Crypto

Bitcoin entered October near $83K and touched roughly $87K within days, retesting an area last seen in late September, with its three-month performance up about 33.23%. Strategy bought 334 BTC for $28.7M in early October while estimating a $20.9B digital-asset gain for the third quarter, and Metaplanet lifted its holdings to 44K BTC after a 1K BTC net increase in the third quarter, targeting 85%-90% of assets in Bitcoin. Coinglass data showed $164.22M of net Bitcoin ETF inflows over one day and $226.41M over seven days. Kalshi's market-implied year-end high rose to $95K, up $6.6K, while CFTC Chairman Selig said the agency is proposing its first crypto market rules. Bitcoin-linked stocks were weaker over the past week, with MARA Holdings down 12%, Cipher Mining down 10%, Robinhood Markets down 8%, Coinbase Global down 6%, Circle Internet Group down 3%, BitMine Immersion Technologies down 3%, and Hut 8 down 2.45%.

A 50/50 joint venture between OKX and ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has filed to launch 24/7 tokenized US stock trading under the SEC's proposed five-year innovation exemption, the first major attempt by anyone to use that exemption. The initial list will have 63 stocks, including Strategy, Apple, Nvidia, Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle and major banks. Trading would run continuously, 24/7 365, through Uniswap liquidity pools on OKX's X layer and in USDC, USDG and USDT pairs, with users holding assets in self-custodial wallets subject to identity verification, AML and KYC. Unlike Robinhood-style representations, the tokens must be backed one for one by an actual share held through a registered broker dealer, and investors would receive dividends and voting rights just like on any stock. Companies have 30 days to object to having their stock tokenized.

Strategy added 334 bitcoin for $28.7 million while spending $176.3 million to buy back its STRC preferred stock, a sum roughly six times larger than its latest bitcoin purchase. The bitcoin purchase was funded with $15.7 million from issuing and selling MSTR shares and $13 million from Strategy's flexible USD cash pool, while the STRC buyback was funded with $154.1 million of its USD cash pile and $22.2 million of interest earned on its dollar holdings. Strategy now holds $4.88 billion in protected USD reserve and $833.4 million of flexible USD cash, and has spent about $64 billion in total on bitcoin at an average cost base of $75,440.70. Separately, a joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, has filed to offer 24/7 tokenized US stock trading under the SEC's proposed five-year innovation exemption, with an initial list of 63 stocks including Strategy, Apple, Nvidia, Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle. Trading would run continuously through Uniswap liquidity pools on OKX's X Layer in USDC, USDG and USDT pairs, with assets held in self-custodial wallets and backed one-for-one by actual shares held through a registered broker-dealer. Bloomberg Terminal has also begun carrying Hyperliquid data, and the Independent Community Bankers of America is suing the OCC over national trust bank charters granted to crypto companies. Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast will shut down with an October 26 withdrawal deadline, after assets on the network fell from $2.2 billion to $32 million and its token lost 98% of its launch value, while the IMF approved funds for El Salvador after a waiver for its bitcoin breach.

Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert said a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission initiative to reform accredited investor rules vindicates a prediction he made about tokenization in 2011. Silbert, described as the "King of Crypto," recalled his 2011 interview with the WSJ and concluded that 15 years later Wall Street had effectively capitulated to his long-term prediction about tokenization. He summed up the outcome with the remark, "I Nailed That One Too." The SEC's move to revisit the accredited investor framework is the development that prompted his comments.

Visa is expanding its stablecoin infrastructure across nine blockchains and now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume up nearly 200% year over year. In fiscal 2026 year to date, about 17% of Visa's stablecoin-linked card volume came from business and commercial card programs, and its stablecoin settlement volume has crossed a $20 billion annualized run rate, up more than 15-fold from a year ago. The company launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, introduced an onchain credit model in September 2026 that uses VisaNet settlement data, and expects its partnership with Bridge to take stablecoin-linked cards to more than 100 countries. Visa's Value-Added Services revenues rose to $3.8 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 from $2.8 billion a year earlier, while processed transactions rose 10% year over year to 71.7 billion. Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $16.3 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, free cash flow reached $15.2 billion, and Visa returned $6.2 billion in the third quarter through dividends and share repurchases, including $4.9 billion of buybacks, with $28.4 billion still available under its repurchase authorization as of June 30, 2026.

Strategy's high-profile STRC preferred stock is nearing the critical $100 level, a threshold that may once again open the door to an important line of capital for the Bitcoin treasury juggernaut to grow its cryptocurrency position. The development centers on the preferred instrument tied to the company's Bitcoin accumulation strategy, with the $100 mark serving as the key reference point for whether that capital channel reopens.

Citigroup Inc. is taking Citi Token Services to Japan and the United Arab Emirates, broadening its digital payments network across key financial hubs. Built on a private and permissioned blockchain, the platform enables near-instantaneous movement of funds within Citigroup's network, helping clients overcome traditional banking cut-off times, holidays and time-zone constraints. With the addition of Japan and the UAE, Citi Token Services is now available across seven markets, including the United States, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom; Japan will support USD transactions, while the UAE will support USD and euro transactions. The platform, launched commercially in 2024 following an initial Singapore-New York pilot, was integrated with Citigroup's 24/7 U.S. dollar Clearing capabilities in 2025 and later expanded to support euro transactions through its Dublin operations. The initiative aligns with Citigroup's 2026 Investor Day strategy, which identified tokenization and next-generation platforms as longer-term Services growth drivers, with Services revenues expected to grow at a low to mid-single-digit rate in 2027-2028.

Metaplanet ended the third quarter with 44,000 Bitcoin after a net increase of 1,000 BTC, having sold 10,000 BTC and repurchased 11,000 crypto tokens during the period. The Japan-based crypto treasury company said the sale demonstrated its ability to convert Bitcoin into cash to meet financial obligations while keeping its long-term accumulation strategy intact. Under a revised capital allocation policy, Metaplanet plans to hold 85% to 90% of total assets in Bitcoin, with 10% to 15% allocated to strategic investments, and will use preferred stock, corporate bonds, and Bitcoin-collateralized financing while keeping crypto-related borrowing below roughly 10% of Bitcoin NAV. Its new net interest income strategy will invest in income-generating assets, including preferred securities issued by Bitcoin treasury companies, to fund further Bitcoin purchases. Metaplanet's Bitcoin income generation business produced ¥848 million, or $5.4 million, in third-quarter revenue, bringing nine-month revenue to ¥5.565 billion, or $35.4 million, with a third-quarter Bitcoin yield of 11.3% and an unchanged fiscal 2026 earnings forecast. Metaplanet stock traded about 3% higher at roughly $1.87, while Bitcoin traded near $86,000.

Morgan Stanley is making a mark in the Bitcoin ETF market as it has maintained a long streak of steady Bitcoin purchases regardless of the unstable market conditions. The bank's Bitcoin stash is piling up, with a $1 Billion milestone now in view. The buying has continued through unstable market conditions, underscoring the firm's persistent accumulation of Bitcoin ETF exposure.

Crypto asset exchange operator BACKSEAT announced on October 5 that it has obtained a SOC 2 Type 1 assurance report, dated the same day, following an independent third-party assessment of the security posture and internal controls of its custody business, which handles the safekeeping and management of crypto assets. According to the company, this is the first such acquisition by a domestic crypto asset exchange operator in Japan, and it described the move as part of preparations for the anticipated lifting of the ban on crypto asset ETFs in Japan. The assessment was based on the Trust Services Criteria, covering five areas: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. President Keiji Maeda explained that in the United States, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, major operators serving as custodians for ETFs have obtained SOC 2 reports, and said this acquisition marks a milestone in gaining objective third-party evaluation. The company said it has been preparing for the realization of domestic ETFs in anticipation of revisions to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and other laws, and indicated it plans to provide custody services for a crypto asset market platform in which financial institutions and others will participate. Domestic crypto asset ETFs are expected to be permitted in January 2028.

Bitcoin rebounded to $86,970 on October 5 after Strategy disclosed it had acquired an additional 334 BTC worth about $24 million. Michael Saylor said on X that Strategy recorded $21 billion in valuation gains on digital assets in the third quarter of 2026, acquired 334 BTC the previous week, and bought back about $176 million worth of STRC shares. As of October 4, the company held 848,000 BTC and about $5.7 billion in dollar-denominated assets. With this purchase, bitcoin buying has continued for a third consecutive week, extending a trend that resumed in late August after a ten-week pause from June 7 to August 23. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs also recorded total inflows of $3.219 billion over 11 of the past 12 trading days. In prediction markets, Kalshi puts the probability of bitcoin exceeding $100,000 by January 2027 at 38%, while Polymarket sees only a 12% chance of it reaching $100,000 during October.

Cloudflare has entered a strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom under which the German carrier will add Cloudflare's security and connectivity solutions to its enterprise portfolio and the two companies will directly connect their networks. Deutsche Telekom will also train and certify its professionals on the Cloudflare platform through T-Systems, giving customers support for consulting, implementation and managed security services. The deal covers protection of applications, networks and data as well as AI workloads, and the companies plan to work on digital resilience and sovereignty in Europe, including protection of critical data and infrastructure and the use of post-quantum cryptography. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Cloudflare's 2026 and 2027 revenues indicates year-over-year growth of 32.5% and 28.6%, respectively. Cloudflare shares have jumped 77% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Internet – Software industry's return of 9.9%, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 35.28 versus the industry's average of 4.42.

XRP has claimed the top spot in trading volume on South Korea's cryptocurrency market, surpassing Bitcoin and Ethereum, according to CoinMarketCap. The surge in local activity has kept the token's price within a $1.45 to $1.52 range even as broader global markets face pressure. The ranking marks a notable shift in South Korean trading preferences, where XRP now leads both major cryptocurrencies by volume.

Entersekt and SEB Baltic have reinforced their partnership to enhance digital payment security across the Baltic region, focusing on evolving authentication needs. The collaboration uses Entersekt's 3-D Secure Access Control Server to support various authentication methods, balancing robust security with a smooth customer experience. The two organizations said the partnership addresses technical, regulatory and operational challenges in payment authentication, emphasizing deep collaboration beyond mere product provision. As digital payment landscapes evolve, they aim to adapt their strategies to meet changing security and customer experience requirements. The news was originally reported by Simply Wall St, citing Entersekt on GlobeNewswire.

WISeSat.Space Holdings Corp. shares surged as much as 500% in Monday premarket trading after the company completed its previously announced reverse SPAC merger with Columbus Acquisition Corp. on October 1, 2026. The subsidiary of WISeQey Corp. began trading its ordinary shares on Nasdaq under the ticker SAIQ on October 2, 2026. Founder, chairman and CEO Carlos Moreira is scheduled to ring the Nasdaq Opening Bell on October 9, 2026, at Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square. The listing supports WISeSat.Space's plans to expand secure satellite connectivity, drawing on WISeQey's expertise in cybersecurity, digital identity and secure semiconductors to connect IoT devices beyond terrestrial networks. SAIQ was up 308.63% at $7.55 in premarket trading on Monday, hitting a new 52-week high.

Shiba Inu recorded immediate price gains following its official listing on the Solana blockchain. The listing is part of a broader expansion of the largest Ethereum assets onto Solana, a process being gradually implemented by the Sunrise bridge. The launch of the canonical version of Shiba Inu was immediately reflected in its price, according to the report. The move marks a measurable financial result from the bridge's ongoing rollout of Ethereum-based assets to Solana.

Zscaler announced a collaboration with IBM and Red Hat to protect private applications during the window between vulnerability disclosure and patch deployment. The collaboration combines Zscaler Autonomous Application Shield, delivered through the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange security platform, with Lightwell from IBM and Red Hat to provide adaptive, application-specific protection alongside validated software remediation in a single coordinated response. Zscaler cited Mandiant's M-Trends 2026 report, which found the mean time to exploit a vulnerability has fallen below zero, meaning vulnerabilities are increasingly exploited before a public patch exists. Under the arrangement, Zscaler App Connectors continuously assess each private application's exposure points and vulnerabilities, adaptive protections are applied inline in real time when a new vulnerability emerges, and Lightwell then provides validated remediations for affected open source software. Joby Menon, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Zscaler, said the collaboration brings together inline, application-specific protection and validated remediation to help customers reduce risk during that gap, while Gunnar Hellekson, vice president and general manager of Lightwell at Red Hat, said AI is shrinking the exploitation window from months or weeks to hours and minutes. Autonomous Application Shield is currently available through an Early Access Program, and Zscaler said availability, capabilities, and timing of the collaboration are subject to change.

Dogecoin has completed a golden cross on its daily chart, the first such signal in 14 months, with the MA 50 crossing above the MA 200. The last daily golden cross came in August 2025, and on September 13, 2025, Dogecoin traded to a high of $0.3 before selling pressure set in; the coin later fell to a low of $0.09 during the October 10 flash crash, when the crypto market suffered a historic $20 billion liquidation, and flashed a death cross in November 2025. The rebound began from a low of $0.06 in mid-August 2026, flipping the daily MA 50 and surpassing the daily MA 200 for the first time since October 2025. Fundamentals have been positive: DogeOS launched a public test network for Ethereum-style trading and lending using DOGE, and Metallicus launched DogecoinVM, a DOGE-compatible ledger on the Metal Blockchain that makes Dogecoin 300x faster with instant finality. Dogecoin was up 3.88% in the last 24 hours to $0.0962, with the next test for bulls at $0.106 after it decisively breaks the $0.095 and $0.098 levels, and a clear breakout past $0.106 might target $0.12 and $0.16 next.

Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat and chairman of Bitmine, said in an interview with Coinage that Ethereum will set a new all-time high and surge above $5,000 before the end of this year, and he sees the potential for it to reach $60,000 within the next few years, citing past price cycles in which it climbed from below $100 at the end of 2018 to nearly $4,900 in 2021. Lee noted that Ethereum has risen about 80% from its June low near $1,500 to around $2,700 by the end of September, even as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.25% on September 16, bringing the target range to 3.75%-4% by a 12-0 vote. On the institutional side, money has flowed in through spot Ether ETFs in the United States, with September 22 recording net inflows of $162.2 million, the third consecutive day of positive flows, as BlackRock's Ethereum fund took in $88.1 million and Fidelity's fund added $33.6 million. Lee also pointed to Robinhood's decision to build Robinhood Chain on Ethereum, which attracted as much as $2.1 billion in tokenized assets in its first two months, with $1.5 billion deposited into applications running on the network. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an innovation exemption on September 17 that allows certain tokenized versions of US-listed shares to trade on blockchain networks, after the draft Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate by a vote of 49-50.

Ratings giant S&P Global Ratings announced on October 4 that it has launched a risk assessment service for DeFi, or decentralized finance, lending operations. The new service, called Vault Risk Assessment, or VRA, provides independent assessments of "vaults" that pool investor funds and lend them out. It offers a forward-looking, relative assessment of the risk that investors' holdings will suffer losses, and unlike ordinary credit ratings, it does not assess yield levels. According to the company, assets under custody in lending vaults reached about 10 billion dollars as of September 2026, expanding roughly 6.7 times over two years from about 1.5 billion dollars in September 2024. VRA examines the credit quality of the assets being managed, mismatches between withdrawal demand and fund recovery, and the risks of the managers who set investment policy, and further evaluates them from six perspectives, including the blockchain, the lending mechanism, and the vault's security and governance. The company already assesses the ability of stablecoins to maintain their price pegs, and with VRA it will address the risk of losses associated with lending operations, aiming to support institutional investors in selecting investments and managing risk.

Mastercard announced a probability score for AI-initiated transactions on September 30, positioning the capability inside its Agentic Commerce Trust Framework alongside Cloudflare for web and payment signal feeds and Skyfire for Know Your Agent verification. The probability score adds a second layer to the trust stack that agent commerce requires, evaluating each AI-initiated transaction dynamically to produce a trust score at the moment of execution rather than asking whether a transaction is legitimate. It builds on Skyfire's Know Your Agent framework, which Mastercard integrated earlier this year and which issues credentials and verifies agent identity at the point of transaction, a foundation also pursued by Baselayer, which raised $35 million to build Know Your Agent infrastructure. With the probability score in place, the trust infrastructure for agent commerce now has four visible layers: Know Your Agent identity verification, transaction-level probability scoring, payment execution with guardrails such as Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite and Visa's Intelligent Commerce, and consumer protection signals that remain nascent and fragmented.

Bitcoin is approaching a major bullish signal, with its 50-day, 100-day and 200-day simple moving averages just one crossover away from a fully bullish alignment, which would be the first since 2025. The 50-day average currently sits at 79,495 dollars, clearly above the other two, while the 100-day average at 79,493 dollars is rising and close to overtaking the 200-day average at 79,539 dollars. Vikram Subburaj, CEO of the Indian exchange Giottus, told CoinDesk that the crossover would restore the ordering of the averages for the first time since the previous alignment on June 24, 2025, when Bitcoin surged more than 40% to 87,000 dollars in the third quarter before stalling around 85,000 dollars amid a rising US dollar index. Historically, such alignments have led to major rallies, such as on October 27, 2020, when prices traded around 13,600 dollars and climbed to more than 64,000 dollars in May 2021, while the June 2025 alignment lasted 97 days but lifted prices only from about 106,000 dollars to 112,000 dollars. Subburaj said the crossover reinforces the trend case but does not guarantee continuation, and the real test is whether Bitcoin's spot price can hold above the 50-day average during a corrective pullback.

Clearpool's community has approved, with 97.16% voting in favor, an expansion onto the XRP Ledger and the full migration of its native CPOOL token to a new asset, CLEAR. The institutional credit marketplace is bringing infrastructure to XRPL for financing working capital in the real fintech sector, with the platform providing technology rails and smart contracts, credit manager Cicada Partners auditing borrowers and underwriting risk, and Ripple joining the pools as a limited partner. Financing will be conducted exclusively in the dollar stablecoin RLUSD, giving the coin its first organic circulation among institutional investors, while custody provider Hex Trust will provide additional security and compliance bridges. The 1:1 token migration is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026, with the initial supply of the new CLEAR asset rising to 1.125 billion tokens from CPOOL's previous supply of one billion, and 70% of the new supply distributed to current holders at launch to protect against dilution. Half of all fees collected by the platform will go to the open market to buy back and permanently burn CLEAR, and the product relies on the ledger's native standards XLS-65 and XLS-66, which are still being tested on Devnet awaiting approval from 80% of validators before full deployment on the XRPL mainnet.

Coinbase Global CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup has partnered with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up proof the crypto giant "has come a long way" since 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong recalled that getting a bank to work with Coinbase at its founding was "nearly impossible," and thanked Citi for the arrangement. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing revenue component for Coinbase, which shares interest income on reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group and monetizes customer balances on its platform; USDC held in Coinbase products hit an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, more than 30% of all USDC in circulation. Coinbase shares finished Friday down 3.32% at $183.

According to August cryptocurrency trading statistics published on October 2 by the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association, domestic spot trading volume rose to 2.6338 trillion units, roughly double the previous month and the highest level in one year and five months, since March 2025. Trading value also increased 13.4% from the previous month to 76.43 billion yen. Prices rose sharply in August, with the NADA Bitcoin Index showing bitcoin up 20.7% from about 10.33 million yen at the end of July to about 12.47 million yen at the end of August, while the NADA Ethereum Index showed ether up 27.3% from about 306,000 yen to about 389,700 yen. The rally took hold from August 19 onward, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would double the size of its long-term government bond buybacks, pushing down U.S. long-term interest rates, and U.S. President Trump acknowledged that the U.S. government is discussing a plan for large-scale bitcoin purchases. Money also returned to U.S. spot bitcoin and ether ETFs, with combined net inflows of about 2.6 billion dollars in the week through August 21, the largest since October 2025. Margin trading value rose 19.0% from the previous month to 746.5 billion yen, while user deposit balances increased 22.2% to 3.5111 trillion yen. Meanwhile, users' bitcoin holdings fell 2.9% from the previous month to 170,344 BTC, the lowest level since March 2025, while the value of those holdings rose 22.2% to 2.1396 trillion yen on higher prices, suggesting that profit-taking selling emerged during the rally.

Hitachi announced on October 5 that it began offering its Digital Asset AML Platform, a service that monitors money laundering risks in transactions involving crypto assets and stablecoins, on October 1. The service is intended for use by financial institutions and crypto asset-related businesses. In July, Hitachi published the results of a proof of concept conducted with 17 companies, including financial institutions and crypto asset-related businesses, and announced plans to offer the service starting in October. The new service combines information suspected of links to crime or sanctions targets with analysis powered by AI and machine learning to identify signs of suspicious transactions. It evaluates the counterparty's wallet before a transaction, continuously monitors after the transaction for newly emerging risks, and can also check the circulation status of stablecoins and other assets after issuance. Because crypto assets can be transferred across multiple wallets and exchanges, information held by a single company alone may make it difficult to grasp suspicious fund movements. The new service also uses risk information gathered by each business to help detect signs that would be hard for any one company to find on its own.

Bitcoin recovered to hold above the $85,000 level, trading at $85,276, up 0.83% over 24 hours, but still below the $86,000 level it touched before the jobs numbers were released. Research from Glassnode indicated that the strongest short squeeze buying occurred at 04:20 UTC on October 2, with $50 million in short liquidations within 10 minutes, which came 8 hours ahead of the release of the non-farm payrolls figures. Meanwhile, open interest rose by $2.1 billion in the 24 hours before the announcement, then fell by $1.5 billion after the report came out. On the spot Bitcoin ETF side, US funds recorded net inflows of $102 million on October 1, according to data from Farside Investors. Glassnode also assessed that the probability of the Fed raising rates by another 0.25% at its October 28 meeting fell from 66% on September 28 to just 22% as of October 2, after the September jobs report showed an increase of only 29,000 positions and an unemployment rate of 4.2%. The market is still awaiting the ISM September services report, scheduled for release on Monday, October 5, at 10:00 a.m. US Eastern Time.

Tria, which operates a card payment service using crypto assets, began offering 'Tria Gacha' on October 4 on an invitation-only basis, letting users draw Pokémon cards and more within its app. When users purchase eligible packs with the company's card, they can receive cashback of up to 6% depending on their membership plan. The gacha features graded physical Pokémon cards, One Piece cards, and sports cards, and users can hold the cards they draw within the app, sell them on the spot, or request physical delivery. Base reward rates are 1.5%, 4.5%, and 6% depending on the plan, and not all users receive the 6% rate. During the trial period, card payments for gacha draws are subject to a daily cap of 50,000 dollars shared across all users, with the cap replenished at 9 p.m. Japan time.