Bitget said it will restore its protection fund to at least $300 million within a week after using the fund to absorb losses from its latest security incident. In market data, spot Bitcoin ETFs brought in $2.386 billion in net inflows last week, the highest weekly total in nearly a year.
Top developments
In a daily roundup carried by PANews, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the exchange would refill the protection fund to $300 million within one week, keeping a security commitment the company says it has maintained since 2022. THORChain said its network pause was an emergency security mechanism rather than a selective freeze. Circle disclosed that co-founder Sean Neville had resigned from the board, while CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen plans to stay through the end of 2026 before departing.
On fund flows, SoSoValue data showed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.386 billion in net inflows during the Sept. 21-25 U.S. trading week, a near one-year high. DYORSWAP said a recent incident was not caused by an exploit of the DYOR contract and that it has already distributed more than 200 ETH in compensation. Quant rose more than 340% over seven days after a partnership update involving The Clearing House in the U.S. NYSE Arca also approved the listing of the Bitwise NEAR Protocol spot ETF.
Regulation and macro
China’s Ministry of State Security says crypto “anonymity” is a false proposition
China’s Ministry of State Security said in a public account article titled “Virtual currency crimes can’t be traced? Think again!” that virtual currencies have become an important tool for illegal activity, including money laundering, cyberattacks, and espionage-related theft of secrets. The article said the so-called anonymous nature of virtual currency is fundamentally a false proposition because blockchains preserve complete transaction records and other data that can support full-chain tracing.
Trump plans a private White House dinner for Anthropic CEO, Axios says
Axios, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that U.S. President Donald Trump plans to host a private dinner at the White House on Sunday evening for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The report described it as the first one-on-one meeting between Trump and Amodei. Axios added that Trump and House Speaker Johnson plan to meet several top AI company CEOs at the White House on Tuesday, and the dinner could serve as a prelude to that meeting.
Lummis says rejected Clarity bill language already gave Treasury power to target offshore exchange laundering
U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said Democrats had sought new Treasury authority to cut off money-laundering channels running through offshore exchanges such as Binance, but that her Clarity Act already provided that authority. She said Democrats then voted against the bill, blocking what she described as a legislative effort to strengthen oversight of laundering activity involving offshore crypto exchanges.
Projects and company updates
Bitget says user fund will cover losses and be restored to at least $300 million within a week
During a livestream, Gracy Chen said attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party security product to steal internal credential permissions, then forged withdrawal instructions for the wallet system and bypassed risk checks. She said private keys were not leaked, cold wallets were not affected, the vulnerability has been fixed, and the incident is fully under control.
According to Chen, about $388 million in assets was transferred out. The exchange has disclosed attacker addresses and on-chain tracking data. Bitget said all losses from the incident will be covered by the user protection fund, and the fund will be replenished to at least $300 million within one week after it is used. The company said it has already started an asset recovery effort.
MEXC user says roughly $340,000 was drained after account recovery because attacker API key remained active
MEXC user @shuangfei8 said in a post that 322,110 USDT and 9,133,999 ONE, worth about $340,000 in total, were withdrawn from the account on Sept. 27. The user said an attacker had used forged materials on Sept. 25 to change the bound email address and reset security settings, briefly gaining control of the account and creating an API key during that period. MEXC later confirmed the theft, froze the account, and helped recover access, and the user changed the password and Google Authenticator as requested. The API key, however, was not revoked.
The user said the assets were drained through the API about 27 minutes after a 24-hour withdrawal restriction expired, with no new login records during that time. The user has filed a formal compensation claim, attempted to report the case to police, and questioned the platform’s review process, freeze handling, and risk controls.
Lookonchain says Bitget hacker is swapping ETH into BTC through THORChain
Lookonchain said the Bitget attacker, who stole $351.6 million, is currently using THORChain to swap ETH for BTC.
THORChain says pause function is an emergency safety tool, not a selective freeze
THORChain said a network pause is an emergency mechanism designed to protect the protocol and is not a selective freeze aimed at any specific funds or individual swap. The project said that during the May 2026 attack in which $10.7 million was stolen from liquidity pools, the attacker’s address was never blacklisted and was never blocked from taking part in swaps.
THORChain said it is permissionless by design and was not built with censorship mechanisms. It described itself as a neutral public product or tool.
Circle co-founder leaves board, CFO plans to depart after end-2026
Circle said co-founder Sean Neville resigned from the board for personal reasons, effective immediately, reducing the board from eight directors to seven. CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen informed the company that he intends to leave, but will remain in the role through the end of December 2026 to support an orderly transition. Circle said it has already started the search for a new CFO with help from a well-known executive search firm. The company also said Fox-Geen’s planned departure does not stem from any disagreement over operations, policy, or practice.
Upbit, Binance, and Bithumb announce listings
Upbit said it will list CASHCAT in KRW, BTC, and USDT markets, with trading set to begin at 17:00 local time on Sept. 28.
Binance said it will roll out five USDT-margined perpetual contracts between 17:00 and 17:20 Beijing time on Sept. 28: OKLOUSDT, TWSTUSDT, CVNAUSDT, RUMUSDT, and XOMUSDT. Maximum leverage is 20x.
Bithumb said it will list PYUSD in the KRW market, with trading expected to open at 15:00 local time.
Capital B buys 13 more BTC
French Bitcoin treasury company Capital B said it purchased 13 BTC for 970,000 euros. It now holds 3,538 BTC in total, with a year-to-date BTC yield of 2.20%.
DYORSWAP says DYOR contract was not hacked and more than 200 ETH has been paid in compensation
DYORSWAP said the recent incident was not caused by an exploit of the DYOR contract. Instead, it said the application was affected by a fraudulent network called “GIWA Chain 9134,” launched by operators controlling bridge infrastructure and used to drain the real ETH that backed the network.
The project said roughly 1,335 addresses bridged funds, about 767.65 ETH entered the bridge, and around 766.25 ETH was ultimately drained. DYOR recorded 1,479 operations on that chain, including 1,148 successful ones, involving 298 wallets and 104 pools. The team said it has used its own funds to distribute more than 200 ETH to affected users and is still tracing the deployer, the origin of funds, and the destination of the drained assets.
MEXC says it has formed a special task force
MEXC said on X that it has completed a preliminary review of the roughly $340,000 theft case and provided a corresponding solution. The exchange said it formed a dedicated task force immediately, assigned staff to follow the account and later handling, and would continue the process to protect user rights and interests.
Quant rally follows The Clearing House partnership update
Quant climbed 342.1% over the past seven days and 97.6% in the last 24 hours to $298.75. According to a Sept. 24 announcement, The Clearing House in the U.S. will use Quant technology to support its “on-chain money movement” initiative, a new interoperable payments network for clearing and settling tokenized deposit transactions across financial institutions of different sizes.
The announcement said Quant will provide the interoperability, orchestration, and transaction-management layer, connecting with existing fiat payment rails including RTP and CHIPS. The Clearing House processes more than $2 trillion in clearing and settlement activity each day.
NYSE Arca approves listing of Bitwise NEAR spot ETF
NYSE Arca approved the listing of the Bitwise NEAR Protocol spot ETF under the ticker NRR, making it the first spot NEAR ETF in the U.S. Before that, investors mainly used the Grayscale NEAR Trust for exposure. The fund charges a 0.75% management fee and will use Coinbase Custody for custody and NEAR staking. A listing date has not yet been announced. After the news, NEAR briefly rose to around $5.
Vitalik releases sci-fi novel “Snowmoon”
Vitalik Buterin said he has completed a 32-chapter science-fiction novel titled “Snowmoon.” He said all text was written by him, with AI used only for proofreading and consistency checks. The story is set in the fictional city-state of Veridia and includes quadratic voting, quadratic funding, cryptographic sortition, and zero-knowledge privacy credentials. The work is open-sourced under GPL v3, and Buterin said any film or animation adaptation must open-source the adaptation process as well.
Hyperliquid to raise HIP-4 deployment limits and lower funding-rate cap in next upgrade
Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said on the project’s Discord server that the next network upgrade will increase the number of active results a single HIP-4 deployer can maintain from 100 to 200, and raise the daily deployment cap from 500 to 1,000, based on builder feedback. The hourly cap for perpetual funding rates will also be cut from 4% to 0.5%. The team said the old cap was rarely reached in live trading.
Zano restarts blockchain and rolls back about one month of history after gateway bug
Privacy blockchain Zano said it found a critical vulnerability in Gateway Address that allowed unauthorized ZANO and fUSD to enter circulation. The team said wallet payment keys and normal transaction privacy were not affected, and the core consensus mechanism was not compromised. Zano said it removed all unauthorized activity through a coordinated network upgrade and restarted the chain from block height 3,833,000, before the sixth hard fork, affecting about one month of on-chain history.
Nodes, miners, stakers, and related services were told to adopt the emergency update as soon as possible. The team said it will work with affected projects on losses and publish compensation and claims procedures.
MiniMax launches M3.1-Flash-Preview
AI company MiniMax unveiled a new fast text model, M3.1-Flash-Preview, now available in MiniMax Code. The model is positioned for everyday development work, including rapid bug fixes and full feature implementation, with a focus on response speed and stability.
MiniMax also announced a limited-time event running from Sept. 28 to Oct. 7, UTC+8, during which users who check in daily can receive double points. The points apply to code models including M3.1-Flash-Preview and the H3 model for video generation.
Fundraising
Monochrome Exchange opens MCR IEO and raises more than 5.5 million USDT
Lookonchain said Monochrome Exchange, founded by former Binance Australia CEO and co-founder Jeff Yew, has started its MCR token IEO and has raised more than 5.5 million USDT so far.
Views and analysis
Ansem says NFTs could stage a real recovery in this cycle
Crypto KOL Ansem said on X that he is very optimistic about a genuine NFT recovery in this cycle. He said art NFTs may return to the spotlight, but his focus is on experiments around the NFT form itself, including agents, ownership, new issuance mechanisms, and combinations of NFTs with on-chain products.
CryptoQuant analyst says Bitcoin demand has weakened further
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost wrote that Bitcoin demand has not improved and has instead weakened further. He said futures demand fell from 164,000 BTC to just 3,000 BTC, while spot demand remained negative at -174,000 BTC despite strong ETF inflows. Estimated total demand on a 30-day cumulative basis dropped to -171,000 BTC. At the same time, Bitcoin’s price still rose from $74,000 to $84,000 over the past 15 days.
Bloomberg analyst says crypto’s peak may already be behind it
Bloomberg senior analyst Mike McGlone wrote that from a risk and portfolio-management perspective, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may be classified as underperforming assets over the past decade. He said the Market Vector Digital Assets 100 Index, or MVDA, which is roughly two-thirds Bitcoin, has been broadly flat since 2017 while the Nasdaq 100 has continued to climb. MVDA’s volatility has averaged about three times higher and has remained positively correlated with equities, limiting its diversification value.
McGlone said that once Bitcoin futures launched in 2017 and crypto entered the mainstream, MVDA stopped outperforming NDX. He added that the U.S. ETF launch and Trump’s shift in stance before the 2024 election may already mark crypto’s high-water point, and he does not expect that situation to change materially.
Doctor Profit says he has exited QNT
Trader Doctor Profit said he has taken profit on all of his QNT holdings. He wrote that QNT surged from $50 to $374 within days, while elevated funding rates pointed to crowded long positioning. He also said some large holders were selling privately while publicly urging retail traders to buy, a setup he said made him uncomfortable.
Archetype partner says tokenized stock holders could reach 100 million in three years
Archetype partner Dmitriy Berenzon said tokenized stocks currently have about 4 million holders and predicted that figure could reach 100 million within three years.
Vitalik says Hegota may be Ethereum’s last “regular” upgrade
In an essay titled “The cryptographic world computer,” Vitalik Buterin wrote that Ethereum is evolving from a traditional blockchain into a “cryptographic world computer” that combines blockchain infrastructure, cryptographic privacy and verification, and decentralized off-chain components. He said the Hegota upgrade planned for next year could be the last “regular” upgrade.
He said later priorities will include recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and quantum safety. By 2030, block verification could move to SNARK-based verification and PeerDAS data-availability sampling. On the user side, he said Ethereum could offer stronger censorship resistance, better privacy, lighter node requirements, slot times of roughly 4 to 8 seconds, and finality in about 8 to 32 seconds.
Key data
Spot Ether ETFs take in $690 million last week
SoSoValue data showed spot Ether ETFs posted $690 million in net inflows during the Sept. 21-25 U.S. trading week. BlackRock’s ETHA led with $326 million in weekly net inflows, bringing its historical cumulative total to $13.28 billion. Fidelity’s FETH added $174 million, lifting its cumulative inflows to $2.42 billion.
Total net assets for spot Ether ETFs stood at $17.78 billion, with a net asset ratio of 5.42%. Historical cumulative net inflows reached $13.94 billion.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs record $2.386 billion in weekly inflows, a near one-year high
SoSoValue data showed spot Bitcoin ETFs brought in $2.386 billion in net inflows during the Sept. 21-25 U.S. trading week, the strongest weekly total in nearly a year. BlackRock’s IBIT led with $1.158 billion in weekly net inflows, taking its cumulative total to $65.28 billion. Fidelity’s FBTC added $702 million, for a historical total of $11.06 billion.
WisdomTree’s BTCW saw the largest outflow at $4.0161 million. Total net assets for spot Bitcoin ETFs were $108.42 billion, with a net asset ratio of 6.43%. Historical cumulative net inflows reached $57.55 billion.
GNGN-linked address sends 6,100 ETH to Coinbase
On-chain watcher Ai Yi said a GNGN-linked address deposited 6,100 ETH to Coinbase eight hours ago, worth $16.38 million. The ETH had been bridged from the Robinhood network to Ethereum mainnet six days earlier and may represent fee revenue from the Robinhood network, according to the post.
South Korea’s virtual asset trading volume falls more than 50% over the past year
Digital Asset reported that South Korea’s virtual asset trading volume has dropped by more than 50% over the past year, while the top 10% of users accounted for more than 96% of total trading volume, showing deeper concentration in activity. Data submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service to the office of lawmaker Park Hong-bae showed concentration levels in the first half of 2026 of 95.6% for Upbit, 97.41% for Bithumb, 99.2% for Coinone, 99.43% for Digital X, and 97.61% for Gopax.
The comparable figures a year earlier were 89.36%, 97.97%, 97.54%, 97.52%, and 97.95%.
Analyst says one Robinhood-chain group cashed out $18.43 million across 53 token launches
On-chain analyst Wazz said he identified a persistent rug-pull cash-out group on the Robinhood chain that has been linked to at least 53 token launch projects over the past two months, extracting about $18.43 million in total. He added that the real scale may be larger and said the DEED token cash-out that triggered the investigation did not even rank among the group’s top 10.
Major token unlocks due next week
Token Unlocks data showed that DoubleZero (2Z) is set to unlock about 1.66 billion tokens on Oct. 2, worth about $114 million. SUI is due to unlock about 13.26 million tokens on Oct. 1, worth about $16.7 million, and ENA will unlock about 40.63 million tokens on Oct. 2, worth about $11 million.
KMNO is scheduled to unlock about 229 million tokens on Sept. 30, worth about $10.8 million. CARDS will unlock about 59.26 million tokens on Sept. 30, worth about $10.7 million. EIGEN will unlock about 36.82 million tokens on Oct. 1, worth about $10.3 million, and FF will unlock about 77.14 million tokens on Sept. 29, worth about $10.2 million.
USDT adds 845,900 holders over seven days
Token Terminal data showed USDT added 845,900 holders over the past seven days. USDC added 390,800 holders, EURC added 69,800, USDG added 23,300, and CASH added 18,600.
Solana whale’s 20x long shows more than $23 million in unrealized profit
Lookonchain reported that address 0x9c6a opened a 20x leveraged long position about one month ago on 550,087 SOL, with a notional value of about $67.88 million. The position is now sitting on more than $23 million in unrealized profit. The trader has placed take-profit sell orders around $200. If SOL rises to $200, total profit from the leveraged trade could exceed $65 million.