Crypto News

HTX, the crypto exchange formerly known as Huobi, is leaving the UK after settling a case with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) over allegedly unlawful crypto promotions. The FCA obtained High Court undertakings preventing HTX’s Panama-incorporated entity, Huobi Global, from knowingly communicating unlawful financial promotions to UK consumers. The undertakings run until Oct. 21, 2031, and HTX has agreed not to target or solicit UK customers. The settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing, and its terms remain confidential. HTX has stopped accepting UK deposits and blocked new registrations. The Financial Times reported that customers were given 48 hours to withdraw assets before account closure; the FCA did not set a universal withdrawal deadline and directed customers to HTX for arrangements. The FCA said HTX took steps to exit after repeatedly failing to engage with the regulator, while HTX said it had introduced UK restrictions before the settlement. The case is described as the FCA’s first enforcement action against a crypto company under its financial-promotion rules. It underscores regulatory and market-access risks for crypto exchanges, but is unlikely by itself to materially affect broader crypto prices. The UK’s new crypto authorization regime is due to take effect on Oct. 25, 2027, with applications required by Feb. 28, 2027.

Wall Street firms including Blackstone, Blue Owl Capital and Ares Management are investing in AI data centers, seeking rental income from long-term leases rather than relying on AI companies becoming profitable. AI data centers and related power infrastructure could attract about $2 trillion of investment by 2030, within an estimated $5 trillion in AI-related capital spending, according to Ares. Blue Owl says it owns or is developing more than 130 data centers, with nearly 14 gigawatts of capacity and another 21 gigawatts in its pipeline. Its typical leases run for 15–20 years and include rent increases. Ares generally pre-leases facilities to investment-grade technology firms for 12–15 years, while Blackstone says 96% of its data-center counterparties have investment-grade credit ratings. Long contracts can provide predictable income to data-center owners and lenders, even if AI developers are not yet profitable. But they do not remove risks from construction delays, debt costs or tenants failing to pay. A delay at the Blue Owl-backed Project Jupiter and rising concern over CoreWeave’s roughly $50 billion in debt illustrate the potential pressure on financing and returns. For investors, tenant credit quality and the ability to fill facilities remain key risks as AI data centers expand.

NOW’s decline deepened in later reporting. MSX.COM data first showed the token down 18.4% over 24 hours to 126.22 USDT, with a 15.6% drop in the latest hour. Later data cited by Odaily put NOW down 27.5% over 24 hours at 109.45 USDT. Neither report explained the sell-off. Traders may monitor NOW’s price and trading volume for signs of continued selling or a recovery; the cause and broader market implications remain unclear.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield warned that the Polymarket user interface may have been compromised and advised users not to interact with the website. The warning does not confirm the cause or scope of the suspected incident. Traders should avoid connecting wallets or signing transactions through Polymarket until the platform provides an update. The alert raises security concerns for Polymarket users and could disrupt activity on the prediction market in the short term.

Polymarket said a breach at a third-party service provider affected its international platform, Polymarket.com. The platform says it has fixed the issue, referred the incident to law enforcement and will fully reimburse affected users. Trading has been temporarily paused while Polymarket works to restore service. Some users had reported unauthorised withdrawals; trader Car said about $800,000 was stolen from their account. Polymarket has not named the service provider or disclosed the total losses.

Polymarket restricted its international platform to cancel-only mode at 18:05 UTC on Oct. 29 (2:05 a.m. Taipei time on Oct. 30) and paused relayer activity while investigating an incident. Users can cancel existing orders, but new orders and trades are not processing. The disruption affects the international Predictions Trading API; account access, websocket, market data and Polygon RPC services were reported as operational. Polymarket has not confirmed a cause, a security breach or a loss estimate, and has given no timetable for restoring normal trading. Users on X alleged unauthorized wallet losses. One claimed losses of $800,000 and $600,000, while another alleged up to $2.68 million had moved through Polymarket deposit-wallet infrastructure. These claims and the suggested transaction route have not been independently verified. Polymarket has not announced a reimbursement plan. Its commitment to reimburse users affected by a separate third-party frontend issue in June does not apply to the October reports unless the company says otherwise. The notice did not identify Polymarket’s separate US venue as affected. For traders, the Polymarket trading halt and wallet-security claims highlight platform and custody risks, but the allegations remain unconfirmed. Treat social-media reports cautiously and check official updates before connecting a wallet or signing requests. The incident may weigh on confidence in Polymarket and prediction markets until the cause is clarified and trading resumes.

Hardhat Ethers 4.2.2 fixes an authorization bug affecting private keys supplied through configuration variables without a 0x prefix. The update improves reliability for developers using the Hardhat Ethers plugin to configure private-key access. The release note also mentions that the Nomic Foundation is hiring.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is down about 15% over the past month and trades near $0.0000055, with a market capitalisation of roughly $2.9 billion. One potentially bullish signal is that SHIB held on exchanges has fallen to about 86 trillion tokens, its lowest level since April 2021, which may reduce immediate selling pressure. The burn rate also jumped more than 635% in 24 hours after nearly 11 million tokens were sent to a null address, although their dollar value remains small. Some traders see a possible rebound if SHIB holds support around $0.0000047–$0.0000049 and breaks resistance near $0.0000052–$0.0000053. However, declining interest in meme coins and low activity on Shibarium, which has recently processed only hundreds or thousands of daily transactions, remain significant headwinds. The exchange-reserve decline offers a positive supply signal, but weak network demand could limit any SHIB recovery.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman says major memory makers remain wary of building new fabrication plants, despite surging demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI accelerators and data centres. He estimates Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron could each generate about $100 billion in annual free cash flow, but says memories of past overcapacity and near-bankruptcies are limiting expansion. Altman cited an earlier cycle when the sector spent roughly $20 billion on capital expenditure against about $19 billion in revenue. New fabs take years to build, making investment decisions risky when future demand is uncertain. Anthropic also highlighted the possibility of an HBM supply shortfall in its IPO filing. The cautious approach of memory makers could constrain AI infrastructure growth. Investors will be watching capital spending plans and further supply warnings.

Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund holds 1.99 million shares in Strive, a Bitcoin treasury company, valued at about $51.5 million. The position rose only slightly from 1.98 million shares reported in July 2026; its value more than doubled, largely as Strive’s share price climbed. The holding reflects passive index investing, not a direct Vanguard decision to buy Bitcoin or endorse crypto assets. Strive, founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, shifted from an anti-ESG investment focus to Bitcoin accumulation after acquiring Semler Scientific in January 2026. The company reportedly holds about 43,000 BTC and bought 6,182 BTC for $511 million in late October, funded through equity and preferred-stock offerings. If Strive grows and gains more weight in market indexes, passive funds may need to hold more of its shares, increasing their indirect Bitcoin exposure. Strive’s stock may remain sensitive to Bitcoin prices, while further fundraising could dilute shareholders.

Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty has urged the US Treasury to include stronger consumer safeguards in rules implementing the GENIUS Act. In comments filed on October 19, 2026, on behalf of the National Cryptocurrency Association, he supported the law’s 100% reserve requirement for payment stablecoins and proposed redemption grace periods if an issuer loses authorization, recovery routes for stolen assets, and protection for self-custody and peer-to-peer transfers. He also argued that software providers should be distinguished from custodians that hold customer assets. The GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules are expected to begin taking effect on January 18, 2027. Treasury will determine the detailed requirements after reviewing public comments. The GENIUS Act could shape stablecoin regulation and how users access, redeem and hold digital assets, but the filing itself does not change current rules.

Polymarket users reported on Discord that the prediction market’s front end may have been compromised, with assets allegedly being withdrawn without permission. The reports have not been independently confirmed in the provided article. Traders should treat the situation as a potential platform security incident and avoid interacting with the Polymarket front end until further information is available. Any confirmed breach or service disruption could affect user confidence and activity on Polymarket.

Polymarket has switched its trading platform to cancel-only mode and suspended its relayer service while it investigates an incident. The announcement did not provide details about the incident or say when normal trading would resume. The restrictions may prevent users from placing or executing new trades, while allowing them to cancel existing orders. Traders should monitor Polymarket’s official updates and consider the platform-specific risks until services are restored.

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) searched premises linked to Mudrex, Saber.money and Instadapp on Oct. 27 as part of investigations into alleged cross-border crypto transactions. The agency announced preliminary findings on Oct. 29, putting the total amount under scrutiny at more than ₹5,000 crore (about $525 million). The ED alleges that Mudrex operator RPFAS Technologies and Saber.money used USDT and USDC to facilitate unauthorized overseas transfers. Investigators estimate more than ₹4,600 crore in alleged transfers and crypto balances held abroad, and named Binance and Bybit among the platforms involved. The agency said the findings are preliminary; it did not announce arrests or penalties against the exchanges. In a separate case, the ED alleges that Instadapp-related entities routed stablecoin revenue and investor funds through overseas companies and accounts, then sent money to India under purported software and consultancy payments. The agency estimates the alleged foreign-exchange violations at about $40 million. The investigation is ongoing, and the release did not provide transaction-level evidence. The searches add to India’s scrutiny of crypto remittances, offshore exchange activity and compliance with foreign-exchange rules.

Crypto trading platform Frontrun.pro has publicly asked to buy the company behind Blast, offering $50,000 to start negotiations. Frontrun says it has a team ready to improve the Layer 2 network and unnamed investors willing to fund it, but only if a sale goes ahead. The proposal does not identify the purchasing legal entity or investors, specify what assets would be acquired, or clarify whether $50,000 is an initial payment or the full offer. Blast has not announced an agreement or acceptance. The approach follows Blast’s wind-down announcement, which cited operating costs exceeding Layer 2 revenue and a lack of a credible path to sustainability. Blast asked users to withdraw assets to Ethereum; its regular withdrawal interface deadline was Oct. 26. Its public status page nevertheless showed key network services operating on Oct. 29. For traders, the Blast sale proposal is unconfirmed and does not establish a change to the network’s shutdown plans or the outlook for the BLAST token.

Curve yields and protocol updates were mixed in Week 44, 2026. Selected pools offered 19.7% APR for sUSG/reUSD and 7.6% for reUSD/sUSDe. Llamalend v2 showed modeled 20x looped APRs of 37.1% for sDOLA and 23.4% for syrupUSDC, but leverage can magnify losses and rates are variable. Curve launched StableSwap on Stellar mainnet in beta, enabling swaps and liquidity provision. The DAO also approved oracle pricing for the YieldBasis crvUSD/WETH pool using Pyth ETH/USD reports, and approved raising the sreUSD market’s crvUSD lending limit from 30 million to 60 million. Key Curve metrics were mixed: crvUSD mint-market debt rose 2.1% to $69.7 million, while Llamalend TVL fell 3.7% to $247 million. The crvUSD oracle price was $0.9994. These Curve yields are selected estimates, not guaranteed returns; liquidity, collateral and smart-contract risks remain relevant to traders.

Thailand’s Supreme Court has ruled that Bitcoin is property protected under the country’s criminal law, while confirming it is not legal tender. The ruling, issued on 28 October 2026, upheld a 10-year prison sentence in a 2022 Koh Samui robbery. A tourist was forced to transfer 2.480801 BTC, then worth about US$50,000, and the court ordered the Bitcoin returned or equivalent cash compensation paid. Rejecting the argument that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, the court cited its market price, tradability and convertibility into baht, as well as Thailand’s 2018 Digital Asset Business Emergency Decree. The decision gives lower courts a precedent for treating Bitcoin theft as a property crime and may support prosecution and asset recovery. It does not make Bitcoin legal tender or require merchants to accept it. For traders, the ruling is a legal development, with no clear direct effect on Bitcoin prices.

A miner using FutureBit’s Apollo Solo setup found Bitcoin block 973,262, earning the 3.154 BTC block reward plus transaction fees from 2,477 transactions. FutureBit said its Apollo device or Solo Node assembled and submitted the block, but the public record does not identify the specific hardware or hashrate responsible. This is at least the fourth block attributed to FutureBit Apollo Solo. Solo mining remains a long-shot: against a Bitcoin network hashrate of about 1,070–1,087 EH/s, a home setup rated around 10–18 TH/s could face expected waits of centuries. The find highlights the possibility of earning a full block reward independently, but it does not change Bitcoin’s network fundamentals or the dominance of large mining pools.

Galaxy Digital has applied to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Galaxy National Bank in New York. If approved, the federally supervised trust bank would provide digital-asset custody, trading, staking and fiduciary investment advice, offering Galaxy Digital a more unified framework to serve institutional clients nationwide. The charter would not automatically grant FDIC deposit insurance or access to Federal Reserve payment systems. The application comes as the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) challenges the OCC’s authority to issue crypto-related trust bank charters. The group sued the regulator on October 2, arguing that its rules let crypto firms operate without meeting conventional bank requirements. The case does not directly target Galaxy Digital or automatically pause its application, but could affect the regulatory basis for crypto trust banks. Galaxy Digital already holds more than 50 licences and recently secured a New York BitLicense and money transmitter licence. Its application highlights growing competition in federally supervised crypto custody and financial services.

Polymarket users have reported unauthorized asset transfers, including one trader who said about $800,000 was taken from their account after all positions were sold. The trader also said a friend lost about $600,000. Other users reported losses of around $200,000 or unexpected withdrawal-signature requests on the website. The reports have raised concerns about a possible attack on Polymarket’s front end, but the platform had not commented at the time of publication. Polymarket suffered a separate front-end phishing attack in June, linked to a compromised third-party supplier, in which about $2.94 million in user assets was reportedly stolen.

Pontoro and regulated digital-asset firm Archax have launched an Automated Liquidity Pool on Stellar, announced during Meridian 2026. The pilot combines liquid money-market assets with private-market fund exposure, using predefined pricing and allocation rules to manage subscriptions and redemptions. Archax handles regulated tokenization and issuance of permissioned interests; Pontoro provides the pool model and operating infrastructure. The Stellar liquidity pool aims to make private-asset exposure easier to distribute and manage, but it does not make illiquid holdings instantly redeemable. Pool liquidity depends on available liquid assets, credible valuations and how the rules perform under stress. Tokens are permissioned and held in identity-verified wallets, while the fund manager retains authority over asset selection, valuation and governance. The Stellar Development Foundation disclosed investments in both companies. The pilot demonstrates a potential framework for tokenized private assets, but sustained investor demand and redemption performance have yet to be established. Traders should watch for reported subscription volumes, redemption outcomes and results during market stress. The announcement does not by itself establish a liquid secondary market or signal a direct price catalyst for Stellar’s token.

The S&P 500’s ten worst-performing stocks of 2025, tracked as the “Thanksgiving Leftovers,” staged a strong rebound before retreating in October 2026. The equally weighted group bottomed in late September at about 15% below its value on 28 November 2025. It recovered to that starting level on 22 October, but then fell to 94.4% of it in less than a week. The market-cap-weighted portfolio followed a similar pattern. It bottomed at 80% of its starting value on 7 October, climbed to 86.5% on 22 October, and then slipped to 84.3%. The figures show a sharp recovery in the S&P 500’s weakest 2025 performers, followed by renewed losses.

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at its meeting concluding on October 28, as markets had widely expected. But the pause does not necessarily signal a dovish shift: the Fed described the economy as strong, while persistent inflation and elevated Treasury yields continue to weigh on the outlook for equities. The article points to energy prices and robust capital investment as factors keeping inflation sticky, potentially increasing the chance of further rate hikes. High long-term yields also make equity valuations look expensive and can pressure corporate free cash flow. The author argues that these conditions do not support broad equity gains. For traders, the key issue is whether inflation and Treasury yields ease enough to change expectations for the Fed’s future policy; the rate pause alone may not provide a lasting boost to risk assets.

RedStone has received 15.775 million Canton Coin (CC) from the Canton Foundation to develop the Canton Access and Privacy Standard (CAPS), an open-source tool for using shared oracle prices while keeping negotiated settlement terms private, including from data providers. The grant was initially reported at about $1.55 million; the later funding baseline is about $1.83 million. The 12-month project will first support tokenized funds, private-market assets and structured products. Pricing calculations and a licensing module are planned under the Apache 2.0 license. Half of the grant is tied to adoption milestones, including active Zenith price feeds, more than $1 million in liquidity bridged through Memora, and $1 million in monthly trading volume dependent on CAPS. Zenith and Memora are design partners, with integrations still in development. A public draft and reference implementation are available, but CAPS remains a proposal in draft form. RedStone has provided pricing data to Canton since December 2025. Canton says it has more than 600 institutional participants, including Goldman Sachs, DTCC, BNY and Franklin Templeton, and processes about $9 trillion in monthly transaction volume. CAPS could strengthen Canton’s institutional data and tokenized-asset infrastructure, but delivery and adoption are not yet proven. The grant supports the network’s ecosystem; it does not by itself establish new demand for CC.

Celestia Labs has introduced Voyager, a blockchain architecture designed for high-volume payments between AI agents and online services. In a five-hour benchmark, Voyager averaged 21.2 million transactions per second (TPS), peaking at 21.6 million across 100 million accounts. Celestia says Voyager uses Celestia Fibre for data availability and separates transaction processing into parallel tasks to boost throughput. The benchmark was run on a single node and did not include state-root computation, data replication across machines or real-time transaction-status queries at that scale. Voyager is not yet described as production-ready; Celestia says those capabilities are among the next development steps. The project aims to enable micropayments for agent-driven web services, but its claimed capacity has yet to be demonstrated in a live payment environment.

MetaMask 13.54.0 and 13.55.0 deliver a series of wallet, security and trading improvements, with the later release adding fixes for swap quote loading, perpetual futures slippage messages and transaction nonce handling. MetaMask also strengthens warnings for malicious or suspicious tokens opened through deeplinks and other entry points. Earlier updates added dismissible banners and earning prompts for eligible stablecoins, perps outage notices, and deposit flows that prefill half of a selected token balance. Across the releases, MetaMask also improves Money account deposits, Stellar balances and wallet support, network settings, onboarding, and transaction handling on Bitcoin, Tron and Solana. Fixes address fee estimates, hardware-wallet signing, swaps and bridges, Send Max gas calculations, and inaccurate balances or earnings displays. The releases improve usability and transaction feedback for traders, but announce no token launch or market-moving financial data; their direct effect on crypto prices is likely limited.

The crypto industry has spent about $176 million on more than 100 US midterm races this election cycle, but a survey suggests crypto itself is a low priority for voters. Only 13% of Americans say it is very or extremely important for candidates to support technologies such as blockchain, crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi). A broader message about keeping financial technology development in the US resonated more: 35% said it was very important, making it the survey’s top-ranked policy position. Support for that message was higher among Republicans than Democrats, at 45% versus 30%. The survey of 1,545 adults was conducted by Ipsos for the DeFi Education Fund from Sept. 8 to 16, with a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points. Reuters’ review found that crypto groups spent about $176 million across more than 100 races, with Fairshake and its affiliates accounting for about $150.8 million through Oct. 20. The industry’s political push comes after the Clarity Act failed a key Senate vote in September. The survey also found that voters are more focused on financial security and personal investment choice: 63% want the financial system upgraded to address threats such as AI and cybercrime, while 49% oppose the government deciding which products they can invest in.

Ledger has published 23 papers from its 2026 Ledger N3XT research competition, spanning the agentic economy, privacy and open research. Students from seven countries examined digital ownership through experiments, hardware prototypes and security audits, with a recurring focus on how to authorize and hold value-bearing AI agents accountable. The three track winners were Charles Sneed of the University of Oregon, who audited a Solana trading agent and identified a gap between its recorded decisions and signed transactions; Drew Manley, who proposed zero-knowledge medical credentials controlled by patients; and Ivan von Greiff of TUM, who built a fuzzing framework to test zero-knowledge virtual machines for soundness flaws. Their work and other submissions also questioned whether hardware-based custody alone can guarantee privacy or prove user intent. Each winner attended Ledger Op3n in Paris on October 15–16. The research offers no direct market-moving announcement, but highlights growing security and accountability challenges as AI agents interact with crypto wallets and onchain markets.

Bullish CEO Thomas Farley expects tokenized securities to gain mainstream adoption within one to two years, bringing forward his earlier five-year forecast. He said a major IPO or a new financial product could act as the catalyst for tokenized equity adoption. Bullish has tokenized its equity on Solana, and its tokenized BLSH shares began trading on its Gibraltar-regulated exchange in August 2026, with settlement in a US dollar stablecoin. The company is also planning to acquire transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion, a deal expected to close in January 2027. The acquisition could help Bullish provide tokenized securities infrastructure to other issuers. Farley’s forecast comes amid a regulatory shift: the article says the SEC established a five-year innovation exemption framework for tokenized securities venues in September 2026. Together, the infrastructure and regulatory developments could support broader institutional adoption, though a high-profile market launch may be needed to accelerate demand.