Today's headlines:
1. OpenAI plans to accelerate the completion of approximately $30 billion in financing before Anthropic's IPO
2. Strategy bought 267 bitcoins over the past week and repurchased $193 million of STRC
3. Strive increased its holdings by 1,223 bitcoins last week and currently holds a total of 36,818 BTC
4. 1inch Card will cease operations and advises users to transfer balances before December 18
5. Pump.fun launches Pre-IPO tokens, with new coins pairable with OpenAI and others
6. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded total net inflows of $527 million yesterday, with only BlackRock's IBIT achieving net inflows
Regulation & Macro
Australia plans to sue Meta, TikTok and three other platforms for violating the under-16 social media ban
According to Bloomberg, Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government will sue five platforms—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube—alleging that they failed to comply with the social media ban for users under 16. Nearly a year after the ban took effect, the government has doubled the maximum penalty for violations to AUD 109.2 million (about $76 million). The eSafety Commissioner opened investigations into the platforms in March this year, and a July report showed that most underage users were still able to retain or create accounts. Wells said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is using her powers to prepare to file proceedings in the Federal Court. Meta and eSafety did not immediately respond.
Foreign Ministry responds to U.S. government ban on Chinese AI: will resolutely safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, presiding over a regular press conference, responded to the U.S. government's requirement that federal agencies stop using Chinese AI products such as DeepSeek, saying that China has consistently opposed overstretching the concept of national security and politicizing science, technology and economic and trade issues, and will resolutely safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies.
Hyperliquid Policy Center supports SEC crypto asset rule proposal, offers five suggested amendments
The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) submitted a comment letter to the U.S. SEC on October 19 supporting its "Crypto Asset Regulation Rules" proposal and offering five suggested amendments: write the recognition of qualifying airdrops into the formal rules; clarify the intermediary status of secondary market trading and on-chain protocols; allow projects using the safe harbor not to be deemed to have automatically acknowledged that the token previously involved an investment contract; include token buyback guidance; and ensure that exemptions from state-level registration requirements remain continuously effective. The proposal would allow startup projects to issue tokens of no more than $5 million within four years, with a separate fundraising exemption of up to $75 million every 12 months.
France's Financial Markets Authority publishes a new batch of websites illegally offering crypto assets or related services
The French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) published a newly identified batch of websites in the third quarter that illegally offer crypto assets or related services in France, including alphaairobot.com, bitgrokapp.com, cryptobullbear.com, investpathline.com and others. Since 2026, the AMF has added 64 names to its list of unauthorized crypto asset websites. The AMF said the list is updated frequently but cannot be exhaustive, and investors can check the whitelist of crypto asset service providers (PSCA) on its official website to verify whether a platform is authorized to operate in France.
Ramp applies to the U.S. OCC for a trust bank charter
According to Bloomberg, fintech company Ramp has submitted an application to the U.S. 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, will not take deposits, and will not make commercial loans. Since the beginning of this year, companies such as Revolut and Crypto.com have obtained conditional approval for different types of OCC charters. Bloomberg previously reported that Ramp was valued at $60 billion in a new funding round, with annualized revenue rising to $2 billion.
Project Developments
Binance to delist 4 spot trading pairs including BONK/FDUSD on October 23
Binance announced that it will remove and stop trading four spot trading pairs—BONK/FDUSD, JUP/FDUSD, LDO/FDUSD and WAL/BNB—at 11:00 (UTC+8) on October 23.
Revolut: multiple services disrupted, customer funds and data secure
Revolut's official system status page shows that multiple services in the UK region are experiencing outages, with 30 services marked as "partially unavailable." Affected personal services include registration, login, card payments, card top-ups, transfers, ATM withdrawals, currency exchange, stock trading, cryptocurrency, identity verification and online customer service; multiple business services are also affected. Revolut said its team is investigating and fixing the issue and confirmed that all customer funds and data are secure.
1inch Card will cease operations and advises users to transfer balances before December 18
According to the FAQ page of 1inch's official help center, the 1inch Card project will gradually cease operations. New user registration has been closed, and existing cards and accounts can still be used for now. 1inch advises cardholders to withdraw or spend their card balances as soon as possible, and no later than December 18. Funds in the card are held in an e-wallet issued by licensed electronic money institution Monavate. Matters such as account closure, KYC and personal data are handled by card service provider Crypto Life (CL). Under the issuer's terms, remaining funds can still be claimed for redemption within 6 years after account closure.
Notion upgrades AI Agent to support computer and browser operations and tasks of up to 24 hours
Notion announced an upgrade to its AI features. Notion Agent can now use a standalone computer and browser, has improved context management, and adds a "Review for me" mode with safety checks, with tasks able to run for up to 24 hours. The upgraded Auto model routing balances quality, speed and cost based on the task; the company achieved results close to Opus 5.5 and Astra on more than 20 common tasks at an average cost about 90% lower. Notion supports personal Agents connecting to existing ChatGPT subscriptions, and the enterprise BYOK feature has entered private Alpha testing. Notion MCP memory sync is now live; AI usage will be included in a new unified credits system.
21Shares launches physically backed Lighter (LIT) and Venice Token (VVV) ETPs in Europe
According to a 21Shares announcement, the company has launched the Lighter (LIT) ETP and Venice Token (VVV) ETP in Europe. Both products are backed by physical tokens and carry a fee of 2.50%. The Lighter ETP trades under the ticker LIHT and is listed on the German exchange Xetra, supporting euro and U.S. dollar trading; the Venice Token ETP trades under the ticker VENC and is listed on the Swiss Exchange SIX, trading in U.S. dollars. Lighter is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform using zero-knowledge technology, and Venice is a privacy-focused AI platform. Investors can hold the relevant ETPs through ordinary securities accounts.
Cashmere Labs publishes roadmap: to launch Mountain and token CSM on Robinhood Chain, with a maximum supply of 666 million
"Autonomous currency infrastructure" project Cashmere published its roadmap, planning to launch the Mountain product and the CSM token on Robinhood Chain. CSM will have a maximum supply of 666 million, of which 65% will be continuously issued through Mountain, 25% will go to the team and treasury with a vesting period, and 10% will be used for protocol-owned liquidity. Mountain plans to sell 1,000 founding Barns (soulbound NFTs) at prices from 0.125 to 1.5 ETH. Goat Street NFTs can be permanently bound to Mountain to obtain a share of CSM issuance. CSM previously issued on Anvil will be voided, and the token will be redeployed. The team also plans an airdrop, and wallets that list Goat Street NFTs for sale on OpenSea will be excluded.
Former Coinbase Head of Research David Duong becomes U.S. Head of Ethereum InstitutionalEthereum Institutional announced the appointment of David Duong as Head of the United States, responsible for advancing collaboration with U.S. institutional investors and helping institutions further participate in building the Ethereum ecosystem. David Duong previously served as Global Head of Investment Research at Coinbase, responsible for crypto market research for the exchange's institutional clients, and spent 17 years in sell-side macro strategy research at HSBC, Santander, and Deutsche Bank.
Musk: X updates timeline recommendation model, placing greater emphasis on user dwell time and complete reads
Musk posted on X that the platform's timeline recommendations are undergoing two important adjustments: the new AI ranking model can more accurately predict users' likely dwell time; and the retrieval model has been trained to recommend posts that users will read in full. He also said that active usage time among X users is growing exponentially, hitting all-time highs almost every day.
Upbit to list MPLX token on the Korean won market
According to an official announcement, South Korean crypto exchange Upbit will list the MPLX token on the Korean won market, with trading set to begin at 18:30 local time on October 20.
BlackRock files for Bitcoin downside protection ETF, linked to IBIT with capped upside
According to a U.S. SEC filing, BlackRock's iShares Trust submitted a registration application on October 19 for the iShares Bitcoin Managed Protection ETF, ticker PBIT. The fund aims to provide upside exposure to IBIT and similar Bitcoin exposure, but with a roughly capped upside, while offering a degree of downside protection. Its strategy typically involves buying Bitcoin options in three tranches while selling options to offset purchase costs, and investing in fixed-income products to earn interest income used to hedge option costs and provide downside protection.
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 as its settlement layer, deployed in coordination with HyperCore, which handles transactions, and with 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, it will transition from the testing phase to a formal network.
Binance: Users holding at least 255 Alpha Points can claim an airdrop of 87 CT tokens
Binance Alpha has opened a second wave of Concrete (CT) airdrops. Users holding at least 255 Binance Alpha Points can claim an airdrop of 87 CT tokens. 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 on the Alpha event page within 24 hours, otherwise it will be deemed forfeited.
Sophon mainnet to shut down on November 30, users must withdraw assets by 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 shut down successively, and assets still on the chain at that time may become permanently inaccessible. Users can withdraw liquid assets such as SOPH, ETH, and USDC via claim.sophon.com, and claim outstanding staking and Guardian rewards. Unwithdrawn Sophon farm assets must be withdrawn at farm.sophon.xyz.
Pump.fun launches Pre-IPO tokens, new coins can be paired with OpenAI and others
Pump.fun said that Pre-IPO tokens powered by PreStocks have launched on its platform. Users can trade Pre-IPO tokens of private 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. Pump.fun launched its custom trading pair feature on October 9.
Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade scheduled to activate on Hoodi testnet in the early hours of October 27 Beijing time
According to an Ethereum Foundation announcement on October 16, the Glamsterdam upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Hoodi testnet at 01:42:48 on October 27 (Beijing time), at which point Hoodi's block gas limit will also increase to 200 million. The upgrade includes enshrined 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.
Investment and financing news
Robotics AI company Dream Labs completes $90 million seed round, launches robotics foundation model API
Robotics AI company Dream Labs announced the completion of a $90 million seed funding round, with investors including B Capital, Kindred Ventures, A.Capital, SV Angel, and Wing VC. The company was founded in 2026 by the former head of Nvidia's GR00T robotics research team, and the funds will mainly be used for compute investment. Dream Labs also launched the Dream API, which can convert robot camera footage and natural language instructions into motion control commands. Its Dream-1 model learns through video and can adapt to robots from different manufacturers, and it has already partnered with more than 20 hardware partners.
OpenAI seeks to complete roughly $30 billion funding round before Anthropic's IPO
According to an exclusive Reuters report, 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 the end of the year. In March this year, OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round at a valuation of $852 billion.
Anthropic in talks to buy about $45 billion of compute from Nscale, potentially the second major deal between the two
According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, Nvidia-backed AI cloud computing company Nscale is in talks with Anthropic to sell compute, in a deal that could be worth about $45 billion. 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 has a right of first refusal on a third facility. The people said the deal could be finalized in the coming days, but details may still change. According to Nscale's IPO filing, Anthropic had previously signed an infrastructure agreement with it worth about $44.6 billion.
AI startup Tenstorrent completes $1.5 billion Series E funding, with Tether among investors
AI startup Tenstorrent completed a $1.5 billion Series E funding round at 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 ARK Invest, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley, SanDisk, T. Rowe Price, Tether Investments, Virtu Financial, and XTX Markets.
Views & Analysis
Zhou Xiaochuan: Research should be conducted and contingency plans prepared to prevent financial risks caused by failed AI investments
Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China, said at the "AI and Productivity Transformation" roundtable forum at the 2026 Bund Summit that the evolution of artificial intelligence technology will undoubtedly involve some investment failures and some successes, but today huge amounts of capital are flowing into AI and related infrastructure. Once some of it fails, it could trigger financial turmoil and lead to a crisis, requiring large-scale action to support the economy and rescue some financial institutions. Therefore, research should be conducted and contingency plans prepared, with corresponding tools kept in the policy toolbox to respond to such turmoil.
Key dataSouth Korean stocks close down nearly 4%, SK Hynix falls 4.22%
The South Korean KOSPI index closed down 214.93 points, or 3.73%, at 5,553.08 on October 20. Samsung Electronics fell 2.98%, and SK Hynix fell 4.22%.
Unitree Robotics rises over 10%, turnover exceeds RMB 2.6 billion
Market data shows: Unitree Robotics rose over 10%, with turnover exceeding RMB 2.6 billion.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash new version tops Agent Arena open-source model leaderboard, ranks 11th overall
AI model evaluation platform Arena announced that DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-20261017 (Max) has ranked first among open-source models on Agent Arena and 11th on the overall leaderboard. Based on approximately 7,500 real usage sessions, the model achieved a comprehensive net improvement of about 5.1% relative to the average model, with a median cost per task of about $0.20. This version ranks first among open-source models in all four metrics: task success confirmation, positive and negative user feedback, Bash command execution reliability, and steerability, with the task success confirmation metric ranking 8th overall.
South Korean KOSPI index extends decline to 3%, SK Hynix falls 4.6%
The South Korean KOSPI index extended its decline to 3%, SK Hynix fell 4.6%, and Samsung Electronics fell 2%.
Drift Protocol attacker moves 13,400 ETH to Tornado Cash after 2 months of inactivity
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, the Drift Protocol attacker became active again after 2 months of inactivity and has transferred at least 13,400 ETH, worth approximately $32 million, to Tornado Cash. The attacker currently still holds approximately $224.59 million in assets across tracked wallets, including 93,965 ETH (approximately $224.04 million), 477,375 USDY (approximately $549,000), and 1.33 SOL (approximately $138).
Goldman Sachs: Hedge funds cut tech stocks at fastest pace since 2016, semiconductors hit by concentrated selling
Goldman Sachs prime brokerage data shows that in the five trading days through last Thursday, the net selling of tech sector holdings by hedge funds as a proportion of positions hit the highest level since records began in 2016. Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment contributed 57% of the net selling amount in US tech stocks. Last week, the Nasdaq 100 fell 5.5%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 11.4%. After the reduction, tech stocks still account for 23.5% of net allocation in Goldman Sachs' global prime brokerage book, at the 90th percentile of the past five years. Separately, according to Goldman Sachs statistics, leveraged equity ETFs saw net inflows of nearly $9.5 billion from October 12 to 16, a single-week record, of which SOXL saw inflows of about $7 billion.
A trader goes 10x long HYPE on Hyperliquid, with unrealized profit of $17.4 million
According to Arkham monitoring, trader 0x666 holds a 10x leveraged HYPE long position worth $35.31 million on Hyperliquid, with current unrealized profit of $17.4 million. The position was opened at $39.81, with a mark price of $78.46. It is currently the only open position in this address and has not been reduced so far. The trader's Hyperliquid account value is currently $27.47 million.
Huawei engineers stationed at DeepSeek, DeepSeek plans to use Ascend 950DT for pre-training as early as year-end
According to Tencent Technology, people familiar with the matter revealed that Huawei engineers have been stationed long-term at DeepSeek's office to incorporate large model training requirements into next-generation chip design. DeepSeek plans to use Huawei Ascend 950DT for large-scale pre-training as early as the end of this year, and a complete pre-training run may require more than 10,000 chips running continuously for several weeks. Huawei plans to allocate most of the supply of Ascend 960DT, scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2027, to DeepSeek. DeepSeek open-sourced the TileLang toolkit adapted for Ascend 950 on September 30, while still seeking more Nvidia chips.
Data: Of the 25 traders with the largest losses on Papertrade, 21 remain at a loss even after accounting for USDC rewards
According to Lookonchain statistics, among the 25 traders with the largest losses on Papertrade, 21 were still at a loss after accounting for USDC rewards, with only 4 achieving profits. These 25 traders generated a combined trading volume of $111.5 billion and received 2.06 billion PAPER, accounting for 23.4% of the token's total supply; they have also claimed $11.61 million in USDC rewards, accounting for 20.6% of all USDC rewards.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw total net inflows of $527 million yesterday, with only BlackRock's IBIT recording net inflows
According to SoSoValue data, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw total net inflows of $527 million yesterday (US Eastern Time October 19). The largest single-day net inflow was BlackRock's IBIT, with net inflows of $665 million and cumulative historical net inflows of $66.233 billion; the largest single-day net outflow was Fidelity's FBTC, with net outflows of $83.6315 million and cumulative historical net inflows of $10.371 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of spot Bitcoin ETFs was $105.459 billion, the ETF net asset ratio reached 6.4%, and cumulative historical net inflows reached $57.405 billion.