Crypto markets, regulation, security, and infrastructure all saw fresh developments over the past 24 hours.
SEC sues former Linqto executives over alleged fraud tied to more than $430 million in SPVs
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency on Oct. 9, 2026 filed charges against former Linqto executives William Sarris and Joseph Endoso, accusing them of defrauding retail investors through an online platform that sold interests in pre-IPO unicorn companies.
The SEC said Linqto subsidiaries sold more than $430 million of special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, to retail investors from 2021 to 2024. The complaint alleges the two executives falsely claimed prices were below market when nearly all were above fair value, said shares were "sold out," represented that pricing was set dynamically by algorithm when it was actually set manually, and continued to present the offerings as compliant despite knowing of violations.
The SEC also accused them of operating an unregistered investment company and selling unregistered securities to non-accredited investors. The agency is seeking injunctions, disgorgement plus interest, civil penalties, and officer-and-director bars. The investigation was led by the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI.
CITIC Securities says strong U.S. earnings growth may no longer be limited to top tech names
CITIC Securities said investor attention is shifting to the upcoming U.S. third-quarter earnings season after the performance of U.S. equities during China’s holiday period and what it described as reduced sensitivity to interest rates.
Citing LSEG consensus estimates, the firm said S&P 500 revenue and earnings growth for 26Q3 are expected at 1.2% and 45.0% year over year, respectively, with both easing sequentially. By sector, earnings growth in energy, information technology, materials, and healthcare is all expected to exceed 50%. On that basis, CITIC said high earnings growth in U.S. equities may no longer be concentrated only in large technology companies, with non-tech sectors making a more visible contribution.
On Hong Kong equities, the brokerage said liquidity remains under pressure as overseas rate hikes overlap with a restart in AI momentum trading, but fundamental expectations have already bottomed and earnings growth expectations for major broad indexes have started to move higher. It said revisions remain highly uneven across sectors, with some niche tracks seeing upgrades while domestic-demand-related industries still face downward pressure. Third-quarter earnings, in its view, will be an important gauge of the recovery path. The firm said investors should stay patient on Hong Kong stocks and expects dividend strategies to keep outperforming in the near term.
Argentina central bank comments point in two directions on bank crypto services
Cointelegraph reported that Argentina’s central bank said banks could be allowed to offer crypto-related services to customers during a second term for President Javier Milei if he is re-elected. The report said four years have passed since the central bank barred banks from offering such services. No timetable, access rules, or product scope was disclosed.
At the same time, Bitcoin.com News reported that Juan Curutchet, head of financial and foreign exchange institutions supervision at Argentina’s central bank, said crypto assets will not be allowed into the banking and payments system in the short term and that the 2022 ban on financial institutions offering crypto services will remain in place. Curutchet said Argentina’s economic fragility does not support such a move for now, and whether the ban is lifted later will depend on economic conditions. He added that the issue could be discussed in a second Milei term.
South Korean experts call for clearer rules as local crypto projects continue moving offshore
According to South Korean outlet Dailian, the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance, or DAXA, released its 2026 digital asset policy materials. Seoul National University professor Zhao Zaiyu said that since the 2017 ICO ban, South Korean crypto projects have continued moving issuing entities and business bases overseas because of regulatory gaps.
The materials said Klaytn’s token issuance is handled by a Singapore entity, while Wemade’s WEMIX also uses a Singapore issuer. Metabora later moved to Dubai, and NeoFin shifted its foundation to Abu Dhabi.
Experts said the main obstacles include regulatory differences between domestic and overseas issuers and difficulties in opening corporate bank accounts. They argued that South Korea does not need looser regulation but clearer rules, and called for a basic digital asset law that defines licensing standards for issuance, custody, and validation, along with procedures for bringing core offshore functions back onshore.
Liquid Network redemptions remain frozen for 35 days
Bitcoin.com reported that LBTC-to-BTC redemptions on the Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network have been suspended for 35 days. As of Oct. 11, 2026, the project still had 86% support.
An attacker had previously exploited an Elements software vulnerability to move nearly 4,000 BTC. About 3,400 BTC has been returned, but the attacker still holds 598.5 BTC worth $49.69 million. Blockstream rejected the attacker’s request for a 10% bounty and demanded the immediate return of the remaining bitcoin.
Liquid Network said an independent external security audit of Elements v23.3.4 is under way. The Liquid Federation is also updating the PAK list and has moved all redemption keys into cold storage. No date has been given for restoring redemptions. Some LBTC holders have moved funds through apps including Sideswap and Sideshift.ai. One user said the move took weeks because of limited liquidity, with spreads and fees totaling about 5%.
CZ publishes a crypto custody guide
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao published a condensed guide to crypto asset custody, saying users should match security measures to the size of their holdings and their own technical ability. He highlighted three issues: preventing theft, avoiding accidental loss, and planning inheritance in advance.
For self-custody, Zhao recommended storing private keys on offline devices, using trusted hardware wallets, verifying transaction addresses, and keeping multiple backups in separate locations. He warned against saving keys in photos or screenshots because they may sync to the cloud and leak. On inheritance, he said users should prepare a secure recovery plan rather than directly sharing keys or storing recovery information in unencrypted form.
For centralized exchanges, Zhao said users should assess platform reputation, security capability, and business model, then strengthen account protection with a separate email address, strong passwords, two-factor authentication, hardware security keys, and withdrawal address whitelists. He also warned about phishing and API credential leaks.
Zhao added that users should allocate assets between exchanges and personal wallets based on technical ability, security management capacity, and liquidity needs. Self-custody means taking full responsibility for private key protection and recovery, while exchange custody introduces platform credit and counterparty risk. Keeping an independent wallet can also preserve access during exchange maintenance or service outages.
U.S. spot Ether ETFs log $542.1 million in weekly net outflows
The Block reported that U.S. spot Ether ETFs saw $542.1 million in net outflows last week, their worst week since January, extending the outflow streak to nine straight days.
Over the same period, Solana ETFs recorded $24.8 million in net outflows, ending a 14-week run of net inflows and marking the largest weekly net outflow since the product launched.
Papertrade responds to manipulation and protocol vulnerability criticism
Papertrade said small and large orders cannot have the same priority because that would clog the front end with spam transactions and create a worse outcome than the current queueing system.
The team said it had made the fair-launch design as inclusive as possible within those constraints. It argued that the attempted manipulation of BTC and ETH on Hyperliquid’s BBO the previous night was not the result of an overlooked flaw in a mechanism designed over six months. Instead, it said the issue became possible because position limits were set very loosely at launch to handle congestion.
Papertrade said imposing position limits during peak queue demand would have made the user experience even slower, while the queue itself offers some natural protection because the timing of open and close confirmations is uncertain. As congestion has eased, the team said it has already started tightening position limits both on-chain and at the relay layer. It added that manipulation attempts are always possible in systems like this, and the real goal is to make them economically unattractive, with negative expected value and high tail risk even if they succeed.
Separately, trader Rune said on X that PaperTrade’s own documentation had already disclosed a protocol-level pricing "vulnerability" risk. Based on screenshots he shared, an attacker could manipulate prices through Hyperliquid’s best bid and offer, or BBO. He said the risk touches unresolved manipulation paths, contract economics and exposure controls, as well as operational safeguards and permission management.
Rune also reposted comments from community user boblob, who said two wallets appeared to be actively exploiting the platform. According to that post, roughly $20 million in trading briefly moved ETH prices on Hyperliquid by about 10 to 20 basis points. boblob said the protocol has obvious issues that need to be fixed quickly or they could affect long-term sustainability.
Analysts focus on Bitcoin cost basis clusters and rising sell pressure
Crypto analyst Darkfost said 53% of invested capital is concentrated above the $83,000 level. In his view, buying Bitcoin there would place an investor’s cost basis ahead of more than half the market.
He said the $84,000 to $85,000 range is the largest cost-basis cluster and the key resistance zone Bitcoin needs to clear. On the downside, he identified $79,000 to $77,000 as a possible support area. If price fails to break through $84,000 to $85,000, the market may first revisit that lower support zone. If it breaks and holds above the dense cluster on strong volume, he said, cost pressure on most holders would be absorbed and upside resistance would ease.
Darkfost also said Bitcoin has entered a phase of visibly stronger seller pressure. After the recent rebound pushed BTC above $85,000, the Seller Exhaustion indicator signaled rising potential sell pressure. He said the metric combines profitable supply and volatility and is useful for identifying risk and calm phases over the short term. The latest rise was abrupt, especially among short-term holders, and the indicator is now close to levels seen near several local tops in the current cycle. He said the next step is to watch whether demand improves and volatility contracts enough to contain a pullback and normalize the signal.
Another trader, Killa, said the ideal path for BTC would be to keep rising before the U.S. midterm elections, build a bullish narrative, and break the previous high, then pull back after the election as in prior cycles. He added that this time the pullback may not create a new cycle low but instead a higher low.
Killa said that if BTC falls before the midterms, he thinks the market is more likely to rebound to around $95,000 after the election. He noted that nearly $2 billion in long positions had already been liquidated and that only about three weeks remain before the U.S. midterm elections. In his view, the market may be setting up for a "max pain" move in which BTC rebounds before the election after some narratives have already broken down, then reverses and pressures traders on the other side before risk is deleveraged again.
He also said that in three of the last four U.S. midterm election cycles, markets fell one to two months after the vote, implying a historical sample probability of about 75%. Killa added that he still holds a 10x BTC long as well as earlier long positions opened at $62,600 and $76,400, with no reductions so far.
Ledger supply-chain concerns spread, and related funds move through Tornado Cash
X user @0xJohannes said a Ledger hardware wallet bought several weeks ago from an official European reseller was found to contain an unauthorized spy implant. The device reportedly had suspicious internal wiring not present in genuine Ledger hardware, suggesting physical tampering before sale.
The implant was described as likely an older version, with newer versions usually hiding components behind the screen. Funds on the affected device have not been stolen. Suspected cases have now been reported in Asia, South America, and Europe. If the original secure element remains intact, Ledger’s Genuine Check cannot detect unauthorized physical modifications.
Separately, on-chain investigator Specter said addresses linked to the CryptoBilis Ledger hardware wallet incident deposited 2,990.3 ETH, worth about $7.45 million, into Tornado Cash between Oct. 9 and Oct. 10. Monitoring showed the attacker had first withdrawn funds to 14 addresses, then bridged through NEAR Intents into ZEC for privacy processing.
Specter said some withdrawal transactions reused earlier deposit addresses, while others were initiated by wallets linked to the address that paid gas during the theft, creating links between deposits and withdrawals. The attacker is still moving and obscuring funds. Ledger has said it is investigating the earlier CryptoBilis incident and urged affected users to pay attention to device security.
COLDCARD says its X account posted a phishing link
Hardware wallet maker COLDCARD said its official X account had posted a fake security notice directing users to a phishing site disguised as a wallet migration guide. The post has been deleted, and the company said it found no corresponding login, session, or access records.
COLDCARD said its credentials and offline two-factor authentication remain secure, leading it to suspect the attacker may have obtained platform-level or administrator-level access at X. The company said it has asked X’s security team to investigate urgently. It also mentioned unverified reports about X administrator accounts being sold on dark web markets, though it said no link to this incident has been established.
Cloudflare acquires Deno and plans self-hosted support for Workers
Forbes reported that Cloudflare has acquired JavaScript and TypeScript runtime company Deno. Deno founder Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js, and co-founder Bert Belder will join Cloudflare with the rest of the team.
The key asset in the deal is the open-source project celld, a distributed deployment tool that runs Workers and Durable Objects as a single Rust binary. It allows enterprises to run Cloudflare’s serverless programming model on their own infrastructure, addressing long-running criticism that Workers is too locked in. Cloudflare plans to merge celld into the open-source runtime workerd to deliver full self-hosted support.
Deno had previously raised $26 million. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Deno Deploy will shut down in six months, and the Deno runtime will receive one year of security updates before development ends. The acquisition is Cloudflare’s second developer-tools deal in four months after its June purchase of VoidZero, the company behind the Vite build tool.
Kyle Samani says his biggest angel investment is in Backpack
Multicoin co-founder Kyle Samani said on X that his largest personal angel investment has gone into Backpack.
On Sept. 2, Backpack announced that Samani, a Multicoin Capital co-founder and early Solana investor, had joined the board of Backpack US. Backpack said at the time that the appointment reflected a shared view that the future of global finance will combine institutional-grade risk controls with the efficiency and transparency of on-chain markets.
Order-book data shows thicker near-term ETH bids on Binance spot
According to order-book intelligence platform Liquid247.xyz, ETH was trading at $2,510.44. The thickest book was on Binance spot, where bids totaled $8.2185 million and asks totaled $6.0449 million, leaving bids ahead by $2.1736 million.
On Binance perpetuals, Coinbase spot, OKX perpetuals, and Hyperliquid perpetuals, asks were thicker than bids. The platform said that if a large order hits suddenly, thinner venues are likely to move first and show larger price swings.
XRPL fixes a severe vulnerability that had existed for more than 10 years
Responding to a report from Veria AI about a critical payment engine issue, RippleX engineering lead J. Ayo Akinyele said the XRP Ledger had a severe vulnerability in its payment engine that had existed for more than a decade and could have allowed XRP to be minted beyond its fixed supply. He said the flaw was discovered through a bug bounty program and was never exploited.
The development team released xrpld 3.4.1 to fix the issue and coordinated validators to complete a network upgrade before public disclosure. Akinyele said AI is accelerating the pace of vulnerability discovery, and XRPL will increase proactive security investment, reduce technical debt, advance formal verification, and systematically remove latent risks in legacy code.
Other market and industry developments
- Bernama reported that a man in Perak, Malaysia, may have lost about 12.47 million ringgit, or about $3.05 million, after his crypto wallet was allegedly compromised. Police said the victim discovered unauthorized transfers on the afternoon of Oct. 9. Authorities are working with the commercial crime investigation department’s cryptocurrency unit to trace the funds. The case is being investigated under Section 420 of Malaysia’s Penal Code, and the attack method has not been disclosed.
- The Financial Times reported that Nvidia is in talks that could lead either to an acquisition of U.S. open-weight model developer Reflection AI or to a larger investment in the company. People familiar with the matter said discussions are still at an early stage and the transaction could take several forms.
- The International Monetary Fund said tokenized stocks are less liquid and more volatile than traditional equities. Watcher Guru cited the IMF as saying tokenized stocks have "lower liquidity and greater volatility" than conventional shares.
Meme leaderboard
According to GMGN market data as of 08:45 on Oct. 12:
- Top five ETH meme tokens over the past 24 hours: INCOGNITO, ZC, CLAUS, DNA, DOPE.
- Top five Solana meme tokens over the past 24 hours: DOPE, baton, CLAUDIA, Incognito, Normie.
- Top five Base meme tokens over the past 24 hours: XDP, Basecat, PROS, BLUECHIP, VVV.
Articles highlighted over the past 24 hours
- "Five Centuries of Evolution: Prediction Markets Become Global Information Pricing Infrastructure" discussed yield-bearing collateral in prediction markets, including assets such as sUSDe and tokenized Treasuries. It said sUSDe generated annualized returns of 4% to 30% over the past two years through perpetual funding rates and can already be used as collateral on Aave, Pendle, and Morpho. The piece also described how prediction markets could be combined with lending and other DeFi modules.
- "When Fintech Merges With Crypto Rails, the Next Decade of Digital Finance" argued that the future of fintech lies in combining traditional financial platforms with programmable financial infrastructure. It said blockchains are increasingly being integrated as back-end settlement and liquidity layers, while stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain markets bring faster settlement, cheaper cross-border payments, and new financial products.
- "Justin Sun’s Latest Interview: Cognitive Upgrades in the AI Era" quoted Sun as saying he leans toward creation over consumption, but also sees consumption as a way to recover after long periods of intense work, with the two reinforcing rather than suppressing each other.
- "Latest Report From the Team Behind ‘AI Doomsday Report’: Agents and RWA Are Reshaping Crypto" said institutions and individuals are now both able and willing to participate in a broader range of RWA markets. It argued that the key question is shifting from whether tokenization can gain legal recognition to who will capture revenue and profit once these products enter the U.S. market.
- "Goldman Discussion: AI Trading Shifts From Hardware to Applications" presented discussion content and remarks from a Goldman call.
- "Winners Queue for Payouts, Losers Get Airdrops: Understanding Papertrade’s ‘Lose-to-Mine’ Model" said that once PAPER becomes tradable, market pricing will determine the value of tokens earned through losses. It argued that Papertrade does not remove the need for liquidity, but instead asks traders to create that liquidity over time through losses while rewarding them with PAPER.
- "The Numbers Game Behind Trillion-Dollar Valuations: Why OpenAI and Anthropic Revenue Can’t Be Compared Directly" said more AI startups are using annualized revenue to show growth and support high private valuations, while debate over that metric can distract from the more basic question of how much real sales are needed to cover spending and justify valuations above $1 trillion.