Important News from Last Night and This Morning (October 19–October 20)

ESMA Adds 9 Crypto-Asset Service Providers, Bringing Total to 375

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has added nine crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to its registration list under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), including BingX's Austrian entity MEGE zweite, YouHodler's Italian subsidiary, and Santander's Openbank Deutschland, bringing the total number of registered CASPs to 375.

Shenzhen Economic Crime Investigation: Beware of "RWA Real Estate Tokenization" and "Blockchain Evidence Storage" Scams

The Economic Crime Investigation Bureau of the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau issued a reminder to be wary of new scams packaged as "RWA real estate tokenization" and "blockchain evidence storage." The bureau pointed out that technical terminology ≠ trust endorsement. Technical practitioners tend to mistake "technically verifiable" for "project compliance and legality." Criminals infiltrate technical communities disguised as industry veterans, leveraging in-group trust to lower others' vigilance. In addition, contract addresses and company registration numbers can only prove that code exists and that an entity is registered; they neither represent that the underlying assets actually exist, nor that the entity holds financial business qualifications.

Binance Alpha to Open Airdrop Trading at 21:00 Today, Threshold of 255 Points

The Binance Alpha airdrop claim and trading event will open today at 21:00 (UTC+8). Users holding at least 255 Binance Alpha points can claim tokens on a "first come, first served" basis until the airdrop pool is fully distributed or the event ends.

Strategy Bought 267 Bitcoin and Repurchased $193 Million of STRC Over the Past Week

Strategy announced that over the past week it repurchased $193 million worth of STRC and bought 267 Bitcoin (BTC). As of October 18, 2026, it holds a total of 848,517 Bitcoin and $5.3 billion in USD assets. In addition, Strategy expanded its "digital credit securities repurchase program" from $2 billion to $3 billion.

Strive Added 1,223 Bitcoin Last Week, Now Holding 36,818 BTC

Strive added 1,223 Bitcoin last week and now holds a total of 36,818 BTC. So far this year, Strive's Bitcoin holdings have grown by more than 380%.

BitMine Added 12,535 ETH Last Week, Total Holdings Reaching About 6.04 Million

BitMine added 12,535 ETH last week. As of October 18, its total holdings reached 6,041,481 ETH, accounting for about 4.9% of the total ETH supply. Currently, the total value of BitMine's cryptocurrency, cash, and other investment assets is about $15.1 billion, including $582 million in cash and marketable securities, 215 Bitcoin, $180 million in Beast Industries equity assets, and a $74 million investment in Eightco Holdings (ORBS). In addition, BitMine has staked 5,067,309 ETH; at a price of $2,365 per ETH, this is worth $12 billion.

Binance: Holding at Least 255 Alpha Points Allows Claiming an Airdrop of 87 CT Tokens

Binance Alpha has launched the second wave of the Concrete (CT) airdrop. Users holding at least 255 Binance Alpha points can claim the token airdrop. Claim an airdrop of 87 CT tokens on the Alpha event page. If the rewards are not fully distributed, the points threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every 5 minutes. Claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Binance Alpha points. Users must confirm the claim within 24 hours on the Alpha event page, otherwise it will be considered a forfeiture of the airdrop.

De¹ Launches Tokenized Asset World on BNB Chain, Building Financial Intelligence That Fully Understands the RWA Execution Environment

De¹ announced that it is building the first vertical of its Financial World Model (FWM) on BNB Chain, the Tokenized Asset World, focusing on tokenized stocks and RWAs, aiming to integrate scenarios such as asset trading, liquidity execution, collateralized lending, structured credit, and AI agent interaction to create a unified, continuously learning financial intelligence environment.

Building on BNB Chain's existing diverse financial ecosystem, De¹ will leverage infrastructure such as PancakeSwap, ListaDAO, Venus, and the BNB Agent SDK to convert real on-chain behaviors like trading, lending, and liquidation into verifiable training signals, forming a continuous feedback loop from market interaction and model updates to trade routing and agent strategy optimization. This will help BNB Chain's fragmented financial scenarios form a complete system that AI agents can uniformly understand and operate, allowing the financial world model to continuously learn and optimize from real market activity.

Machi Has a Net Loss of $382,000 on PaperTrade

Machi (Huang Licheng) has been losing money on PaperTrade. The $261,000 he deposited yesterday has been almost entirely lost, with only $5,682 left in the account. Machi lost $779,000 in trading while earning $394,000 in rewards through USDC staking, resulting in a final net loss of $382,000.

SkyAI Has Sold All Its SOL, Now Holding $223.8 Million in Cash

Solana treasury company SkyAI (formerly Sharps Technology) has sold all of its Solana assets, with its holdings dropping from more than 2 million SOL in September to zero as of October 16. The company currently holds $223.8 million in cash and has launched a buyback program of up to $201.3 million, at a repurchase price of $3 per share (or per warrant).

US Plans to Ban Federal Agencies from Using DeepSeek Products

The Trump administration plans to ban US federal government agencies from using DeepSeek's products or services. According to a notice published by the US Department of Homeland Security on the Federal Register website on Monday, federal agencies must remove all DeepSeek products from their systems. The order cites US cybersecurity-related laws and also prohibits DeepSeek from participating in federal government contracts.

US Memory Chip Stocks Rally Across the Board, Multiple Stocks Up Over 5%

According to Binance market data, US memory chip stocks strengthened across the board, with Micron Technology up 4.18%, SK Hynix up 5.07%, SanDisk up 7.23%, and Western Digital up 5.96%.

Echo Protocol Decides to Gradually Wind Down the Protocol and End Related Business

Bitcoin infrastructure protocol Echo Protocol announced that after nearly two years of operation, the team has decided to gradually wind down the protocol and end related business. Currently, the lending business has stopped accepting new deposits and borrowings and has stopped accruing interest; Strategy has stopped accepting new deposits; LSD has stopped accepting new staking. Repayments, withdrawals, and necessary asset liquidation can still proceed normally. After November 14, Echo will officially cease operations.

Users can withdraw, repay, and unstake starting from 08:00 on October 19, with a deadline of 07:59 on November 20. Loans not repaid by the deadline will have their collateral liquidated, with the proceeds used to repay lenders. After the deadline, remaining positions will enter liquidation or settlement procedures, with specific timing to be determined. After the protocol is shut down, the cross-chain bridge redemption service from Aptos to B² Network will remain available. The team reminds users to ignore any requests asking you to transfer funds or privately sign to a specific wallet address.

AI Startup Tenstorrent Completes $1.5 Billion Series E Round, with Tether Among Investors

AI startup Tenstorrent completed a $1.5 billion Series E funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $6.2 billion. The round was led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with participation from new and existing investors including Agostinelli Group, ARK Invest, Brett Barna, Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Maverick Silicon, Morgan Stanley, Protagonist, SanDisk, T. Rowe Price*, Tether Investments, Troluce Capital, Virtu Financial, and XTX Markets.

MiniMax Releases M3.1 Flash, Agent Task Costs Reduced by 70% Compared to Previous Generation

According to MiniMax's official blog, MiniMax has officially released its new-generation model M3.1 Flash, with agent task usage costs reduced by 70% compared to the previous generation, online inference speed improved by nearly 3x, and output speed exceeding 200 tokens per second. API pricing is $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.6 per million output tokens. The model scored 61.7 on the OSWorld V2 benchmark, ranking first among Chinese models. The company said that the anonymous model "Space Bunny," which previously processed over 200 trillion tokens, was an early version of M3.1 Flash. The model is now available through the MiniMax API, M Plan, and MiniMax Code, and the model weights will be open-sourced later. MiniMax previously launched M3.1-Flash-Preview in September.

Pump.fun Launches Pre-IPO Tokens, New Coins Can Be Paired with OpenAI and Others

Pump.fun posted on X that Pre-IPO tokens powered by PreStocks are now live on Pump.fun. Users can trade Pre-IPO tokens of unlisted companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Anduril, Neuralink, Figure AI, Kalshi, Polymarket, and Oura, and can issue new coins paired with these tokens. PreStocks is a Pre-IPO tokenization platform on Solana. Previously, Pump.fun launched a custom trading pair feature on October 9, allowing new coins to be paired with tokens already issued on the platform.

Coinbase Adds AXIS, PEARL, and STABLE to Its Listing Roadmap

Coinbase Assets posted on X that Coinbase has added Axis Labs (AXIS), Pearl (PEARL), and Stable (STABLE) to its listing roadmap, with AXIS being a Base network token. The trading launch of the above assets still depends on market-making support and whether technical infrastructure is in place; once the relevant conditions are met, the listing time will be announced separately.

Anthropic in Talks to Buy About $45 Billion of Compute from Nscale, Potentially a Second Major Deal

Nscale, an AI cloud computing company backed by Nvidia, is in talks with Anthropic to sell compute capacity, with the deal potentially worth about $45 billion. Under the plan, Nscale will build a second facility at its Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, providing 460 megawatts of compute using Nvidia Vera Rubin chips, and Anthropic also holds a right of first refusal on a third facility. People familiar with the matter said the deal could be finalized in the coming days, but details may still change. According to Nscale's IPO filing, Anthropic has previously signed an infrastructure agreement with it worth about $44.6 billion.

BlackRock Files for Bitcoin Downside Protection ETF, Linked to IBIT with a Return Cap

According to US SEC filings, BlackRock's iShares Trust submitted a registration application on October 19 for the iShares Bitcoin Managed Protection ETF, with the ticker PBIT. The fund aims to provide upside returns from the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) and similar Bitcoin exposure, but with a roughly capped upside, while providing a degree of downside protection. Its strategy typically involves buying Bitcoin options in three tranches while selling options to offset the purchase cost (thereby limiting upside), and investing in fixed-income products to earn interest income, used to hedge option costs and provide downside protection.

Former Google CEO Schmidt Reportedly Holds About 1% Stake in Anthropic

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt holds about a 1% stake in Anthropic, stemming from tens of millions of dollars he invested in its Series A round, which would make him one of the biggest individual beneficiaries of Anthropic's upcoming IPO. It is currently unclear whether he has sold any shares; both Schmidt and Anthropic declined to comment. According to Pitchbook data, Anthropic was valued at $461 million when Schmidt first invested in 2021. Investors said last week that Anthropic's reasonable valuation is between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion; if calculated at the upper end, Schmidt's net worth would rise to nearly $80 billion.

OpenAI Plans to Accelerate Completion of About $30 Billion Funding Round Before Anthropic's IPO

People familiar with the matter said OpenAI is seeking to complete a new funding round of about $30 billion at an unusually fast pace, hoping to finalize it before Anthropic's expected IPO in mid-November. SoftBank, MGX, and other existing investors are in talks to participate, and the round could value OpenAI at more than $1.4 trillion. OpenAI has told investors that its annualized revenue has reached $50 billion and could reach $70 billion by year-end. In March this year, OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round at a valuation of $852 billion.

US CFTC Rebuts CME's Standing to Sue, Says It Failed to Prove Harm from New Perpetual Contract Policy

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a brief in court last Friday, saying that CME Group (CME) failed to prove it was harmed by the CFTC's new perpetual contract policy and therefore lacks standing to sue. The CFTC pointed out that after the policy change, CME's crypto futures trading volume rose rather than fell, and that CME told investors on an earnings call that it saw no demand for perpetual contracts and that the two were not substitutes. The CFTC approved Kalshi in May this year to launch the first Bitcoin perpetual contract in the US, and said it would regulate such products on a case-by-case basis as futures. CME argues that perpetual contracts have no expiration date and should be regulated as swaps. The CFTC asked a judge last month to dismiss the case. TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg said the perpetual contract market has continued to expand during the litigation, and if CME wins, the market unwind would be more complicated.

Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Personally Developing a New Programming Language

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said on X on Sunday that he is personally developing a new programming language for Cardano. His collaborator is Input Output Global software engineer Lucas Rosa, who is also the co-creator of Aiken, Cardano's smart contract language. Hoskinson said this will be the first language to combine transaction intents with cryptographic proofs that "rules have been followed," supporting transaction intents, proof-carrying data, and Groth16 proofs. Developers can use it to build applications that coordinate transactions and verify complex conditions, with a small proof ultimately verified on the Cardano chain. Cardano's existing smart contract languages are Plutus and Aiken. Hoskinson has not yet announced the language's name, public code, or launch time.

Ramp Applies to US OCC for a Trust Bank Charter

Fintech company Ramp has submitted an application to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Ramp National Trust Bank. Ramp said on X that if the application is approved, the trust bank will provide fiduciary investment management and digital asset custody services, and will not take deposits or make commercial loans. This year, companies such as Revolut and Crypto.com have received conditional approval for various types of OCC charters. Bloomberg previously reported that Ramp was valued at $60 billion in a new funding round, with annualized revenue growing to $2 billion.

A Whale Sold 12,468 ETH for a Profit of $8.99 Million, Then Moved 20 Million USDC to Hyperliquid to Go Long on Crude Oil

A whale sold 12,468 ETH at an average price of $2,368, receiving 29.52 million USDC and realizing a profit of about $8.99 million. The whale then moved 20 million USDC to Hyperliquid to go long on crude oil. Its crude oil long position is currently worth about $22.4 million, including CL (WTI crude oil) and BRENTOIL (Brent crude oil) contracts, and it is still adding to the position. The whale had previously borrowed 30 million USDS in a loop on Spark in early June, using leverage to buy 18,212 ETH at an average price of $1,647.

South Korea's KOSPI Index Losses Widen to 3%, SK Hynix Down 4.6%

South Korea's KOSPI index losses widened to 3%, with SK Hynix down 4.6% and Samsung Electronics down 2%.

Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Set to Activate on Hoodi Testnet in the Early Hours of October 27 Beijing Time

The Glamsterdam upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Hoodi testnet at 17:42:48 (UTC) on October 26, which is 01:42:48 Beijing time on October 27; at that time, Hoodi's block gas limit will also be raised to 200 million. This upgrade includes embedded proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and gas accounting adjustments. The Sepolia testnet completed activation on October 6, and the Ethereum mainnet upgrade date has not yet been determined. Node operators need to update their execution layer and consensus layer clients before Hoodi activation.

Sophon Mainnet to Shut Down on November 30, Users Need to Withdraw Assets Before November 25

Sophon announced plans to permanently shut down the Sophon mainnet on November 30, 2026. The asset withdrawal deadline is November 25. After that, key infrastructure and related websites will be gradually shut down, and assets still remaining on the chain may become permanently inaccessible. Users can withdraw liquid assets such as SOPH, ETH, and USDC through claim.sophon.com, and claim outstanding staking and Guardian rewards. Unwithdrawn Sophon farm assets need to be withdrawn at farm.sophon.xyz. The team reminds users to only use official links and beware of fake migration websites.

BNB Chain Opens a New Layer 1 NewL1 Community Forum, Testnet Expected to Launch by End of 2026

BNB Chain has opened a dedicated community forum section for its new Layer 1 network NewL1. The section went live in July 2026 and was promoted again on October 17 and 19. NewL1 is EVM-compatible and targets trading, payment, and AI scenarios, including autonomous trading by AI agents. The target performance is pre-confirmation under 50 milliseconds, TPS over 100,000, and sub-second finality. NewL1 does not issue a new token; BNB is the only gas token. The network will introduce a TxStream structure to reduce front-running risk, add privacy-enhancing features, and build a native cross-chain bridge connecting to BSC. The forum discusses technical topics such as token economics, consensus protocols, and privacy, and prohibits price speculation discussions. The testnet is expected to launch by the end of 2026, and the mainnet is expected to launch in early 2027.

Hyperliquid Ecosystem L2 Network Elysium to Launch Mainnet on November 9

Elysium, the first L2 network in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, announced that it will launch its mainnet on November 9. Elysium is a general-purpose high-performance L2 network built specifically for Hyperliquid, with HyperEVM (Hyperliquid's smart contract environment) as its settlement layer, deployed in coordination with HyperCore, which handles trading, and HYPE as its native gas token. The network currently runs Conduit's G2 sequencer, and its underlying architecture complies with SOC II Type 2 security standards. After the mainnet launch, Elysium will transition from the testing phase to a formal network, open for applications and trading.