📰 NEWS DIGEST — September 30, 2026
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🏛️ Regulation & Policy
UK’s FCA Opens Crypto Authorization Gateway with February 2027 Deadline
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has opened its authorization gateway for crypto businesses, requiring all firms operating in the UK to submit applications by February 28, 2027. This new regulatory framework, which formally takes effect on October 25, 2027, will bring more crypto activities like trading, staking, and custody under FCA oversight, emphasizing consumer protection, market integrity, and financial resilience. Even crypto firms previously registered under AML regulations must reapply.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23566

Illinois Proposes Digital Asset Tax Including Stablecoins, Exempting NFTs
The Illinois Department of Revenue has released draft regulations for its 0.2% digital asset transaction tax, clarifying that stablecoins will be subject to the tax while NFTs will be exempt. While most DeFi transactions remain untaxed, those involving platform operation and maintenance fees will be taxable. Cross-chain bridge services via brokers and self-custody wallet withdrawals with exchange fees are also included.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369716

Stand With Crypto Endorses Senate Candidates Following Failed Clarity Vote
The crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto has announced its first round of Senate endorsements, coming after the CLARITY Act, which aimed to establish federal regulations for crypto markets, failed in a Senate vote. This move signals a strategic shift towards backing pro-crypto candidates following legislative setbacks, highlighting the industry's focus on political engagement to advance regulatory clarity.
→ https://t.me/TheBlock001/7512

Former NY Governor Warns of Regulatory Reversal if Democrats Win Congress
Andrew Cuomo, former New York Governor and OKX board member, stated that current crypto regulatory progress could be overturned if the Democratic Party gains control of Congress in the midterm elections. He emphasized that regulations set by agencies are less stable than those established through legislation, suggesting that a new Congress might scrutinize and potentially reverse existing agency rules.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369772

CFTC Investigates Kalshi over Former Congressman's Prediction Market Trades
The CFTC is investigating former Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger for his prediction market trades on Kalshi between December 2024 and January 2025, specifically regarding whether he would receive a presidential pardon. Kinzinger admitted to making the trades, which generated an $823 profit, and claims he reviewed Kalshi's rules and was not an insider, having left office two years prior. Kalshi prohibits users from trading on events where they are a direct participant, and the CFTC forbids trading on non-public information.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369780

China Busts Crypto Money Laundering Ring Using "Free Credit Card Repayment" Lure
Chinese authorities in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, have dismantled a virtual currency money laundering ring that lured individuals with promises of "free credit card repayments" in exchange for using their accounts. The group processed funds from overseas gambling and telecom fraud, converting them into virtual currencies for international transfers. The investigation identified nearly 1,000 implicated accounts across multiple provinces, highlighting the increasing use of virtual currencies in illicit financial activities.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369737

🤖 AI & Tech
OpenAI Introduces "Dots": Always-On GPT-6 Astra Agents Across 4,000+ Apps
OpenAI has announced "Dots," a new generation of always-on GPT-6 Astra agents designed to operate seamlessly across over 4,000 applications. These agents aim to provide continuous, integrated AI assistance across a broad digital ecosystem. This move marks a significant step towards more pervasive and assistive AI.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23564

InstaCloud Secures $8M Seed Funding for Agent-Native Serverless Cloud
InstaCloud, a YC-backed startup, has raised $8 million in seed funding to build an agent-native serverless cloud platform. This platform aims to allow AI coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor to directly deploy and run applications, automating many DevOps tasks previously handled manually. The service offers auto-scaling and cost-efficiency by scaling to zero when idle, directly challenging traditional cloud providers like AWS.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23555

Meta Launches Enterprise Platform, Appoints MongoDB Exec as Chief Enterprise Platform Officer
Meta has announced the creation of the Meta Enterprise Platform, aiming to bring its AI products and technologies, including Muse, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, and Muse Code, to businesses and developers. Mark Zuckerberg described this as Meta's "next major business pillar." The company also hired Chirantan "CJ" Desai, former MongoDB CEO, as Chief Enterprise Platform Officer, reporting directly to Zuckerberg, causing MongoDB's stock to drop 18%.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369721

Anthropic Unveils $84.5 Billion Compute Agreement with SpaceX's xAI
Anthropic's confidential IPO filings reveal a compute agreement with SpaceX's xAI, potentially involving up to $84.5 billion in expenditures by 2029 for NVIDIA chip-based computing resources. While most of the agreement can be canceled with 90 days' notice, this demonstrates Anthropic's significant investment in AI infrastructure.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369753

Meta Targets Small Businesses with New AI Skills and Connectors for Muse
Meta is expanding its Muse AI assistant with new features and 22 connectors specifically for small businesses, integrating with tools like QuickBooks, Shopify, and Stripe. This enables Muse to analyze sales, manage inventory, and draft marketing content by accessing data from Facebook, Instagram, Meta ad accounts, and connected business applications.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23547

OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol Matches Astra-Level Performance at 1/5th Cost
OpenAI has released GPT-6.1 Sol, which reportedly achieves performance levels comparable to Astra at one-fifth the cost and offers a new 300 tokens-per-second tier. This development indicates a significant leap in efficiency and accessibility for advanced AI models.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23551

Trump's "Super Intelligence" Rebranding Causes Surge in .si Domain Registrations
Following President Trump's declaration that "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) will now be referred to as "Super Intelligence" (SI), the .si domain, the country code for Slovenia, has experienced a massive surge in registrations. Daily registrations for .si domains, which previously saw only 3,500 new registrations in all of August, have now averaged 3,700 per day since Trump's announcement on September 22nd. This unexpected consequence highlights how presidential statements can inadvertently impact digital trends and domain speculation.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369755

Pi AI Programming Tool Integrates MCP with "Codemode" to Optimize Tool Use
The AI programming tool Pi has officially integrated Multi-Component Programming (MCP) in its 0.99.0 update, replacing its previous "No MCP" stance. To avoid context waste and tool combination issues, Pi implemented "Codemode," allowing the AI model to write JavaScript in a sandbox to combine and filter tool outputs, sending only necessary content back to the main context. This approach addresses the previous challenges of excessive token usage and inefficient tool orchestration by standard MCP methods.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369755

OpenAI's "Dots" Domain Name Issues: xAI Owns dot.com, Redirects to Grok
OpenAI's newly announced "Dots" AI agents are facing a branding challenge as its most intuitive .com domain names are not owned by the company. Notably, dot.com is currently owned by xAI and redirects to Grok Bot, while dots.com is also not held by OpenAI. This situation highlights potential oversight in securing key digital assets for major product launches.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369694

DeepSeek Collaborates with Huawei to Adapt AI Training to Ascend Chips, Concerns Huang
DeepSeek has partnered with Huawei to adapt its AI training and inference components for Huawei's Ascend chips, marking a significant step for Chinese tech companies in finding alternatives to NVIDIA's ecosystem. This move directly addresses NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's earlier concerns about models optimizing for non-US hardware, which could erode the competitive advantage of US chip manufacturers. DeepSeek's new open-source tools cover various aspects from kernel development to cross-card communication, mirroring functionalities previously built for NVIDIA GPUs.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369755

Anthropic's CEO Softens Stance on AI Slowdown After White House Meetings
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who previously advocated for slowing AI development, has adopted a more cautious tone after two meetings with President Trump this week. While still acknowledging "very real risks" from AI, Amodei refrained from pushing for a slowdown, instead emphasizing the need for the US to "win safely" in the AI race, aligning more with Trump's pro-acceleration stance. This shift in rhetoric follows discussions where Amodei, along with other AI tech leaders, signed voluntary safety agreements at the White House.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369739

Kuaishou Restructures AI Division, Centralizes Employee Agents for R&D and Office Tools
Kuaishou has reorganized its AI structure by creating a cross-business virtual organization called "Enterprise AI Productivity" to centralize AI-powered office and R&D tools. This new unit will unify employee-facing agents, internal knowledge bases, and IT systems, allowing AI agents direct access to these resources for task completion. Yu Yue, who previously led Kuaishou's intelligent office platform and AI productivity center, will now serve as CEO of the AI company KeLing, indicating Kuaishou's commitment to further AI integration.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369770

SGLang Adds Decision API, Allowing LLMs to Make Choices Without Fine-Tuning
SGLang, a large language model inference and deployment framework, has introduced a native decision API that enables pre-trained LLMs and multimodal models like Qwen3.8-27B to perform choices, judgments, and scoring directly without fine-tuning or modifying weights. This new functionality allows developers to feed current situations and candidate answers, and the model directly returns probabilities for each option, significantly improving efficiency for agent-based applications.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369770

Liquid AI Releases Decision Model d1, Outperforms Jev 1.13 in Benchmarks
Liquid AI, a frontier AI development company, has released its first self-developed decision model, d1, designed for direct choices, judgments, and scoring rather than text generation. According to Hugging Face's Decision Index 0.2.1 benchmark, d1 scored 58.9, surpassing Jev 1.13's 57.9. D1 excelled in artistic judgment, language understanding, and retrieval classification, demonstrating its utility for agent tool selection and pathfinding.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369763

OpenClaw Enterprise Open-Sourced; OpenAI Internally Uses it for Bug Fixes
The OpenClaw Foundation has released OpenClaw Enterprise (OCE), an open-source solution enabling enterprises to deploy and manage long-running AI agents on their own infrastructure. Originating from OpenAI's internal projects and later contributed to the foundation, OCE offers MIT-licensed code for perpetual free use. OpenAI's internal agent, "Androidclaw," uses OCE to fix bugs, merge pull requests, and address product issues by analyzing codebases, GitHub, and logs, demonstrating its practical utility in software development.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369759

ByteDance's Personal AI Assistant Named "Xiaodou," to Launch as Standalone App
ByteDance is developing a personal AI assistant named "Xiaodou" (Little Bean), which will be launched as a standalone application. While ByteDance's main Doubao app will continue to serve as a general AI entry point, "Xiaodou" is specifically targeting consumer-grade personal assistant functionalities. This move indicates ByteDance's strategy to diversify its AI product offerings, integrating existing personal assistant projects like "Spell" across its ecosystem.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369752

Anthropic's GLM-5.3 Network Security Report Boosts Tsinghua AI's Stock
Anthropic's report on GLM-5.3's network security capabilities, while intended to warn about potential attack vulnerabilities, inadvertently boosted Tsinghua AI's stock by over 2% today. The report highlighted GLM-5.3's ability to autonomously perform complex exploit chains, with some capabilities nearing Anthropic's own Claude Mythos Preview. This third-party validation underscored GLM-5.3's advanced potential, turning a warning into an accidental endorsement.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369736

McDonald's Uses AI for Hamburger Pricing, Stores See 21% Price Differences
McDonald's is employing an AI-driven "pricing engine" to help its nearly 14,000 U.S. stores set hamburger prices. This AI analyzes millions of daily transactions, local competitor pricing (like Wendy's and Burger King), and customer willingness to pay to suggest "optimal" prices for each item at each store. A Reuters investigation found that two McDonald's locations just two miles apart in Fresno, California, sold the same Big Mac for $5.69 and $6.89, a 21% difference, though it couldn't confirm if AI directly caused this specific discrepancy.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369725

NVIDIA CPO Accelerates Forecasts, Driving Lumentum Stock Up 6%
NVIDIA's progress in Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) deployment is outpacing market expectations, intensifying demand for AI data center optical interconnects. Lumentum, a key supplier in NVIDIA's advanced optics supply chain, is seen as a direct beneficiary, with its stock rising nearly 6%. GF Securities revised Lumentum's CPO laser revenue forecasts for 2027 and 2028 upwards, while Citi also raised its target price, reinforcing strong market expectations for Lumentum's AI optical communications business.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369727

Oracle and NetApp Partner on Cloud Storage for AI Workloads
Oracle and NetApp have expanded their partnership to launch cloud storage services natively integrated with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This collaboration aims to help enterprises migrate and manage AI and database workloads while retaining existing data management capabilities. The service facilitates easier transitions to Oracle Cloud, reducing the need for application refactoring. Following the announcement, ORCL stock rose by 4.8%.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369696

💳 Payments & Stablecoins
HSBC Names Hong Kong Stablecoin "HSBC RedCoin," Prioritizing P2P/P2M Payments
HSBC has announced "HSBC RedCoin" as the name for its upcoming Hong Kong stablecoin, which will initially focus on person-to-person (P2P) transfers and person-to-merchant (P2M) payments before expanding to corporate and institutional use cases. A survey by HSBC revealed that 74% of over 1,000 Hong Kong customers understood at least one stablecoin use case, with digital asset trading and tokenized investments being the most recognized.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23558

Standard Chartered Predicts 8x Growth for Ethena's USDe by 2028
Standard Chartered has initiated research coverage on Ethena, forecasting that its synthetic dollar protocol, USDe, could grow roughly eightfold over the next two years, driven by the convergence of DeFi and traditional finance. This highlights increasing institutional confidence in USDe's potential to scale within the digital asset ecosystem.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23569

German Startup AllUnity Launches USDAU, a Euro-Backed Stablecoin Under MiCA Regulation
AllUnity, a German stablecoin issuer regulated under the EU's MiCA framework, has launched USDAU, a USD-pegged stablecoin. USDAU will be issued on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Tempo, Arc, and Polygon, maintaining a 1:1 USD peg through segregated reserves. This is AllUnity's fourth fiat-backed stablecoin, following EURAU, CHFAU, and SEKAU, aiming to bring USD liquidity into the European regulatory framework for global trade and cross-border payments.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369744

Frankencoin Launches FCS, a Transferable Governance Token on Uniswap
Frankencoin has launched FCS (Frankencoin Share), a transferable governance token directly tied to its equity reserve, now live on Uniswap. This initiative introduces a new layer of decentralized governance and liquidity for the Frankencoin ecosystem.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23560

🏦 Exchanges & Platforms
Robinhood to Launch Perps and Weekend Stock Trading for US Users
Robinhood is set to expand its offerings significantly for US users by launching perpetual futures (perps) and weekend stock trading. This move aims to provide users with more trading opportunities and flexibility. The perps will reportedly be offered through Bitstamp, integrating with an established crypto exchange.
→ https://t.me/TheBlock001/7510

Bitget Replenishes Protection Fund to Over $309M After Security Incident
Bitget has successfully replenished its Protection Fund to over $309 million, exceeding its $300 million target within a week following a $388 million security incident. The exchange added 2,000 BTC ($166 million) to its cold wallet addresses and now holds 3,705 BTC, demonstrating a commitment to safeguarding user assets and fulfilling its promise to maintain fund levels.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23567

OKX Publishes 47th Proof of Reserves Report, Showing $27.4B in Backed Assets
OKX has released its 47th Proof of Reserves (PoR) report, demonstrating $27.4 billion in primary assets that fully back user funds with a ratio above 1:1. The report indicates a 4.07% increase in BTC holdings to 139,865 BTC, a 3.49% rise in ETH to 1.786 million ETH, and a 4.62% increase in USDT to 8.49 billion tokens, all maintaining reserve ratios of over 100%.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23556

Kalshi to End Liquidity Incentive Program Amid Wash Trading Allegations
Prediction market Kalshi is discontinuing its liquidity incentive program, a decision that follows allegations of wash trading. The move addresses concerns about market manipulation and aims to maintain fair and transparent trading practices on the platform.
→ https://t.me/TheBlock001/7511

Polymarket Adds New User Protections, Including Self-Exclusion and Deposit Limits
In response to growing regulatory scrutiny, prediction market Polymarket has introduced new user protection and responsible gambling measures. Users can now set irreversible deposit limits and opt for temporary or permanent self-exclusion from the platform. Polymarket is also partnering with Birches Health, an online gambling addiction treatment provider, to offer mental health resources to users exhibiting compulsive financial trading behaviors.
→ https://t.me/zoomerfiedNews/1492

Bitget Attackers Transfer 2,700 ZEC to Zcash's Ironwood Shielded Pool
Attackers allegedly linked to North Korea in the Bitget exploit have begun transferring approximately 2,700 ZEC, valued at around $3.8 million, into Zcash's Ironwood shielded pool. This follows the theft of approximately 18,900 ZEC ($28.3 million) from Bitget on September 24, 2026. SlowMist's analysis indicates the use of CoW Protocol and Chainflip to route stolen funds into cross-chain swaps and eventually convert them into BTC to obfuscate their origin.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369766

Telegram Wallet Rebrands to Walt, Plans Crypto Cards and AI Conversational Trading
Telegram's Wallet service has rebranded to "Walt," expanding beyond its Toncoin focus to offer a broader range of services including trading, investment, yield products, multi-chain assets, and cross-chain transfers. Walt plans to introduce crypto cards and AI-driven conversational trading functionalities, aiming to integrate advanced features while allowing existing users to seamlessly transition without migrating funds.
→ https://t.me/theblockbeats/198414

OKX CEO CZ Emphasizes Need for More Industry Participants, Welcomes DEXs
Binance founder CZ stated that the crypto industry requires more participants in its early stages to expand the overall market and welcomed the emergence of more decentralized exchanges (DEXs). He noted that first movers do not always remain the biggest winners, as second and third-generation products can often optimize existing innovations.
→ https://t.me/wublockchainenglish/26220

Dunamu CEO Seeks Global Growth Opportunities Beyond Korea
Oh Kyoung-suk, CEO of Dunamu, the operator of Korea's largest digital asset exchange Upbit, announced plans to seek growth opportunities outside of Korea. The company aims to connect the Korean digital asset ecosystem with global financial markets. Dunamu is also collaborating with Naver Financial to provide shared infrastructure for banks, brokerages, payment, and fintech companies, covering trading, custody, asset transfer, and AML services.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369738

Solv Protocol Reviews Transaction Flagged by Risk Management
Solv protocol is reviewing an individual transaction flagged through its risk management process, although BTC+ subscriptions and redemptions continue to operate normally. This indicates proactive risk management while maintaining core operations.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23568

📈 Crypto Trading & Markets
Bitwise Launches First US Spot NEAR ETF with Staking Rewards
Bitwise has launched the first US spot NEAR ETF (NRR), which includes staking rewards for shareholders, providing exposure to NEAR's performance through its Net Asset Value (NAV). The ETF saw $35.5 million in net inflows on its first day, with a total AUM of $36 million and $15.1 million in trading volume. Bitwise plans to stake the NEAR tokens held by the fund to maximize staking rewards, estimated at an average of 5%.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23548

Bitcoin ETFs See $66M Inflows, Ether Funds Experience Small Outflow
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $66.19 million in net inflows on September 29, primarily led by BlackRock's IBIT with $51.09 million. In contrast, spot Ether ETFs experienced a modest net outflow of $2.81 million, despite Grayscale's Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH) attracting $12.83 million.
→ https://t.me/wublockchainenglish/26222

Bonk Guy's Super Inu (SI) Investment Sees Over 600% Return
Trader Bonk Guy has reportedly achieved over $1 million in unrealized profits from his Super Inu (SI) investment, having purchased 19 million SI for $168,000. The value of his holdings has surged to $1.2 million, representing a roughly 600% return. This comes as the Solana-based meme coin (SI) jumped over 176% in 24 hours, briefly exceeding a $68 million market cap, possibly influenced by President Trump's recent re-branding of AI as "Super Intelligence" (SI).
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369744

Cboe and S&P Extend Partnership, Explore Tokenized S&P 500 Options
Cboe Global Markets and S&P Dow Jones Indices have extended their exclusive licensing agreement for S&P 500 Index (SPX) options through 2051, a 25-year extension. The renewed partnership also includes exploring new products beyond traditional index derivatives, specifically tokenized options contracts. This indicates a growing interest in integrating blockchain technology into mainstream financial products.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23546

Analysts Debate Bitcoin's Response to Strong Dollar and PCE Data
Bitcoin's recent price fluctuations are being assessed against a strengthening US dollar and recent PCE data. While a strong dollar traditionally negatively impacts dollar-denominated assets like Bitcoin, the correlation coefficient between BTC and the DXY has dropped to -0.41 over the past 90 days, indicating a weaker inverse relationship. Analysts suggest that the market's current focus might be more on Bitcoin's intrinsic factors rather than macro movements, with short-term price movements potentially influenced by retail investor behavior.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369794

Tom Lee Declares Crypto Market in Bull Phase, Citing Institutional Inflows and Tokenization
Tom Lee, during the 2026 Korea Blockchain Week, declared that the crypto market has entered a bull phase. He highlighted Bitcoin surpassing its 200-day moving average, renewed institutional investor inflows, and the widespread phenomenon of tokenization making intergenerational wealth transfer easier. He also noted that AI agents are beginning to use digital currencies for transactions, further signaling market maturation.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369715

🔷 DeFi & Protocols
Balancer Holders Approve Wind-Down Amid BIP-928 Passage, Fork Fails
BAL token holders have approved an orderly wind-down of Balancer through the passage of BIP-928, while a competing fork proposal, BIP-929, failed to pass before the October 30 deadline. This decision marks a significant shift for the Balancer ecosystem, moving towards a planned cessation of its current operations.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23563

Cardano Tapped by Brazil's Petrobras for Cleaner Fuel Tracking
Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, has partnered with Cardano to implement blockchain technology for tracking emissions from cleaner jet fuel and diesel. This collaboration marks a significant real-world adoption of Cardano's blockchain for environmental transparency and supply chain integrity.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23570

Metaplex Introduces MPL-3643, a Licensed RWA Token Standard for Solana
Metaplex, a tokenization platform on Solana, has launched MPL-3643, a new licensed Real-World Asset (RWA) token standard for the Solana ecosystem. This standard allows issuers to directly issue assets on Solana without needing a wrapped asset model, embedding transfer restrictions, lock-up periods, and compliance management functionalities. MPL-3643, built on Token-2022 and Solana Attestation Service, is currently in a limited Alpha phase.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369709

Aave V4 Reaches $1.03B Supplied, Most Cap Raises via Multisig
Aave V4 has grown to $1.03 billion in total value supplied, with the majority of capital raises being executed through multisig operations rather than on-chain governance votes. This indicates a preference for more centralized control in critical financial decisions within the protocol's current operational phase.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23565

Jumper DEX Token Sale Application Exceeds $20 Million, 10x Target
The token sale application for Jumper, a multi-chain DEX, has surpassed $20 million on the Legion platform, reaching 10 times its target amount. Jumper aims to be an on-chain financial super-app, integrating swaps, cross-chain transfers, yield farming, perpetuals, and tokenized RWA trading into a single interface. The platform claims over $41 billion in cumulative transaction volume and 100,000 monthly active users, with its cross-chain aggregation volume leading the market.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369765

Zcash to Award $1.5 Million to Orchard Vulnerability Discoverer
Zcash will award a total of $1.5 million to Taylor Hornby, the discoverer of the Orchard counterfeiting vulnerability. This amount includes his requested $750,000 bug bounty and an additional $750,000 nominated by the community. The Zcash community passed both retrospective funding proposals during the Q3 token holder vote, pending KYC completion and fund disbursement.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369695

Arthur Hayes Predicts ETH to Reach $10,000 by Year-End
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes reiterated his bullish outlook on Ethereum at Korea Blockchain Week, predicting ETH's price to hit $10,000 by the end of this year. Hayes has consistently expressed optimism for ETH's future market performance.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369710

Paid Protocol Adjusts Fee Structure, 25% to Fund PAID Buybacks
Solana ecosystem project Paid has launched a new claim system and adjusted its fee structure: 65% of fees will go to recipients, 25% will be used for PAID token buybacks (up from 20%), and 10% will be reserved for the protocol. This change aims to enhance value accrual for the PAID token.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369747

Solana's Metaplex Launches MPL-3643 for Licensed RWA Token Standard
The Solana ecosystem's tokenization platform, Metaplex, has introduced MPL-3643, a new licensed Real-World Asset (RWA) token standard tailored for Solana. This standard enables issuers to directly mint assets on Solana without needing a wrapped asset model, integrating functionalities like transfer restrictions, lock-up periods, and compliance management. Built on Token-2022, sRFC 37, and Solana Attestation Service, MPL-3643 is currently in a limited Alpha phase.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369709

Concrete (CT) to TGE Today, Binance Alpha & Coinbase to List
Concrete (CT), the native governance and allocation token for the on-chain financial operating system Concrete, is scheduled for its Token Generation Event (TGE) today on Ethereum and BSC. With a fixed initial supply of 1 billion tokens, 35% are allocated to the ecosystem, 15% to the foundation, 22% to the team, and 28% to investors. Both Binance Alpha and Coinbase have announced plans to list CT, with Coinbase enabling deposit addresses and Binance Alpha offering airdrop claims for eligible users.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369733

Gemini Co-Founder Compares Zcash Hype to 2019 Crypto Market
Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, stated that the current market excitement around privacy coin Zcash reminds him of the crypto market in 2019, when Bitcoin emerged from the 2018 bear market and focus shifted to institutional infrastructure and custody. Zcash, launched in 2016 with zero-knowledge proofs for private transactions, has seen its price surge from $511 in January 2026 to $1,335.51 by September 16. Gemini became the first licensed exchange to offer Zcash trading and custody services in 2018.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369753

🔦 Other
Bloomberg Corroborates Reports on Blockstream's Frozen Funds and Undisclosed Fraud Conviction
A Bloomberg investigation has confirmed earlier reports regarding Blockstream's frozen funds and an undisclosed fraud conviction. This corroboration adds weight to previous concerns about the financial and operational integrity of the Bitcoin infrastructure company.
→ https://t.me/leviathan_news/23559

Pilot Arrests Spark Hijacking Scare on Dubai Flight to Tel Aviv
A Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight (FZ1073) was diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after pilots issued emergency codes indicating a general emergency (7700) and then a hijacking (7500). Israeli fighter jets were scrambled. Dubai Flydubai confirmed an "incident" mid-flight, and all passengers landed safely. Israeli officials later ruled out external hijacking, with reports from Israeli Channel 13 stating that two pilots were arrested in Tabuk following a physical altercation in the cockpit.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369756

Former Dragonfly Partner Omar Kanji Joins Brevan Howard for Digital Assets Growth
Omar Kanji, formerly a partner at Dragonfly, has announced his new role as Digital Assets Business Growth Investment Manager and Portfolio Manager at Brevan Howard, an alternative investment management platform. Kanji, who left Dragonfly on September 1st after a four-year tenure, will remain based in New York.
→ https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/369719
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