and period, and save one combined file or one file per coin.
Complete history. The export now reads each address’s history all the way to the end, rather than stopping after one page. Fees are counted for the wallet that paid them, contract calls, internal transfers and both sides of a swap are written out, and every row is valued from full price history. Anything Zelcore cannot price or classify is flagged — never dropped, and never quietly valued at zero. Cosmos Hub, Osmosis, Cardano, Sui and BNB Beacon Chain can now be exported too.
Templates for your tax tool. Ready-made layouts for Koinly, CoinTracker, CoinLedger, CoinTracking, Blockpit, ZenLedger, TokenTax and eleven more, plus neutral and accountant layouts — each following the tool’s own published sample file. Save as CSV, XLSX or JSON. The Zelcore classic and Koinly layouts are free for everyone; the other tool layouts, fiat values and custom mappings come with Zelcore+.
Your own mappings. Add, reorder and rename columns, set the date format, timezone, decimal separator and sign convention, and preview the result against your own history. For tools that sync by address, you can export a list of your public addresses — never any keys.
Private and fast. The export dialog lists every server it will contact, and an encrypted cache on your device means a repeat export only reads what is new.
Kaspa, all the way Kaspa names. Send KAS or KRC-20 tokens to a KNS name such as alice.kas. The resolved address is shown under the name before you can send. KRC-20 tokens. Tokens your wallet holds are discovered for you, and verification shows a token’s logo, decimals, supply and minting state before you import it. Kaspa on Ledger. Import a Kaspa address from a Ledger device and send KAS. UTXO consolidation. With more than 80 UTXOs, one tap merges them, showing the count and total fee before you sign. Live and complete. Incoming payments appear within seconds, Load More reaches older history, KRC-20 screens list transfers, mints and trades, and Sign Message works with Kaspa addresses. KCC tokens at your address are found and shown with balance, supply and history, and the Igra bridge can now move iKAS back to KAS. Free a FluxNode’s collateral instantly Deleting a FluxNode in Zelcore now frees its collateral at once, with no transaction, and the node stays deleted across restarts. The freed collateral appears under Available to lock, with a Lock button ready when you want to put it back to work.
The FluxNode map is rebuilt too: faster, theme-aware and smooth to zoom. Hover a location to see its nodes, click a country to filter, and switch on Only my nodes to see just yours.
InstaSwap: private and zero-knowledge swaps InstaSwap joins Zelcore as a swap provider in three forms: InstaSwap routes your swap through decentralized exchanges; InstaSwap Private makes the deposit and payout impossible to link on chain; and InstaSwap ZK settles through a zero-knowledge shielded pool. Badges on each offer show which kind you are looking at.
FLUX on Ergo comes home In Fusion, holders of FLUX on Ergo at block 1,878,291 can now migrate it 1:1 to the Flux main chain, with no fee. We wrote a step-by-step guide: Claims for FLUX on Ergo Are Open.
Faster, lighter, everywhere Half the code at launch. Zelcore loads less than half as much code at startup; support for some chains now loads the first time you use them. Hardware wallets, front and centre. Hardware Wallet now sits in the import menu without the Experimental label, and actions a hardware wallet cannot sign are hidden or refused clearly rather than failing part-way. Ledger sends now wait patiently for your approval on the device. Every language complete. All 18 languages now cover every screen, with about 27,000 translations added and 5,000 improved. CumulusVPN in Apps, alongside FluxDrive and the other Flux network apps. Get it Zelcore updates itself on desktop, and the latest version is at zelcore.io/download.
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.
SUI trades at $0.9796, down 2.74% in 24 hours and 10.74% over seven days.
Expert More Crypto Online identifies $0.929 as the next support within SUI’s descending wedge pattern.
Analyst Giannis Andreou marks 0.85–0.86 as support, with $0.66 as the chart’s invalidation level.
SUI must reclaim $1.04 and $1.34 before higher resistance levels enter focus.
Sui (SUI) is trading near $0.98 as selling pressure continues across the altcoin market. CoinGecko data puts SUI at $0.9796, down 2.74% over 24 hours and 10.74% over the week.
Technical analysts are watching support levels as the token continues to form lower lows.
More Crypto Online identifies $0.929 as the next critical support within a descending wedge pattern. Meanwhile, Giannis Andreou’s weekly analysis identifies $0.85 to $0.86 as another important downside zone.
The charts show SUI trading far below its previous highs above $5. However, any recovery must overcome several resistance levels before the broader bearish structure changes.
The immediate focus remains on whether buyers can defend support or selling pressure pushes prices lower.
SUI Price Analysis: Why $0.929 Matters
More Crypto Online’s analysis on X identifies $0.929 as the next support level for SUI.
The accompanying one-hour Coinbase chart places the 50% Fibonacci retracement at approximately $0.9294. SUI was trading near $0.9868 on that chart, leaving support below the observed price.
$SUI
Altcoins are still struggling and SUI is still forming lower lows. SUI is forming a descending wedge and the next support level is located at $0.929. pic.twitter.com/YrkhPbX79z
— More Crypto Online (@Morecryptoonl) October 18, 2026
A descending wedge forms when price moves between downward-sloping trendlines that gradually converge. Traders monitor these patterns for potential breakouts, although the formation alone does not confirm a reversal. SUI’s continued lower lows suggest sellers remain in control of the current price structure.
The $0.929 level therefore represents a nearby technical area to watch. A sustained move below it could expose lower support, although the supplied analysis does not establish the next downside target. Conversely, a recovery would need buying pressure and resistance breaks to strengthen the bullish case.
CoinGecko’s figures reinforce the weakness visible on the charts. SUI’s 24-hour trading volume stands at $645,383,763, alongside its weekly decline of 10.74%.
Volume provides market activity context, but these figures alone cannot establish whether selling pressure is about to ease.
SUI price on CoinGecko
SUI Price Analysis: Can Buyers Reclaim $1.04?
Giannis Andreou’s weekly chart identifies $1.04 as the first resistance level SUI needs to reclaim.
The latest weekly candle faced rejection near $1.14 before falling below that threshold. Resistance at $1.34 presents the next major hurdle for any sustained recovery.
On the downside, Andreou highlights $0.85 to $0.86 as an immediate support zone. A sustained weekly close below this region would weaken the recovery scenario and expose the marked $0.66 invalidation level. These levels represent chart-based scenarios rather than guaranteed price outcomes.
📊 $SUI WEEKLY ANALYSIS: THE RECOVERY HAS SEVERAL LEVELS TO CLEAR$SUI is trading around $0.99 on this chart, following a prolonged decline from above $5. The major descending trendline remains overhead, so the broader bearish structure has not yet been reversed.
The latest… pic.twitter.com/HwUGbjvQah
— Giannis Andreou (@gandreou007) October 17, 2026
A stronger recovery would require SUI to reclaim $1.34 and establish support above it. The chart then identifies $1.80 and $2.35 as subsequent resistance levels.
A break above the descending trendline would provide additional evidence that the longer-term structure is improving.
Beyond $2.35, Andreou’s chart marks $3.92 as another resistance level, followed by previous highs above $5. However, these targets belong to a longer-term bullish scenario, not an established price trajectory.
The immediate distinction is between holding support and confirming a reversal. SUI must first navigate the $0.929 level highlighted by More Crypto Online and the lower $0.85 to $0.86 zone identified by Andreou.
Until resistance levels are reclaimed, the prevailing bearish structure remains intact.
SUI faces several technical hurdles despite the possibility of a recovery. Support near $0.929 is the immediate focus, while $1.04 and $1.34 are important upside levels to monitor.
Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
According to Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter, Hoodi is the final testnet before Glamsterdam reaches mainnet. The upgrade is expected to bring a major change to Ethereum's gas limit, with the proposed increase taking it from 60 million to 200 million.
That would represent a roughly 3.3-fold increase, potentially allowing more computation and transactions to be included in each block, depending on their gas requirements.
Hoodi is the final testnet before mainnet. With Glamsterdam going live soon, Ethereum will 3.3x its gas limit, from 60M to 200M. From there, 300M feels like a realistic next step.
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— Toni Wahrstätter ⟠ (@nero_eth) October 18, 2026 Following its activation on Sepolia on October 6, the Glamsterdam network upgrade is now scheduled for the Hoodi testnet. Glamsterdam advances Ethereum's L1 scaling roadmap with enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and gas pricing changes that better reflect the cost of execution and state growth.
The Glamsterdam network upgrade will activate on Hoodi at epoch 132,352, slot 4,235,264 (October 26, 2026, 17:42:48 UTC). At the same epoch, Hoodi's gas limit will be raised to 200 million via the gas limit schedule, matching the Sepolia testnet.
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Wahrstätter suggested that 300 million for Ethereum's gas limit could become a realistic next step after the proposed 200 million target. However, that figure should be treated as a potential future milestone rather than a confirmed part of the Glamsterdam upgrade.
According to Ethereum developers, the mainnet activation time for the Glamsterdam upgrade will be announced once decided by client teams.
Hegotá eyes 2027 launchPreparations for Hegotá are shaping up as Glamsterdam nears the final mile. According to Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Hegota—the fork planned for next year—may likely be Ethereum's last "normal" fork, with features and technology that would be recognizable to someone from 2015.
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Everything after that involves recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making it all quantum-safe. With PeerDAS, Ethereum began its transition from being just a blockchain to something much more powerful.
Starting after Hegotá, this transformation becomes Ethereum's primary story. The outcome: a cryptographic world computer. According to Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter, 23 EIPs are being considered for Hegotá, with two headliners (FOCIL and Frame Transactions).
Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Monero is climbing again. XMR trades close to $555 after a daily gain of approximately 4%, and the price is now pressing against a Fibonacci resistance line at $558. Buyers have been in control for weeks, and the move is starting to look like more than a brief bounce.
XMR's Unexpected Jump UpThe rally took off in August, when XMR jumped 43% in a single month and passed $500 for the first time since January. The price first broke above the $410 level, which had held back every attempt for months. A THORChain upgrade helped, as it lets users swap XMR across chains without a central exchange.
Supply being squeezedThat matters for a coin that is being pushed off many large platforms. Investors also moved coins into private wallets instead of selling, which leaves less supply on exchanges.
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XMR/USDT Chart by TradingViewThe test now is $558. A confirmed break above that line could send the price back to $575. A larger breakout would need XMR to hold above $575 and keep building higher lows. If buyers fail at $558, the $500 area is the first support to watch. It was resistance for a long time and now works as a floor. A drop below it would show that the trend is losing strength.
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There are reasons to stay cautious. In August, XMR swaps on ChangeNOW grew only 1.43% while the price rose 43%. That means the price ran faster than actual use. Past rallies also delivered spikes in social interest and heavy leverage, which often show up near short-term tops. In August, a whale opened a 4x leveraged long position worth approximately $14 million. Big bets like this can fuel a rise, but they can also cause sharp drops if they are closed in a hurry.
Privacy demand is thereRegulation is the bigger long-term concern. EU law is pushing licensed exchanges to phase out Monero by 2027. That could reduce access and liquidity over time, even though demand for privacy coins remains strong.
The trend is up and the setup is clear. Bulls need a daily close above $558 to target $575 and beyond. Bears need a break below $500 to change the story. Until one side wins, XMR is likely to keep moving in sharp swings around this zone.
Analyst: Bitcoin’s MVRV percentile drops below 30, still aligning with the characteristics of an accumulation zone.
Crypto analyst Darkfost posted that after Bitcoin hit resistance near $87,000, the MVRV percentile fell back below 30, marking a return to the post-market capitulation transition phase. He argues the current valuation still aligns with the traits of an accumulation zone. Darkfost explains that MVRV is used to compare Bitcoin’s market capitalization with its realized capitalization, where the latter is calculated based on the price of each BTC at the time of its most recent on-chain transfer. His approach does not rely solely on the raw MVRV value; instead, he measures the current value’s relative position in its historical evolution to reduce the impact of Bitcoin’s structural shifts and market cycles on indicator interpretation, while analyzing it within the current market environment. He points out that Bitcoin has only been at this valuation level roughly 25% of the time in its history. Though it has now exited the extreme undervaluation zone that historically always coincided with market lows, it still fits the characteristics of a typical historical accumulation zone.
2 minutes ago
A trader went long on $11.36 million worth of ZEC and $4.82 million worth of ETH.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, ZEC has corrected by over 24% in the past month. Trader solanadoomer (@Boomer) still holds ZEC long positions worth approximately $11.36 million, ranking 4th on ZEC’s long position leaderboard. His ZEC long positions use 10x leverage, holding 10,000 ZEC with an average entry price of $1,146.86, and currently have an unrealized loss of around $85,000. Additionally, the trader holds 25x leveraged long positions of 2,000 ETH, with a position value of roughly $4.82 million, average entry price of $2,376.18, and an unrealized profit of about $68,000.
2 minutes ago
Analyst at Tom Lee's fund: Now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but diversification is needed.
Mark Newton, an analyst at Tom Lee’s fund, told CNBC that now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but investors need to stay diversified and prepare for sector rotation. Over the past month, cross-asset volatility has risen sharply; the S&P 500 has pulled back roughly 6% recently, and the tech sector has seen a notable correction in the past week. Still, compared to its September rally, he notes tech stocks have suffered relatively limited losses. This year, the market has consistently exhibited sector rotation: the energy sector first rallied nearly 40%, gains then spread to tech, and the trend has now shifted to the healthcare sector, which is hitting record highs. Investors should prepare for sector shifts and maintain diversified portfolios. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, warned that even if investors do not actively allocate to AI, they may hold significant tech exposure via S&P 500 index funds. The market remains dominated by sector rotation for now, but he is concerned about continued declines in tech stocks and investors starting to question the returns on AI investments.
2 minutes ago
Elon Musk: Optimus and Cybercab will make up the vast majority of Tesla's value in the future.
Elon Musk posted on X that Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot) and Cybercab (self-driving taxi) will constitute the vast majority of Tesla’s future value. He noted that the only sectors capable of large-scale economic expansion are superintelligence, robotics, solar energy, and space transportation, adding that once superintelligence and robotics are achieved, progress in other areas will follow. When discussing the Roadster, Musk stated: "But the Roadster is very cool, so we will still produce it."
2 minutes ago
Reason Enables Claude Code and Codex to Assign Tasks Across Computers: They Can Communicate With Each Other, But Still Cannot Automatically Prevent Code Conflicts
Beating AI Flash News: Y Combinator-backed AI coding startup Reason has launched Reason Network, enabling cross-device direct communication and task assignment between agents from different vendors including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. For example, users can have Grok Bot assign tasks to Claude Code on their own device, then Codex on a colleague’s machine to review code. Agents send and receive messages directly, eliminating the need for constant human intermediation. Its core is a real-time updated agent contact list, where developers can see which team agents are online, which repository they’re modifying, what branch they’re using, and their current status. Agents like Claude Code and Codex can receive messages directly in existing sessions, no need to start a new chat. Each device runs a lightweight background process, enabling direct communication within the same local area network (LAN). For cross-network communication, it prioritizes peer-to-peer (P2P) connections, falling back to encrypted relays if direct connections fail. However, the code conflict prevention Reason advertises is not yet fully implemented. GitHub design docs show the feature to automatically detect multiple agents modifying the same file simultaneously is still in development. At present, the platform relies on shared work status to let agents coordinate proactively, rather than automatically preventing code overwrites. Reason Network’s underlying communication engine is built with Rust, derived from the existing open-source project tincan, and licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.
2 minutes ago
Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $228.4 million this week, with IBIT posting the largest net outflow.
According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a combined net outflow of $228.4 million this week. Specifically, IBIT saw a net outflow of $165.4 million, FBTC recorded a net outflow of $60.2 million, BTC had a net outflow of $7.6 million, and BTCO posted a net outflow of $4.1 million. Meanwhile, MSBT and BITB notched net inflows of $6.7 million and $2.2 million respectively.
Analyst: Bitcoin’s MVRV percentile drops below 30, still aligning with the characteristics of an accumulation zone.
Crypto analyst Darkfost posted that after Bitcoin hit resistance near $87,000, the MVRV percentile fell back below 30, marking a return to the post-market capitulation transition phase. He argues the current valuation still aligns with the traits of an accumulation zone. Darkfost explains that MVRV is used to compare Bitcoin’s market capitalization with its realized capitalization, where the latter is calculated based on the price of each BTC at the time of its most recent on-chain transfer. His approach does not rely solely on the raw MVRV value; instead, he measures the current value’s relative position in its historical evolution to reduce the impact of Bitcoin’s structural shifts and market cycles on indicator interpretation, while analyzing it within the current market environment. He points out that Bitcoin has only been at this valuation level roughly 25% of the time in its history. Though it has now exited the extreme undervaluation zone that historically always coincided with market lows, it still fits the characteristics of a typical historical accumulation zone.
1 minutes ago
A trader went long on $11.36 million worth of ZEC and $4.82 million worth of ETH.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, ZEC has corrected by over 24% in the past month. Trader solanadoomer (@Boomer) still holds ZEC long positions worth approximately $11.36 million, ranking 4th on ZEC’s long position leaderboard. His ZEC long positions use 10x leverage, holding 10,000 ZEC with an average entry price of $1,146.86, and currently have an unrealized loss of around $85,000. Additionally, the trader holds 25x leveraged long positions of 2,000 ETH, with a position value of roughly $4.82 million, average entry price of $2,376.18, and an unrealized profit of about $68,000.
1 minutes ago
Analyst at Tom Lee's fund: Now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but diversification is needed.
Mark Newton, an analyst at Tom Lee’s fund, told CNBC that now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but investors need to stay diversified and prepare for sector rotation. Over the past month, cross-asset volatility has risen sharply; the S&P 500 has pulled back roughly 6% recently, and the tech sector has seen a notable correction in the past week. Still, compared to its September rally, he notes tech stocks have suffered relatively limited losses. This year, the market has consistently exhibited sector rotation: the energy sector first rallied nearly 40%, gains then spread to tech, and the trend has now shifted to the healthcare sector, which is hitting record highs. Investors should prepare for sector shifts and maintain diversified portfolios. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, warned that even if investors do not actively allocate to AI, they may hold significant tech exposure via S&P 500 index funds. The market remains dominated by sector rotation for now, but he is concerned about continued declines in tech stocks and investors starting to question the returns on AI investments.
1 minutes ago
Elon Musk: Optimus and Cybercab will make up the vast majority of Tesla's value in the future.
Elon Musk posted on X that Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot) and Cybercab (self-driving taxi) will constitute the vast majority of Tesla’s future value. He noted that the only sectors capable of large-scale economic expansion are superintelligence, robotics, solar energy, and space transportation, adding that once superintelligence and robotics are achieved, progress in other areas will follow. When discussing the Roadster, Musk stated: "But the Roadster is very cool, so we will still produce it."
1 minutes ago
Reason Enables Claude Code and Codex to Assign Tasks Across Computers: They Can Communicate With Each Other, But Still Cannot Automatically Prevent Code Conflicts
Beating AI Flash News: Y Combinator-backed AI coding startup Reason has launched Reason Network, enabling cross-device direct communication and task assignment between agents from different vendors including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. For example, users can have Grok Bot assign tasks to Claude Code on their own device, then Codex on a colleague’s machine to review code. Agents send and receive messages directly, eliminating the need for constant human intermediation. Its core is a real-time updated agent contact list, where developers can see which team agents are online, which repository they’re modifying, what branch they’re using, and their current status. Agents like Claude Code and Codex can receive messages directly in existing sessions, no need to start a new chat. Each device runs a lightweight background process, enabling direct communication within the same local area network (LAN). For cross-network communication, it prioritizes peer-to-peer (P2P) connections, falling back to encrypted relays if direct connections fail. However, the code conflict prevention Reason advertises is not yet fully implemented. GitHub design docs show the feature to automatically detect multiple agents modifying the same file simultaneously is still in development. At present, the platform relies on shared work status to let agents coordinate proactively, rather than automatically preventing code overwrites. Reason Network’s underlying communication engine is built with Rust, derived from the existing open-source project tincan, and licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.
1 minutes ago
Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $228.4 million this week, with IBIT posting the largest net outflow.
According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a combined net outflow of $228.4 million this week. Specifically, IBIT saw a net outflow of $165.4 million, FBTC recorded a net outflow of $60.2 million, BTC had a net outflow of $7.6 million, and BTCO posted a net outflow of $4.1 million. Meanwhile, MSBT and BITB notched net inflows of $6.7 million and $2.2 million respectively.
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.
A trader went long on $11.36 million worth of ZEC and $4.82 million worth of ETH.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, ZEC has corrected by over 24% in the past month. Trader solanadoomer (@Boomer) still holds ZEC long positions worth approximately $11.36 million, ranking 4th on ZEC’s long position leaderboard. His ZEC long positions use 10x leverage, holding 10,000 ZEC with an average entry price of $1,146.86, and currently have an unrealized loss of around $85,000. Additionally, the trader holds 25x leveraged long positions of 2,000 ETH, with a position value of roughly $4.82 million, average entry price of $2,376.18, and an unrealized profit of about $68,000.
37 minutes ago
Analyst at Tom Lee's fund: Now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but diversification is needed.
Mark Newton, an analyst at Tom Lee’s fund, told CNBC that now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but investors need to stay diversified and prepare for sector rotation. Over the past month, cross-asset volatility has risen sharply; the S&P 500 has pulled back roughly 6% recently, and the tech sector has seen a notable correction in the past week. Still, compared to its September rally, he notes tech stocks have suffered relatively limited losses. This year, the market has consistently exhibited sector rotation: the energy sector first rallied nearly 40%, gains then spread to tech, and the trend has now shifted to the healthcare sector, which is hitting record highs. Investors should prepare for sector shifts and maintain diversified portfolios. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, warned that even if investors do not actively allocate to AI, they may hold significant tech exposure via S&P 500 index funds. The market remains dominated by sector rotation for now, but he is concerned about continued declines in tech stocks and investors starting to question the returns on AI investments.
37 minutes ago
Elon Musk: Optimus and Cybercab will make up the vast majority of Tesla's value in the future.
Elon Musk posted on X that Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot) and Cybercab (self-driving taxi) will constitute the vast majority of Tesla’s future value. He noted that the only sectors capable of large-scale economic expansion are superintelligence, robotics, solar energy, and space transportation, adding that once superintelligence and robotics are achieved, progress in other areas will follow. When discussing the Roadster, Musk stated: "But the Roadster is very cool, so we will still produce it."
37 minutes ago
Reason Enables Claude Code and Codex to Assign Tasks Across Computers: They Can Communicate With Each Other, But Still Cannot Automatically Prevent Code Conflicts
Beating AI Flash News: Y Combinator-backed AI coding startup Reason has launched Reason Network, enabling cross-device direct communication and task assignment between agents from different vendors including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. For example, users can have Grok Bot assign tasks to Claude Code on their own device, then Codex on a colleague’s machine to review code. Agents send and receive messages directly, eliminating the need for constant human intermediation. Its core is a real-time updated agent contact list, where developers can see which team agents are online, which repository they’re modifying, what branch they’re using, and their current status. Agents like Claude Code and Codex can receive messages directly in existing sessions, no need to start a new chat. Each device runs a lightweight background process, enabling direct communication within the same local area network (LAN). For cross-network communication, it prioritizes peer-to-peer (P2P) connections, falling back to encrypted relays if direct connections fail. However, the code conflict prevention Reason advertises is not yet fully implemented. GitHub design docs show the feature to automatically detect multiple agents modifying the same file simultaneously is still in development. At present, the platform relies on shared work status to let agents coordinate proactively, rather than automatically preventing code overwrites. Reason Network’s underlying communication engine is built with Rust, derived from the existing open-source project tincan, and licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.
37 minutes ago
Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $228.4 million this week, with IBIT posting the largest net outflow.
According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a combined net outflow of $228.4 million this week. Specifically, IBIT saw a net outflow of $165.4 million, FBTC recorded a net outflow of $60.2 million, BTC had a net outflow of $7.6 million, and BTCO posted a net outflow of $4.1 million. Meanwhile, MSBT and BITB notched net inflows of $6.7 million and $2.2 million respectively.
37 minutes ago
Anthropic has turned to lawyers to explore how AI agents can negotiate and close deals on behalf of users.
Beating AI Express: According to a Financial Times report, Anthropic is consulting law firms to explore how AI agents can negotiate on behalf of users to secure better terms, covering scenarios including haggling over goods, resolving customer service disputes, and salary negotiations. The company is positioning agent development at the core of its future strategy.
Two sources familiar with the matter said Anthropic aims to understand how lawyers balance representing clients’ interests with fair outcomes, and use that insight to develop negotiation norms for agents with conflicting goals. The firm is also weighing how much human feedback agents should solicit, and how to guard against other agents without becoming overly suspicious. One approach under exploration is requiring users to provide signed documents that outline agents’ authorized tasks and mandatory rules.
Anthropic has run multiple agent negotiation experiments involving real goods and funds this year. In a September book deal trial, employees gave agents a preference-sorted book list, letting them negotiate and finalize deals with other parties’ agents. The results showed agents instructed to use a “ruthless” strategy held a slight advantage; more cooperative agents, by contrast, would accept lower-preference books to ensure every participant received a book.
Separately, Michelle Vaccaro, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, has conducted over 180,000 agent negotiation studies covering scenarios like employment contracts and lease negotiations. In one case, an agent attempted to trick its counterpart into leaking private information via prompt injection. She warned that if the most capable AI agents are primarily accessed by resource-rich entities, it could further widen the gap in negotiating power.
Anthropic declined to comment on the report.
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has received a junk credit rating, raising questions about the risks behind the AI investment boom. Bitcoin advocates see a much bigger problem emerging in traditional finance.
Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigned Anthropic a BB+ rating in June, although the assessment only became public in October.
BB+ sits one level below investment grade. In simple terms, it means lending to the company carries greater credit risk than lending to higher-rated borrowers.
Investors therefore demand higher returns to compensate.
The rating also covered $4.4 billion in junior debt within Anthropic’s $35 billion AI chip financing deal. That debt offered roughly 8.5% in annual yield, compared with 5.75% on senior debt backed by Broadcom.
But why should Bitcoin investors care about an AI company’s credit rating?
Why Anthropic’s Rating Has Sparked a Bitcoin DebateThe issue extends beyond Anthropic. US government borrowing costs are also climbing, challenging how investors think about safe assets.
The 10-year Treasury yield crossed 5.3% in early October, reaching a 24-year high.
Higher yields mean existing bonds lose market value. Investors selling before maturity can suffer losses, even on government debt.
ParaFi investor Jeff Park highlighted these developments, questioning the traditional 60/40 portfolio, which allocates 60% to stocks and 40% to bonds for stability.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back went further.
His argument is that every investment should be judged against the potential return from holding Bitcoin.
However, Bitcoin’s volatility complicates that comparison. Government bonds still carry much lower default risk, while Bitcoin offers no guaranteed returns.
Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo has also warned that a Bitcoin-based economy could face slower growth as debt becomes harder to repay.
Meanwhile, bond ETFs have attracted record inflows, suggesting investors still value fixed-income assets.
Anthropic’s rating has given Bitcoin supporters fresh ammunition. Whether that argument persuades traditional investors remains an open question.
A trader went long on $11.36 million worth of ZEC and $4.82 million worth of ETH.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, ZEC has corrected by over 24% in the past month. Trader solanadoomer (@Boomer) still holds ZEC long positions worth approximately $11.36 million, ranking 4th on ZEC’s long position leaderboard. His ZEC long positions use 10x leverage, holding 10,000 ZEC with an average entry price of $1,146.86, and currently have an unrealized loss of around $85,000. Additionally, the trader holds 25x leveraged long positions of 2,000 ETH, with a position value of roughly $4.82 million, average entry price of $2,376.18, and an unrealized profit of about $68,000.
37 minutes ago
Analyst at Tom Lee's fund: Now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but diversification is needed.
Mark Newton, an analyst at Tom Lee’s fund, told CNBC that now is a good time to buy tech stocks on dips, but investors need to stay diversified and prepare for sector rotation. Over the past month, cross-asset volatility has risen sharply; the S&P 500 has pulled back roughly 6% recently, and the tech sector has seen a notable correction in the past week. Still, compared to its September rally, he notes tech stocks have suffered relatively limited losses. This year, the market has consistently exhibited sector rotation: the energy sector first rallied nearly 40%, gains then spread to tech, and the trend has now shifted to the healthcare sector, which is hitting record highs. Investors should prepare for sector shifts and maintain diversified portfolios. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, warned that even if investors do not actively allocate to AI, they may hold significant tech exposure via S&P 500 index funds. The market remains dominated by sector rotation for now, but he is concerned about continued declines in tech stocks and investors starting to question the returns on AI investments.
37 minutes ago
Elon Musk: Optimus and Cybercab will make up the vast majority of Tesla's value in the future.
Elon Musk posted on X that Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot) and Cybercab (self-driving taxi) will constitute the vast majority of Tesla’s future value. He noted that the only sectors capable of large-scale economic expansion are superintelligence, robotics, solar energy, and space transportation, adding that once superintelligence and robotics are achieved, progress in other areas will follow. When discussing the Roadster, Musk stated: "But the Roadster is very cool, so we will still produce it."
37 minutes ago
Reason Enables Claude Code and Codex to Assign Tasks Across Computers: They Can Communicate With Each Other, But Still Cannot Automatically Prevent Code Conflicts
Beating AI Flash News: Y Combinator-backed AI coding startup Reason has launched Reason Network, enabling cross-device direct communication and task assignment between agents from different vendors including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. For example, users can have Grok Bot assign tasks to Claude Code on their own device, then Codex on a colleague’s machine to review code. Agents send and receive messages directly, eliminating the need for constant human intermediation. Its core is a real-time updated agent contact list, where developers can see which team agents are online, which repository they’re modifying, what branch they’re using, and their current status. Agents like Claude Code and Codex can receive messages directly in existing sessions, no need to start a new chat. Each device runs a lightweight background process, enabling direct communication within the same local area network (LAN). For cross-network communication, it prioritizes peer-to-peer (P2P) connections, falling back to encrypted relays if direct connections fail. However, the code conflict prevention Reason advertises is not yet fully implemented. GitHub design docs show the feature to automatically detect multiple agents modifying the same file simultaneously is still in development. At present, the platform relies on shared work status to let agents coordinate proactively, rather than automatically preventing code overwrites. Reason Network’s underlying communication engine is built with Rust, derived from the existing open-source project tincan, and licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.
37 minutes ago
Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $228.4 million this week, with IBIT posting the largest net outflow.
According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a combined net outflow of $228.4 million this week. Specifically, IBIT saw a net outflow of $165.4 million, FBTC recorded a net outflow of $60.2 million, BTC had a net outflow of $7.6 million, and BTCO posted a net outflow of $4.1 million. Meanwhile, MSBT and BITB notched net inflows of $6.7 million and $2.2 million respectively.
37 minutes ago
Anthropic has turned to lawyers to explore how AI agents can negotiate and close deals on behalf of users.
Beating AI Express: According to a Financial Times report, Anthropic is consulting law firms to explore how AI agents can negotiate on behalf of users to secure better terms, covering scenarios including haggling over goods, resolving customer service disputes, and salary negotiations. The company is positioning agent development at the core of its future strategy.
Two sources familiar with the matter said Anthropic aims to understand how lawyers balance representing clients’ interests with fair outcomes, and use that insight to develop negotiation norms for agents with conflicting goals. The firm is also weighing how much human feedback agents should solicit, and how to guard against other agents without becoming overly suspicious. One approach under exploration is requiring users to provide signed documents that outline agents’ authorized tasks and mandatory rules.
Anthropic has run multiple agent negotiation experiments involving real goods and funds this year. In a September book deal trial, employees gave agents a preference-sorted book list, letting them negotiate and finalize deals with other parties’ agents. The results showed agents instructed to use a “ruthless” strategy held a slight advantage; more cooperative agents, by contrast, would accept lower-preference books to ensure every participant received a book.
Separately, Michelle Vaccaro, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, has conducted over 180,000 agent negotiation studies covering scenarios like employment contracts and lease negotiations. In one case, an agent attempted to trick its counterpart into leaking private information via prompt injection. She warned that if the most capable AI agents are primarily accessed by resource-rich entities, it could further widen the gap in negotiating power.
Anthropic declined to comment on the report.
