Robinhood said it will launch AI agents that can execute trades, crypto perpetual contracts with leverage of up to 10x, and weekend trading for U.S. stocks. HSBC, meanwhile, has named its planned Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HSBC RedCoin.
Top developments
Robinhood said it will introduce AI trading agents, 10x leveraged crypto perpetuals, and weekend trading for U.S. equities. HSBC’s upcoming Hong Kong dollar stablecoin will be called HSBC RedCoin. Binance Alpha is set to list Concrete (CT) for the first time on Sept. 30. Binance Pay has also rolled out crypto payments across millions of PayPay-supported merchant locations in Japan.
SlowMist said the Bitget theft can be traced back to Aug. 31 and involved a zero-day vulnerability in a third-party product. CryptoQuant said short-term on-chain profit margins have reached their highest level since December 2024, raising the possibility of a Bitcoin pullback. Abracadabra has opened a vote on shutting down and liquidating MIM, while Aztec has relaunched the zk.money privacy wallet on its Ethereum layer-2 network.
Regulation and macro
Kalshi may end trading-volume incentives on Oct. 13
According to a filing submitted to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Kalshi plans to terminate its trading-volume incentive program as early as Oct. 13. The program was designed to improve market liquidity by distributing rewards from a pool based on each trader’s share of eligible volume.
Trump says AI will be renamed "super intelligence"
U.S. President Donald Trump said he will sign a strong executive order on artificial intelligence and rename AI as "super intelligence," or SI. Trump said he would not suppress AI growth and wants to preserve U.S. leadership in the field. He also said AI, if misused, could affect how a political system functions, and added that he would sign an order requiring agencies to integrate with the america.gov website.
Fed Governor Barr says more rate hikes may be needed
Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr said more rate hikes may be needed.
Jensen Huang and Lisa Su join Tsinghua advisory board
Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management said its 2026 advisory board meeting will be held in Beijing on Oct. 13 and 14, marking the board’s 27th annual meeting since its establishment. Three new members were added this year: Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su, and Pictet Group senior managing partner Marc Pictet.
Five replacement members were also added, including BMW Group chairman Oliver Zipse, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, and Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, while their predecessors stepped down because of job changes.
Four Greek institutions enter MiCA register
Greece has entered ESMA’s register of MiCA crypto-asset service providers for the first time, with BCash, Xenios Blockchain Group, Capital Wallet Greece, and Piraeus Bank approved. That brought the total number of registered providers to 359. The first three are supervised by the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, while crypto banking activity is overseen by the Bank of Greece.
After reports claimed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde had intervened to block Binance from seeking a MiCA license through Greece, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission said in a written response that it had never communicated with the ECB or Greek government officials on the matter and "categorically denied" that the remarks had been made by its officials.
Project updates
Robinhood expands product lineup
Robinhood said Robinhood Agents will let customers create AI agents, choose models from OpenAI or Anthropic, and authorize access to separate trading accounts. Those agents can trade stocks, options, and crypto assets. The company said more than 150,000 agent accounts have already been created, and each trade still requires customer approval by default.
Its perpetual contracts will be offered through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp, with leverage of up to 10x on BTC and ETH. Robinhood also said it will offer earnings binary contracts through Cboe and weekend trading in stocks and ETFs through Bruce ATS.
HSBC names stablecoin HSBC RedCoin
HSBC said its planned Hong Kong dollar stablecoin will be called HSBC RedCoin. A survey found that 74% of local consumers recognized at least one stablecoin use case. Digital asset trading and tokenized investment ranked first at 57%, followed by P2P transfers at 53%, cross-border remittances at 52%, and merchant payments at 52%.
The survey also found that 60% of respondents correctly defined stablecoins as fiat-backed assets, while 26% mistakenly believed they are issued by governments. The first phase will focus on P2P and consumer-to-merchant payments, with later expansion into commercial and corporate finance. In April, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted the first batch of Hong Kong dollar stablecoin issuer licenses to HSBC and Standard Chartered. HSBC plans a formal launch in the second half of the year.
Binance Alpha to debut Concrete
Binance Alpha will list Concrete (CT) for the first time on Sept. 30. Eligible users will be able to claim an airdrop with Binance Alpha points after trading opens, with further details to be announced later.
Binance Pay rolls out in Japan through PayPay merchants
Binance Pay now allows international visitors to Japan to pay with crypto at millions of locations that support PayPay. Users can scan a merchant QR code or present their own payment code for the merchant to scan, then pay directly from crypto balances in their Binance accounts with zero gas fees.
Abracadabra opens vote to shut down and liquidate MIM
Abracadabra, the lending protocol behind the MIM stablecoin, has opened a proposal vote to shut down the protocol and liquidate MIM. The proposal would liquidate remaining assets, convert collateral into ETH, and distribute it pro rata to MIM holders.
The team estimated that MIM has about $900,000 in enforceable backing against $21 million in bad debt, leaving effective backing below $0.04 per token and more than 95% without collateral support. Abracadabra said MIM is a liability of the protocol and ranks ahead of SPELL. Until MIM is fully repaid, SPELL has no accounting value. The protocol has suffered multiple exploits with cumulative losses above $21 million, and MIM experienced a severe depeg in June.
Aztec relaunches zk.money
Aztec Labs has relaunched the self-custodial privacy wallet zk.money on Aztec Network, its Ethereum privacy layer 2. The wallet does not publish user balances, payment amounts, or counterparty information on a public ledger.
The original zk.money launched in 2021 and was discontinued in 2023. It had more than 75,000 unique user addresses and processed more than $100 million in transaction volume. Aztec Labs CEO Joe Andrews said the earlier shutdown was not due to a lack of demand, but because the early system could not scale to global usage.
Balancer approves orderly shutdown
The Balancer community approved the BIP-928 orderly shutdown proposal, while the fork proposal BIP-929 failed. Liquidity pools will continue operating until Oct. 30, and withdrawals will remain open throughout the process.
- Oct. 16 is the deadline for partners to request that designated V3 pools be extended to Nov. 30.
- From Oct. 30, pools will become withdrawal-only and the bug bounty program will end.
- On Nov. 30, the V3 Vault will be paused.
BAL holders are expected to be able to burn BAL from late May 2027 to claim treasury assets on a pro rata basis. tetuBAL holders will receive BAL equal to 50% of their locked assets.
Velocity restarts after hack recovery
Velocity, formerly Drift Protocol, said co-founder Cindy has stepped down and the protocol will continue to be run by the existing team. The on-chain perpetuals exchange launched on Solana in November 2021 and has processed more than $150 billion in cumulative trading volume.
The project was hit by a North Korean hack in April. The team later reached an agreement with Tether to support user asset recovery and overhaul security. Velocity said it has now completed an audit, fully open-sourced the codebase, and officially restarted operations today. The team said it will keep working on asset recovery, technical upgrades, and growth.
Bitwise launches spot NEAR ETP in the U.S.
Bitwise NEAR ETF, trading under NRR on the NYSE, has launched in the United States as the first spot NEAR ETP. It began trading on NYSE Arca on Sept. 29 with a management fee of 0.75%. Bitwise said it will stake the NEAR held by the fund and target participation in roughly 5% average staking rewards on NEAR.
NEAR Intents has processed more than $32 billion in cumulative volume, up from less than $1 billion a year ago. NEAR’s market capitalization is above $6 billion, and its inflation rate has recently been halved to 2.5%.
Modveon and Coinbase launch Sivar in El Salvador
Modveon has launched Sivar, a community and payments app for El Salvador, using Coinbase payment infrastructure to create a lower-cost remittance corridor between the U.S. and El Salvador. Sivar includes a non-custodial wallet, and users can fund it with debit cards through Coinbase Onramp. Funds settle in stablecoins on Base for near-instant, low-cost clearing.
Compliant U.S. users sending money to verified recipients in El Salvador will pay a flat $2 fee per transfer. Recipients can cash out at more than 1,000 physical locations in the country.
Stride proposes chain shutdown and migration
Stride, a liquid staking protocol in the Cosmos ecosystem, has proposed an orderly shutdown of the Stride chain because operating funds are close to running out. Current TVL is about $6 million. Users can redeem stTokens normally until Oct. 12, after which redemptions will pause. Redemptions are expected to resume on Osmosis around Nov. 20, and stTokens will not expire.
At the current burn rate, operating funds would be depleted by February 2027. After migration, each stToken will enter an Osmosis conversion pool at a fixed exchange rate, and redemption will become a swap. Once the migration is complete, staking yield will no longer accrue.
Morgan Stanley sets up digital asset lab
According to Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley has established a digital asset lab to test stablecoins, asset tokenization, and decentralized finance applications in a ring-fenced compliant environment. Amy Oldenburg, head of the bank’s digital assets team, said the lab will also study tokenized deposits, central bank digital currencies, tokenized money market funds, and DeFi vaults.
The lab sits within Morgan Stanley’s existing innovation lab system, which tests as many as 270 projects a year. Oldenburg said DeFi vaults remain at an early stage and the bank first needs to understand how the technology works before exposing existing platforms to risk.
CBOE extends exclusive deal with S&P DJI
Cboe and S&P Dow Jones Indices said they have extended their exclusive licensing agreement by 25 years through 2051. The two sides have worked together for more than 40 years since launching S&P 500 index options in 1983.
Under the agreement, Cboe will continue to hold exclusive listing and trading rights for S&P 500 index options. The companies also said they plan to explore products such as tokenized options contracts.
Funding and investment
Multicoin Capital backs Grass
Multicoin Capital general partner Shayon Sengupta said the firm’s hedge fund and venture fund have invested in DePIN project Grass. Grass uses crypto incentives to share idle bandwidth and build a decentralized network that supplies pre-training data to AI labs.
The project has served multiple labs over the past 18 months. It generated $17 million in revenue in 2025 and another $17 million in the first half of 2026, and expects full-year revenue from training-data operations alone to reach $75 million. The business is already profitable, and more than 6 million contributors have received rewards denominated in U.S. dollars.
Views and analysis
SlowMist traces Bitget theft back to Aug. 31
SlowMist, which was commissioned by Bitget to investigate the Sept. 25 hot wallet theft, released an interim report. As of Sept. 29, it said the earliest malicious activity could be traced to Aug. 31 and involved a zero-day vulnerability in a third-party security product.
The report said that on Sept. 25, someone gained unauthorized access to the third-party product’s management platform by posing as an internal employee. Investigators also found a highly customized withdrawal tool used by the attacker. On-chain activity began at 02:31 on Sept. 25 and transfers across multiple blockchains continued for about 2 hours and 52 minutes. The attacker then tried to tamper with withdrawal records and trigger additional BTC withdrawals.
Arthur Hayes sees ETH at $10,000 by year-end
Arthur Hayes said he expects ETH to reach $10,000 by the end of this year.
SlowMist researcher says North Korean hackers used Cow and Chainflip
According to SlowMist researcher Cos, the firm’s TrackAgent system found that North Korean hackers used a combination of Cow Protocol and Chainflip to move funds stolen from Bitget across chains. The attackers used automated scripts to create orders on Cow Protocol and set the receiving address as a pre-arranged Chainflip Deposit-related contract address. Once the orders were filled, the assets were bridged through Chainflip and converted into BTC.
Bitwise says 15 large institutions held or added BTC during decline
A Bitwise report said that although Bitcoin fell from $125,000 to $60,000, none of the 15 large institutions surveyed sold their holdings and some added more. The group included pensions, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds.
Bitwise said these institutions view Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat debasement rather than a speculative asset. Some allocations were around 2% to 8%, with Wells Fargo at roughly 2% to 3%. Some sovereign wealth funds are reducing gold exposure and reallocating to Bitcoin. Bitwise also said spot ETFs have widened institutional access and reduced the severity of drawdowns. Weekly ETF inflows recently reached about $2.5 billion, and the firm said $60,000 may have marked the cycle bottom.
Trader Killa remains bullish on Bitcoin toward $90,000
Trader Killa said the market has broadly expected a deep retracement similar to 2023, but the current BTC structure looks different. Bitcoin has already made a higher weekly high and is consolidating above the prior high, which he said points to a structural shift.
He said the maximum drawdown in this bear market was about 54%, below the 77% seen in the previous cycle. Applying the logic of diminishing returns and shallower pullbacks, he said the largest correction on the path toward a $126,000 target may be only 10% to 15%, implying roughly $78,000 to $74,000. With open interest reset and price holding above the previous high, Killa said he is not betting on a deep pullback and still sees Bitcoin reaching the $90,000 range.
Benjamin Cowen questions bearish Q4 view
ITC Crypto founder Benjamin Cowen said current technicals are favorable for bulls and Bitcoin is now less than 1% below its May high. He noted that in past cycles, including 2019 and 2023, Bitcoin often rose 20% to 30% within one to two weeks after reclaiming the 50-week moving average.
This cycle has been much more muted, he said, possibly because of seasonality and higher U.S. Treasury yields. Even so, Bitcoin has continued to show resilience, which in his view calls for a reassessment of the bearish fourth-quarter thesis.
Key data
Spot Bitcoin ETFs post another day of inflows
According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $66.1947 million on Sept. 29 Eastern Time, extending the streak to nine consecutive days.
- BlackRock’s IBIT posted $51.0883 million in daily net inflows and $65.388 billion in cumulative historical net inflows.
- ARKB from Ark/21Shares recorded $33.2417 million in net inflows, bringing cumulative inflows to $1.409 billion.
- Bitwise’s BITB saw net outflows of $18.1353 million, with cumulative inflows of $2.111 billion.
As of publication, total net assets across spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at $107.961 billion, with a net asset ratio of 6.43% and cumulative historical net inflows of $57.644 billion.
KOSPI posts biggest quarterly drop since 2020 Q1
South Korea’s KOSPI closed down 32.77 points, or 0.48%, at 6,838.04 on Sept. 30. The index fell 19.3% in the third quarter, its largest quarterly decline since the first quarter of 2020.
Strive adds 6,106 BTC
According to Lookonchain, Strive bought 6,106 BTC between Aug. 24 and Sept. 25 at an average price of $80,375, for a total value of about $491 million.
CryptoQuant flags elevated short-term profit margins
CryptoQuant said Bitcoin closed above its 365-day moving average last week, confirming the start of a new bull market, but several indicators suggest momentum has weakened after the price touched $87,400, an eight-month high, and that a pullback may follow.
Short-term holders’ unrealized on-chain profit margin rose to 33%, the highest since December 2024. On Sept. 22, holders realized profits of 25,700 BTC in a single day, the highest daily figure this year. If a pullback occurs, CryptoQuant said the 365-day moving average near $80,000 would be the first support, followed by the 200-day moving average near $71,000 and the trader realized price near $67,000. The firm described such a move as a healthy consolidation in a young bull market.
Bitget replenishes protection fund
According to Ai Yi, Bitget’s protection fund has been replenished by $300 million. Its latest balance stands at 3,705 BTC, worth about $307 million.
Other market and on-chain moves
A whale that bought 30 million ENA three days ago added another 7.96 million tokens. LIT briefly fell below $3.7, with $6.86 million liquidated over four hours.
Onchain Lens said Grayscale’s Chainlink ETF bought and received 159,480 LINK from Coinbase Prime five hours earlier, worth about $2.36 million. The ETF has accumulated at least 629,100 LINK this month, worth about $8.37 million.
On-chain data also showed that Machi Big Brother, Huang Licheng, has fully closed his PUMP long position for an estimated profit of about $827,000. His current positions include a 25x leveraged long in 35,182 ETH with an unrealized gain of $278,000, a 40x leveraged long in 450 BTC with an unrealized loss of $347,000, and a 10x leveraged long in 225,000 HYPE with an unrealized loss of $1.255 million.
Axios says OpenAI ARR is nearing $70 billion
According to Axios, people familiar with the matter said OpenAI’s enterprise sales have more than doubled since July, while its annualized revenue run rate has risen more than 70% since the start of the third quarter to nearly $70 billion. Revenue from its business-to-business segment also grew by more than 100% over the same period.
On the consumer side, OpenAI added more revenue in the third quarter than it did during all of 2025. The report said the company’s exact spending level is still unknown.