Crypto markets, regulation, on-chain flows and AI funding announcements all hit at once between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9. The biggest items in the stretch included the 79th Vault exploit, tighter EU rules on non-MiCA stablecoin services, a large Bitcoin transfer from a U.S. government-labeled address, and a sharp wave of liquidations across derivatives markets.
79th Vault loses about $12.51 million in exploit
Blockchain security firm PeckShield said DeFi protocol 79th Vault (@79thVault) was attacked. A total of 10,000 79AU tokens were stolen and swapped for 16,249 BNB, worth about $12.51 million. The attacker later transferred 30 BNB to crypto exchange KuCoin.
PBOC sets out its position on the yuan exchange rate
According to the People’s Bank of China website, the central bank published a statement on its policy stance toward the renminbi exchange rate. It said China operates a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand and referenced a basket of currencies, and that it exited regular foreign-exchange intervention after 2017.
The PBOC said China has no intention of gaining a trade advantage through devaluation and does not engage in competitive currency devaluation. It said macro-prudential tools were used only to guard against short-term overshooting during major external shocks, including the pandemic and the tariff war in April 2025.
The statement said that since the 2005 exchange-rate reform, the yuan has appreciated 23% against the U.S. dollar on a cumulative basis, while the nominal effective exchange rate has risen by more than 50%. Since the start of 2025, the yuan has appreciated about 9% against the dollar. The central bank also said it is a misinterpretation and misuse to treat the IMF’s External Balance Assessment, or EBA, as an official basis for claims that the yuan is undervalued, adding that reducing global imbalances requires joint action by deficit and surplus countries.
ESMA orders wind-down of non-MiCA stablecoin services
The European Securities and Markets Authority, or ESMA, issued an opinion requiring crypto-asset service providers in the EU to stop offering services involving stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA. The scope covers trading, exchange, custody, transfers and investment advice, and providers must also prevent clients from buying or increasing positions.
Existing exposure must be cleared within three months and no later than Jan. 8, 2027. During the transition, firms may only provide limited exit services such as selling, exchanging and withdrawing.
Silver, U.S. labor data and India’s tax change
Spot silver fell more than 2% on the day and was quoted at $58.56 per ounce.
Initial jobless claims in the U.S. for the week ended Oct. 3 came in at 197,000, versus an expectation of 200,000. The prior reading was revised to 199,000 from 197,000.
In India, officials confirmed that tax preferences for precious metals imports have been canceled. India removed tax benefits for banks and government-designated institutions importing gold, silver and platinum, and imposed a 3% tax on those imports, raising costs for major supply channels. Revenue Secretary Shrivastava at India’s finance ministry said Thursday that the government did not extend the policy that exempted banks from integrated goods and services tax, or IGST, on precious metals imports beyond March 31. The decision took effect on April 1. Shrivastava said, “We do not want tax to be the reason one import channel receives preferential treatment.” He added that the government informed the GST Council of the decision at a meeting held Thursday.
Hashi on Sui targets phased mainnet launch this month
Hashi, a Bitcoin finance infrastructure project on Sui, said it will begin a phased mainnet rollout this month and has secured more than $500 million in capital commitments from a consortium of more than 20 partners.
Hashi is designed to let native BTC be used as DeFi collateral for lending, vaults and structured products. Anchorage Digital has joined the first group of partners and will provide institutional custody access and stablecoin liquidity.
Moscow Exchange plans crypto trading from Dec. 1
Boris Blokhin, senior managing director at Moscow Exchange, said the exchange plans to offer cryptocurrency trading services starting Dec. 1 under new legislation, with testing to continue before launch.
Moscow Exchange had already introduced index futures and perpetual contracts tied to crypto assets including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP and TRX for qualified investors. Under new Russian rules, citizens must buy cryptocurrencies legally through licensed intermediaries such as exchanges and brokers.
Fresh funding for AI and crypto-linked companies
AI trading agent startup Catalyst said it raised a $30 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Jump Trading, Peak XV, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Coinbase and Premji Invest. The company was co-founded in 2025 by Justin Zheng and Dylan Iskandar and aims to help retail investors create and execute trading strategies through AI agents.
Users can describe investment goals in natural language, after which the AI agent converts them into a trading strategy and handles asset selection, cost optimization and trade execution. Final trade approval still rests with the user. Catalyst said it has already completed one testing round with high-frequency trading users.
AI model evaluation platform Arena raised $200 million at a $3.1 billion valuation, nearly double its $1.7 billion valuation in January this year. The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with Salesforce Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital also participating. Arena grew out of the Chatbot Arena research project at the University of California, Berkeley, and is known for its public large-model rankings. Its annualized revenue reached $100 million in June.
Bitcoin life insurance company Meanwhile raised $37 million in a new round at a $350 million valuation. Bain Capital Crypto led the financing, with Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital also taking part. The company said the proceeds will be used to meet demand for Bitcoin-denominated life insurance in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, based in Bermuda, said it is the first life insurer licensed to operate entirely in Bitcoin. Since launch, it has signed 15 brokerage firms serving wealthy families and now operates across insurance hubs including Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland. Its total funding has now exceeded $180 million.
Venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, or USV, said it has raised a new $900 million fund to back startups building at the frontier of large markets undergoing technological change. USV said its previous core fund was $275 million. It said the larger vehicle is meant to let the firm lead more rounds in the AI era, support companies for longer, and invest in capital-intensive sectors including robotics, manufacturing and energy.
USV also announced team additions. Michael Mignano, Jared Hecht and Scott Belsky will join the future core investment team alongside Fred Wilson, Rebecca Kaden, Nick Grossman and Nikhil Raman. Andy Weissman, Albert Wenger, John Buttrick and Brad Burnham will continue supporting USV and its portfolio companies.
Market movers and token performance
According to OKX market data, the top gainers over the past 24 hours included OGN, up 79.24% to 0.03807 USDT; STRK, up 17.40% to 0.05850 USDT; W, up 16.16% to 0.01639 USDT; JUP, up 14.83% to 0.3702 USDT; and ALGO, up 13.09% to 0.1322 USDT.
On the downside, MINA fell 17.19% to 0.0824 USDT; PUMP dropped 10.49% to 0.005710 USDT; ZEC lost 7.50% to 1,207.01 USDT; TWT fell 5.38% to 0.5157 USDT; and LTC declined 4.34% to 64.09 USDT.
DeFi tokens were mixed. Alongside strength in JUP, CRV rose 8.42% to 0.3786 USDT, while UNI fell 3.44% to 7.725 USDT and AAVE slipped 0.89% to 170.65 USDT.
Binance market data showed Riot Platforms (RIOT) down 10.03% intraday at $16.64.
Google Cloud, Anthropic and Nvidia release AI updates
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian introduced Gemini Agent, a general-purpose AI agent that can run tasks in the cloud for hours or even days. It can assemble teams of sub-agents and connect with tools including Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Slack. “Colleague agents” can have their own email and calendar. The agent already supports Gemini and Claude models.
Anthropic said it will commit $150 million over three years to the Trump administration’s federal “Genesis Mission” program. The company will provide its Claude AI models to more than 15 federal agencies, including NASA and NIH, and will also supply Claude, Claude Code and API credits to the Genesis Mission project.
Nvidia pledged to invest $1 billion over the next five years to advance science in the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the White House would regard anyone who uses the term “Artificial Intelligence” rather than the “highly accepted” and “more accurate” new term “Super Intelligence” as an enemy. Trump had previously proposed renaming AI as “Super Intelligence.”
Domain applications, disclosures and large trades
ICANN said the latest round of generic top-level domain applications drew 1,615 submissions, with AI-related domains emerging as a hot area. The .agent string received 13 applications from parties including OpenAI, Meta, a Google-owned registry and iPollo. OpenAI filed 15 applications in total, including .gpt and .chatgpt, while Anthropic applied for .claude. Crypto-related domains such as .btc and .bnb also drew multiple applications.
Newly disclosed financial filings showed that U.S. President Donald Trump completed more than 500 securities transactions in August. One of them was a Meta stock purchase worth as much as $25 million. Two days before signing a broad policy aimed at expanding U.S. commercial space transportation, he also invested up to $5 million in a SpaceX debt product.
Media analysis of Trump’s August disclosure said the 517 buy and sell transactions had a total value range of about $74.3 million to $273.3 million. The same analysis estimated at least $44.2 million in purchases and at least $30.1 million in sales.
The 18-page filing showed Trump’s portfolio remained active, though the pace slowed from June and July, when he disclosed more than 1,000 transactions in each month.
The largest trade came on Aug. 21, when Trump bought between $5 million and $25 million of Meta stock. On the same day, he also made broad portfolio adjustments. The filing showed purchases of AT&T, ConocoPhillips, Abbott Laboratories, Netflix and Chevron, each in the range of $1 million to $5 million.
On the sell side, Trump sold Advanced Micro Devices and Church & Dwight on Aug. 21, with each sale valued between $1 million and $5 million. He also reduced holdings in Boeing, Home Depot, T-Mobile, Datadog, Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks and Nvidia, with each reduction in the range of $500,010 to $1 million.
On-chain, address 0x129…72EbE bought about $8.09 million worth of altcoins over the past four hours, focusing on AI and cross-chain infrastructure. The wallet bought 2.55 million ZRO worth about $5.3 million at $2.08, 4.41 million WLD worth about $2.29 million at $0.5189, and 10 million CHIP worth about $492,000 at $0.04928.
U.S. government-labeled wallet moves 12,267.02 BTC
According to Arkham and on-chain data, at 21:33 Beijing time on Oct. 8, an address labeled “U.S. Government: Bitfinex Hack Seized Funds” transferred out 12,267.02 BTC, worth about $1.01 billion.
Of that amount, 6,000 BTC was later sent in two transactions to a new address, 33pYK…cFk, while the remaining roughly 6,267 BTC was parked in another new address. Over the previous two days, addresses tied to the U.S. government had already sent more than 6,200 BTC to Coinbase Prime.
Japan finance ministry outlines three tokenized JGB models
Japan’s Ministry of Finance held the first meeting of its study group on putting government bonds on-chain and released materials that sort the idea into three categories.
Type 1 would place beneficiary rights in money market funds that invest in government bonds on blockchain rails. Type 2 would put transfer ledgers on-chain within the current settlement framework, with three forms: a single account management institution, coordination among multiple institutions, and linkage to the Bank of Japan ledger. Type 3 would issue a new form of government bond on a blockchain outside the current system.
The ministry said on-chain issuance could improve collateral and liquidity management efficiency and broaden the investor base, especially for overseas investors. It also pointed to issues including market fragmentation, transmission of sharp price swings and system upgrade costs. The three categories are provisional, and the ministry plans to compile a report by January 2027.
Pyth, Cardano and Aptos update token and governance plans
Citrini Research said in a post that as AI agents move into the mainstream and financial assets are tokenized more quickly, the barrier between traditional finance and crypto is breaking down. The firm also published a portfolio allocation: among crypto tokens, DRV, LIT and ETHFI each account for 10%, AAVE and ENA each for 9%, SOL for 8%, and HYPE and AERO for 7% each. Among stocks, SECZ accounts for 20%, CRCL and COIN 18% each, and BHYP and HOOD 14% each.
According to the official Pyth blog, Pyth DAO passed proposal OP-PIP-136, committing 100% of revenue from Pyth products to buying PYTH on the open market and adding it to reserves. The previous policy used one-third of non-PYTH balances.
The proposal replaces separate monthly votes with a long-term authorization. Covered products include Pyth Pro subscriptions, Listing as a Service, Data Marketplace and Pyth Indices, and non-PYTH assets already held by the DAO are also included. PYTH reserves have reached 42 million tokens so far, and the first purchases under the new authorization were executed on Sept. 30. Pyth’s overall ARR reached $11.5 million in September 2026, up 86% month over month. Execution constraints remain unchanged, including a 5% slippage cap, a $25,000 limit per trade, on-chain disclosure and monthly reporting.
The Cardano Foundation said it is spinning out its digital identity project Veridian into an independent Swiss company and tokenizing most of its 1 million shares on-chain using CIP-0113, a newly introduced programmable token standard on Cardano. Veridian is the first company to use the standard for equity tokenization, though the tokenized shares were not offered to the public.
Frederik Gregaard, the foundation’s CEO and chairman of Veridian, said the company plans to seek strategic investors in 2027. Veridian is led by blockchain engineer Thomas A. Mayfield and builds digital credentials on the open KERI and ACDC standards to help individuals, businesses and AI agents verify identity and permissions without a central database. Its mobile wallet is already live on iOS and Android and has integrated with Utah’s digital identity regulations in the U.S.
Aptos said in a post on X that the Aptos Foundation has committed to permanently lock and stake 210 million APT, about 37% of its holdings at mainnet launch. The tokens will never be sold or distributed, and foundation operations will be supported by staking rewards.
Earlier, Aptos proposed tokenomics changes including a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT, a cut in the annual staking reward rate from 5.19% to 2.6%, and a tenfold increase in gas fees with full burning, in an effort to shift token supply mechanics toward network-usage-driven issuance.
Coinbase Markets said on X that, following a recent review, Coinbase will suspend trading in Balancer (BAL) and Tensor (TNSR) at around 14:00 Eastern Time on Nov. 9, or around 03:00 Beijing time on Nov. 10. The suspension will apply to Coinbase.com, Coinbase Exchange and Coinbase Prime. Order books for BAL and TNSR have already been moved to limit-only mode, while withdrawals remain available.
Jump Crypto’s Firedancer wallet staked another 453,987 SOL worth $49.81 million.
Liquidations, address reuse and Pump.fun data
CoinGlass data showed that total liquidations across crypto derivatives reached $455 million in the past hour. Long positions accounted for $427 million, while shorts made up only $28.5681 million, putting the long share at about 93.7%.
By exchange, Binance led with $263 million, or about 58% of the total. Bybit followed with $68.49 million. Gate and OKX saw $36.97 million and $30.70 million respectively, and all of those venues were dominated by long liquidations, with bullish positions making up more than 94%. HTX moved the other way: more than 94% of its $20.10 million in liquidations came from shorts.
By asset, ETH saw the largest liquidation total at about $135 million in the past hour, followed by BTC at about $81.33 million. SOL, XRP, ZEC and DOGE recorded about $21.94 million, $17.10 million, $14.08 million and $10.36 million respectively. Market prices at the time showed BTC at about $81,400, down 2.27% over 24 hours, and ETH at about $2,454, down 4.33%. ZEC led losses with a 24-hour drop of 14.42%.
Glassnode data showed that most BTC with publicly visible public keys is exposed because of address reuse. Once an address has made an outgoing transaction, its public key becomes visible, and moving those coins to a new address can remove that exposure. Over the past year, the amount of BTC affected by address reuse rose from 3.79 million to 4.33 million, now equal to 21.5% of circulating supply.
According to crypto KOL Bando, the top 25 deployers on Pump.fun launched 770,000 tokens and made $128 million from the market, but only six of those tokens reached a market capitalization above $20 million.
Arthur Hayes comments on the market cycle
Arthur Hayes wrote that at the start of every super bull market, the market has to push through layers of concern. He cited the block size debate in 2017, the pandemic in 2020, the FTX collapse and central bank rate hikes in 2023, and fear, uncertainty and doubt around AI crypto technology in 2026. He also said a wave of money printing will eventually arrive and asset prices will eventually surge.