Weekly: Elon Musk Tops $1T, USDC Lands in Samsung, $1B Probe into Chinese Syndicate, and AI’s Threat to Cryptography

Published: October 11, 2026 – 09:04 UTC

Incrypted’s editorial team has prepared another digest of the week’s key developments in cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. This time, the spotlight was on Samsung’s plans to integrate stablecoins into Wallet, ZachXBT’s investigation into the possible laundering of more than $1 billion, Tether’s cooperation with Kazakhstan, Musk’s $1 trillion, Claude’s usage policy, potential risks to cryptography from AI advances, and much more.

Main news

Bitcoin

Market and analytics

VanEck forecast bitcoin rising to $3 million by 2050 and called it a long-term hedge against dollar debasement, while Grayscale calculated that without the ten best trading days, the asset’s three-year return would have fallen from 225% to 27%. According to Santiment, large holders accumulated 86,702 BTC over three weeks, and the outflow of 24,073 BTC from crypto exchanges in a single day was the largest in seven months.

Meanwhile, CryptoQuant linked bitcoin’s correction to weak spot demand and a decline in derivatives open interest, and on October 7, holders realized about $1.03 billion in profits. Separately, the US government moved 833.6 BTC and 40,285 BNB worth more than $100 million in total, and the transfer of part of the bitcoin to Coinbase Prime sparked speculation about a possible sale. At the time of writing, the leading cryptocurrency is trading at $83,058, according to TradingView.

*BTC/USDT chart on the Binance exchange. Source:* *TradingView*.

Crypto funds

In late September — early October, spot bitcoin ETFs in the US attracted $82.93 million over the week, Ethereum ETFs lost $117.91 million, and ZEC ETFs recorded their first weekly outflow of $93.56 million since launch. At the same time, NEAR ETFs brought in $35.99 million in their first week of trading, showing positive momentum against the backdrop of mixed results from other funds.

This week, the situation worsened: from October 5 to October 9, bitcoin ETFs lost $681.1 million, and Ethereum ETFs — $542.07 million, totaling more than $1.2 billion in outflows. Among altcoin funds, NEAR ETFs again stood out with inflows of $35.99 million, while SOL ETFs lost $24.81 million.

Crypto business and personalities

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), after four months in prison in the US, did not step away from the crypto industry, but strengthened ties with UAE elites and began advising governments in various countries. A major feature by The New York Times describes his path from an early bitcoin investor to one of Binance’s most influential shareholders, as well as the criminal case, the conflict with FTX, and the subsequent “crypto diplomacy” despite a ban on running the exchange.

Hackers and Scammers

Security and fraud

Crypto users lost about $472,000 due to address poisoning and phishing signatures, and a hacker stole 200 ETH worth roughly $543,000 from an old MakerDAO contract. In Greece, law enforcement detained 17 members of the FXO crypto pyramid scheme, which scammed at least 10,000 people and caused $8 million in losses by promising to double investments in 50 days.

ZachXBT investigation

Crypto sleuth ZachXBT, posing as a client, infiltrated a Chinese criminal syndicate that, by his estimate, laundered more than $1 billion from crypto exploits linked to the North Korean Lazarus Group. For the investigation, he put up $349,700 of his own money and deliberately took losses of about 5% on each order to gain access to information on the movement of stolen assets.

Hardware wallets and asset protection

Ledger launched an investigation into reports of cryptocurrency thefts from users of devices purchased via the CryptoBilis reseller in Southeast Asia, and asked to suspend their sale and shipment. According to blockchain researchers, total losses across the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and TRON networks exceeded $86 million, but the official cause of the incident has not yet been confirmed.

Wealth and Business of Elon Musk

Elon Musk became a trillionaire again after SpaceX and Tesla shares rose, and his wealth increased by $30.6 billion in a single trading day on October 5, according to Forbes. He retained the top spot in the global rich list, ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose fortune was estimated at $371.5 billion, by nearly $630 billion.

Crypto Markets and AI

South Korea became the largest crypto market in East Asia from July 2025 to June 2026, reaching $449.1 billion in volume, according to a Chainalysis report. One of the key drivers was retail investors, who actively traded AI tokens, which by share of volume in Korean won outpaced other thematic categories, including payment tokens like XRP.

Regulation

Taxation and trading rules

Greece is preparing a bill to introduce a 10% tax on crypto profits, with a proposal to exempt annual profits of up to €500 from taxation, and the document is expected to be submitted to parliament in November.

In the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission unveiled its first set of rules for the crypto market, covering requirements for exchanges registered with the agency and allowing margin trading, leverage, and financing for retail clients.

Crypto privacy and financial oversight

The US Department of the Treasury withdrew two FinCEN draft rules on transactions involving non-custodial crypto wallets and operations involving crypto mixers. Coin Center called it a win for financial privacy, as the proposed requirements could have expanded data collection on crypto transactions and strengthened government oversight of users.

Stablecoins

Payment services

In late October, Samsung plans to open access to stablecoins via Samsung Wallet for eligible Galaxy users in the US. At launch, the service will support USDC, which can be transferred to compatible crypto wallets worldwide. Users will also be able to send funds to bank accounts in more than 60 countries, with settlement in local currency.

Stablecoins and tokenization

Tether signed a memorandum with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the administration of the city of Alatau to explore issuing a stablecoin pegged to the tenge and tokenizing real-world assets. The parties are also considering a pilot project based on the Hadron by Tether platform.

Legal disputes

Conduit Technology filed a lawsuit against Tether in federal court in New York over the freezing of about $2.76 million in USDT. The company claims its wallet was not linked to a Brazilian police investigation and is demanding that the funds be unfrozen and damages be compensated.

Artificial Intelligence

AI and security

In Florida, Carly Michelle Heller was arrested and accused of threatening to shoot up the Lee County Sheriff’s Office via Anthropic’s platform, and the service’s security system detected the messages and passed the information to law enforcement.

At the same time, Anthropic reported cases of unwanted actions by Claude models on real websites of US government agencies, including a fake murder report sent via the Philadelphia Police Department website, after which the company halted the relevant testing.

AI development and usage rules

Anthropic launched a free OSS Scanner to find vulnerabilities in open-source software, powered by its advanced models, including Claude Mythos. The company also updated Claude’s usage policy, tightening restrictions on surveillance, weapons, disinformation, and the use of AI in high-risk areas; the new rules will take effect on November 12.

Cryptography and AI threats

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake warned that advances in artificial intelligence could speed up efforts to break ECDSA cryptography, potentially making it possible to recover private keys from public keys within months. Vitalik Buterin backed a cautious approach and urged reducing Ethereum’s reliance on cryptographic methods whose security rests on hard mathematical assumptions. Drake stressed that this is a potential risk, not a confirmed ECDSA break, and advised large holders to prepare for possible changes without rushing to migrate assets.

Projects

Blockchain infrastructure and network development

Igloo announced it will shut down the Abstract blockchain on December 15, 2026, citing high operating costs, low liquidity, and a limited DeFi ecosystem, while refocusing resources on the Pudgy Penguins brand and the PENGU token.

Meanwhile, Aptos Labs unveiled MonoMove — an execution engine upgrade that, in internal tests, sped up the execution of certain smart contracts by up to 55 times, with mainnet deployment planned for 2027.

The Cardano Foundation launched the CIP-0113 standard on mainnet, which allows embedding KYC, AML, sanctions screening, and transfer restrictions into tokens for working with regulated assets.

Privacy and institutional adoption

NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin called privacy a prerequisite for broader participation by institutional players in blockchain, because without it they will not be able to fully use onchain infrastructure. Among promising areas for the crypto industry’s development, he also highlighted tokenization, traditional finance integration, payments, and cross-border transfers.

Other news:

Solana Foundation launched DvP for institutional settlement of tokenized assets;
Cardano’s founder criticized Buterin over his assessment of post-quantum cryptography risks
CryptoQuant analysts are most bullish on Solana and Ethereum
Google launched a platform for creating games using prompts
Base said it plans to tokenize about 500 stocks by the end of the year
Securitize announced the launch of a product for trading tokenized stocks on Solana
DWF Labs filed a lawsuit against BitGo for $141 million over the sale of tokens before they were unlocked

What’s New at Incrypted?

Articles

The Incrypted editorial team broke down how to create videos in Vids for free. You can read more here:

The team also prepared a step-by-step guide with examples for Skills in Gemini:

In addition, readers can check out Grandpa’s notes from Singapore about pre-TOKEN2049, as well as a recap of TOKEN2049 itself:

In addition…

We put together the key investments in blockchain, crypto assets, and AI for September in one piece
We regularly update Incrypted’s crypto calendar, where you’ll find plenty of interesting events and announcements

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Source: Incrypted