Key News Last Night and This Morning (October 8–9)

PeckShield: 79th Vault attacked, losing about $12.51 million

The DeFi protocol 79th Vault (@79thVault) was attacked, with 10,000 $79AU tokens stolen and swapped for 16,249 BNB, worth about $12.51 million. The attacker subsequently transferred 30 BNB to the KuCoin exchange.

China's central bank: No intention of gaining a trade competitive advantage through depreciation, never engages in competitive currency devaluation

According to the People's Bank of China's official website, the central bank released its "Policy Stance on the RMB Exchange Rate," clarifying that China implements a managed floating exchange rate system based on market supply and demand, with reference to a basket of currencies, and has exited routine foreign exchange intervention since 2017. The central bank stated that China has no intention of gaining a trade competitive advantage through depreciation and never engages in competitive currency devaluation, and only uses macroprudential tools to prevent short-term overshooting under major external shocks such as the pandemic and the April 2025 tariff war. On the data front, since the 2005 exchange rate reform, the RMB has cumulatively appreciated 23% against the US dollar, and the nominal effective exchange rate has appreciated by more than 50%; since 2025, it has cumulatively appreciated about 9% against the US dollar. The central bank also pointed out that treating the IMF's External Balance Assessment (EBA) conclusions as the "official basis" for the RMB being undervalued is a distortion and misuse, and that alleviating global imbalances requires joint action by both deficit and surplus countries.

ESMA requires crypto service providers to stop offering non-MiCA-compliant stablecoin services, with a 3-month exit period

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued an opinion today requiring EU crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to stop offering services involving non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins to EU customers, covering trading, exchange, custody, transfers, and investment advice, and to prevent customers from buying or increasing holdings. Existing exposures must be cleared within 3 months, by January 8, 2027 at the latest, during which only limited exit services such as selling, exchanging, and withdrawing may be provided.

Spot silver falls more than 2% intraday, now at $58.56/oz

Spot silver fell more than 2% intraday, now at $58.56/oz.

Sui's Bitcoin financial infrastructure Hashi to launch mainnet this month, with over $500 million in capital commitments

Its Bitcoin financial infrastructure Hashi will launch its mainnet in phases this month, having secured over $500 million in capital commitments from a consortium of more than 20 partners. Hashi supports using native BTC as DeFi collateral, serving applications such as lending, treasuries, and structured products. Anchorage Digital joins as one of the first partners and will provide institutional custody access and stablecoin liquidity.

Moscow Exchange plans to open cryptocurrency trading from December 1

Moscow Exchange Senior Managing Director Boris Blokhin said the exchange plans to offer cryptocurrency trading services from December 1 under new legislation, with testing to continue before launch. Previously, Moscow Exchange had launched crypto asset index futures and perpetual contracts for BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, TRX, and others for qualified investors. Russia's new rules require citizens to legally purchase cryptocurrencies through licensed intermediaries such as exchanges and brokers.

AI trading agent startup Catalyst completes $30 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital

AI trading agent startup Catalyst announced the completion of 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 by Justin Zheng and Dylan Iskandar in 2025, aiming to help ordinary investors formulate and execute trading strategies through AI agents, allowing users to express investment goals in natural language, which the AI agent then converts into trading strategies and completes processes such as asset selection, cost optimization, and trade execution, though final trades still require user confirmation. Catalyst has reportedly completed a round of testing for high-frequency trading users.

STRK up 17.4% over the past 24 hours, ZEC down 7.5% to near 1200 USDT

OKX market data shows that over the past 24 hours, OGN rose 79.24% to 0.03807 USDT; STRK rose 17.40% to 0.05850 USDT; W rose 16.16% to 0.01639 USDT; JUP rose 14.83% to 0.3702 USDT; ALGO rose 13.09% to 0.1322 USDT. On the downside, MINA fell 17.19% to 0.0824 USDT; PUMP fell 10.49% to 0.005710 USDT; ZEC fell 7.50% to 1,207.01 USDT; TWT fell 5.38% to 0.5157 USDT; LTC fell 4.34% to 64.09 USDT. DeFi tokens showed mixed performance; besides JUP's strength, CRV rose 8.42% to 0.3786 USDT; UNI fell 3.44% to 7.725 USDT; AAVE fell 0.89% to 170.65 USDT.

Google Cloud launches Gemini Agent, capable of executing tasks lasting days

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian released the general-purpose AI agent Gemini Agent, which can execute tasks in the cloud lasting from several hours to several days, supports forming sub-agent teams, and integrates with tools such as Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack. "Colleague agents" can have their own email and calendar. The agent already supports the Gemini and Claude models.

US initial jobless claims for the week ending October 3: 197,000, vs. 200,000 expected

US initial jobless claims for the week ending October 3 came in at 197,000, versus 200,000 expected, with the prior figure revised from 197,000 to 199,000.

ICANN's new round of top-level domain applications reaches 1,615, with .agent contested by 13 parties

The new round of generic top-level domain applications received a total of 1,615 submissions, with AI domains becoming a hot spot. Among them, .agent received 13 applications, including from OpenAI, Meta, Google's registry, and iPollo. OpenAI applied for 15 in total, including .gpt and .chatgpt; Anthropic applied for .claude. Crypto domains such as .btc and .bnb also received multiple applications.

Indian officials confirm cancellation of precious metals import tax benefits, raising gold and silver import costs

India has canceled tax benefits for banks and government-designated agencies importing gold, silver, and platinum, imposing a 3% levy on related imports, thereby raising import costs for the country's main supply channels. India's Ministry of Finance Revenue Secretary Srivastava said Thursday that the government did not extend the policy exempting banks from the Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on precious metals imports beyond March 31. This move subjects all import channels for gold and silver to uniform tax treatment. Srivastava said the decision took effect from April 1, adding, "We do not want taxation to be the reason a particular import channel enjoys preferential treatment." He added that the government had informed the GST Council of the decision at a meeting held Thursday.

Trump completed over 500 securities trades in August: bought up to $25 million in Meta stock and also purchased SpaceX debt products

The latest disclosed financial filings show that US President Donald Trump completed more than 500 securities trades in August. One of the trades was a purchase of up to $25 million in Meta stock; two days before signing a comprehensive policy aimed at expanding US commercial space transportation, he also invested up to $5 million in SpaceX debt products. Media analysis of Trump's August financial disclosures shows that the total value of these 517 buy and sell transactions ranged from about $74.3 million to $273.3 million. Media calculations show purchases of at least $44.2 million and sales of at least $30.1 million. The 18-page filing shows that Trump's portfolio trading remains very active, though the frequency has declined compared with June and July, when he disclosed more than 1,000 transactions each month. The largest single transaction occurred on August 21, when Trump bought Meta stock worth $5 million to $25 million, and on the same day made broad adjustments to his portfolio. The filing shows that on the same day he separately bought shares of AT&T, ConocoPhillips, Abbott Laboratories, Netflix, and Chevron, each purchase ranging from $1 million to $5 million. On the sell side, on August 21 Trump sold shares of AMD and Church & Dwight, each sale ranging from $1 million to $5 million; he also reduced holdings in Boeing, Home Depot, T-Mobile, Datadog, Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, and Nvidia, each reduction ranging from $500,010 to $1 million.

An address swept up $8.09 million in altcoins in 4 hours, heavily buying ZRO, WLD, and CHIP

Address 0x129…72EbE cumulatively bought about $8.09 million in altcoins over the past 4 hours, involving the AI and cross-chain infrastructure sectors. Among them, it bought 2.55 million $ZRO (about $5.3 million, at $2.08), 4.41 million $WLD (about $2.29 million, at $0.5189), and 10 million $CHIP (about $492,000, at $0.04928).

Data: US government address transferred out 12,267 BTC, worth about $1.01 billion

According to Arkham and on-chain data, at 21:33 Beijing time on October 8, an address labeled "US Government: Bitfinex Hacker Seized Funds" transferred out 12,267.02 BTC (about $1.01 billion), of which 6,000 were subsequently transferred in two batches to a new address 33pYK…cFk, with the remaining about 6,267 temporarily held in another new address. In the previous two days, US government-related addresses had cumulatively transferred more than 6,200 BTC to Coinbase Prime.

Japan's Ministry of Finance proposes a "three-type" plan for government bond tokenization

Japan's Ministry of Finance held the first meeting of the "Government Bond On-Chain Study Group" today and released explanatory materials, organizing government bond on-chaining into three types. Type 1 involves circulating the beneficiary rights of funds (MMFs) that invest in government bonds on the blockchain; Type 2 involves putting the transfer ledger on-chain under the current transfer and settlement system, in three forms: a single account management institution, multi-institution collaboration, and connection to the Bank of Japan's ledger; Type 3 involves issuing new forms of government bonds on a blockchain outside the current system. The Ministry of Finance believes that on-chaining can improve collateral and liquidity management efficiency and expand the investor base, especially benefiting overseas investors, but also points out issues such as market fragmentation, transmission of sharp price fluctuations, and system modification costs. All three types are provisional classifications, and the Ministry of Finance plans to compile a report by January 2027.

Citrini Research releases AI and crypto portfolio

Citrini Research stated that as AI agents enter the mainstream and financial assets accelerate tokenization, the barriers between traditional finance and the crypto world are dissolving. The institution also released a portfolio, in which crypto tokens DRV, LIT, and ETHFI each account for 10%, AAVE and ENA each 9%, SOL 8%, and HYPE and AERO each 7%; among stocks, SECZ accounts for 20%, CRCL and COIN each 18%, and BHYP and HOOD each 14%.

Pyth DAO passes OP-PIP-136, with 100% of product revenue to be used to buy back PYTH

According to Pyth's official blog, Pyth DAO has passed proposal OP-PIP-136, committing to use all revenue (100%) obtained from Pyth products to buy PYTH on the open market and inject it into reserves, compared with the previous ratio of one-third of non-PYTH balances. The proposal replaces the previous monthly separate votes with a long-term authorization, covering products including Pyth Pro subscriptions, Listing as a Service, Data Marketplace, and Pyth Indices, and non-PYTH assets already held by the DAO are also included. To date, PYTH reserves have accumulated 42 million tokens, and the first buy under the new authorization was executed on September 30. Pyth's overall ARR reached $11.5 million in September 2026, up 86% month-over-month. Execution constraints such as a 5% slippage cap, $25,000 per transaction, on-chain disclosure, and monthly reports remain unchanged.

Cardano Foundation spins off digital identity project Veridian and tokenizes its equity on-chain

The Cardano Foundation announced that it will spin off its digital identity project Veridian into an independent Swiss company and use the Cardano network's newly launched programmable token standard CIP-0113 to tokenize most of its 1 million shares on-chain. Veridian becomes the first company to adopt this standard for equity tokenization, but the tokenized shares are not offered to the public. Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard, who also serves as Veridian's chairman, said the company plans to seek strategic investors in 2027. Veridian is led by blockchain engineer Thomas A. Mayfield and develops digital credentials based on the open standards KERI and ACDC, helping individuals, enterprises, and AI agents verify identity and permissions without a central database. Its mobile wallet is already available on iOS and Android and has been integrated with Utah's digital identity regulations in the US.

Nvidia commits $1 billion over the next five years to advance US science

Nvidia (NVDA.O) has committed to investing $1 billion over the next five years to advance US science.

Anthropic to open Claude to more than 15 US federal agencies

Anthropic announced that it will invest $150 million over three years in the Trump administration's "Genesis Mission" federal program. The company will provide its AI model Claude to more than 15 federal agencies, including NASA and NIH, and will provide Claude, Claude Code, and API credits to the "Genesis Mission" project.

Over $450 million liquidated across the network in the past hour, with longs the hardest hit

According to CoinGlass data, total contract liquidations across the network reached $455 million in the past hour. Of this, long liquidations totaled $427 million, while short liquidations were only $28.5681 million, with longs accounting for about 93.7%. By exchange, Binance ranked first with $263 million in liquidations (about 58%); Bybit followed with $68.49 million, while Gate and OKX had $36.97 million and $30.7 million respectively, with all of these platforms dominated by long liquidations (longs accounting for over 94%). Notably, over 94% of HTX's $20.1 million in liquidations were shorts, opposite to the overall direction. By asset, ETH had the largest liquidation scale, about $135 million in the past hour; BTC followed with about $81.33 million; SOL, XRP, ZEC, and DOGE had liquidations of about $21.94 million, $17.1 million, $14.08 million, and $10.36 million respectively. On the market front, BTC is now at about $81,400 (24h -2.27%), ETH at about $2,454 (-4.33%), and ZEC led the decline with a 24h drop of 14.42%.

Trump: The White House will treat anyone who uses "Artificial Intelligence" instead of "Super Intelligence" as an enemy

US President Trump posted on Truth Social that the White House will treat anyone who uses the term "Artificial Intelligence" instead of the highly accepted and more accurate new term "Super Intelligence" as an enemy. Previously, Trump had proposed renaming AI to "Super Intelligence."

Riot Platforms (RIOT) stock falls 10.03% intraday, now at $16.64

According to Binance market data, Riot Platforms (RIOT) stock fell 10.03% intraday, now at $16.64.

AI model evaluation platform Arena completes $200 million financing at a $3.1 billion valuation

AI model evaluation platform Arena completed a new $200 million financing round at a valuation of $3.1 billion, nearly double its $1.7 billion valuation in January this year. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital. Arena originated from the Chatbot Arena research project at the University of California, Berkeley, and is known for its public large model leaderboard, with annualized revenue reaching $100 million in June this year.

Aptos Foundation commits to permanently locking and staking 210 million APT

Aptos posted on X that the Aptos Foundation has committed to permanently locking and staking 210 million APT, about 37% of its holdings at mainnet launch, and that these tokens will never be sold or distributed, with foundation operations supported by staking rewards. Previously, Aptos proposed a tokenomics reform plan, including setting a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT supply, reducing the annual staking reward rate from 5.19% to 2.6%, and increasing gas fees by 10 times with all of it burned, to drive the token supply mechanism toward being driven by network usage.

Coinbase to suspend BAL and TNSR trading in the early hours of November 10

Coinbase Markets posted on X that, based on a recent review, Coinbase will suspend trading of Balancer (BAL) and Tensor (TNSR) around 14:00 ET on November 9 (around 03:00 Beijing time on November 10), involving Coinbase.com, Coinbase Exchange, and Coinbase Prime. The BAL and TNSR order books have currently been switched to limit-only mode, and user assets can still be withdrawn normally.

Jump Crypto stakes SOL worth $49.81 million

The Firedancer wallet under Jump Crypto staked another 453,987 SOL, worth $49.81 million.

Arthur Hayes: The early stage of a bull market must overcome many fears, and the "money printing wave" will drive asset prices to surge

Arthur Hayes wrote that at the start of every super bull market, the market must overcome many fears. In 2017 it was the block size debate; in 2020 it was the pandemic; in 2023 it was the FTX collapse and central bank rate hikes; in 2026 it is the FUD triggered by AI crypto technology. The money printing wave will eventually come, and asset prices will eventually surge.

BTC involving address reuse rose from 3.79 million to 4.33 million over the past year, accounting for 21.5% of circulating supply

According to Glassnode data, most BTC with publicly visible public keys are exposed due to address reuse (since these addresses have had outgoing transactions, their public keys are thereby made public; moving these coins to new addresses can eliminate the exposure risk), and this portion has been growing. Over the past year, the total amount of BTC involving address reuse rose from 3.79 million to 4.33 million, now accounting for 21.5% of circulating supply.

Bitcoin life insurer Meanwhile completes $37 million financing led by Bain Capital Crypto

Meanwhile, a Bitcoin life insurance company backed by Sam Altman, completed a new $37 million financing round at a valuation of $350 million. The round was led by Bain Capital Crypto, with other participants including Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Morgan Creek Digital. The funds will be used to meet demand for Bitcoin-denominated life insurance in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Headquartered in Bermuda, Meanwhile is the first life insurer approved to operate entirely in Bitcoin. Since its founding, Meanwhile has signed 15 brokerage firms serving wealthy families, with operations covering insurance hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Switzerland. Meanwhile's total funding has now exceeded $180 million.

VC firm USV sets up a $900 million new fund focused on early-stage investments in AI and other fields

Venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (USV) announced that it has raised a $900 million new fund dedicated to supporting startups building at the frontier of large markets undergoing technological transformation. USV said its previous core fund was $275 million; this expansion is aimed at leading more rounds and supporting companies for longer in the AI era, as well as investing in areas such as robotics, manufacturing, and energy that require more capital. In addition, the team welcomed several new members, including general partner (GP) Michael Mignano (co-founder of Anchor), venture partner Jared Hecht (co-founder of GroupMe and Fundera), and product advisory partner Scott Belsky (co-founder of Behance and former Adobe chief product officer). These new members will form the future core investment team together with USV veteran investors Fred Wilson, Rebecca Kaden, Nick Grossman, and Nikhil Raman; meanwhile, Andy Weissman, Albert Wenger, John Buttrick, and Brad Burnham will also continue to support USV and its portfolio companies.

Top 25 Pump.fun deployers issued 770,000 tokens and profited $128 million, with only 6 tokens exceeding a $20 million market cap

According to statistics from crypto KOL Bando, the top 25 developers by Pump.fun deployment volume collectively launched 770,000 tokens and profited $128 million from the market, but only 6 tokens have a market cap exceeding $20 million.