Chinese fraud victims seeking to recover 61,000 seized Bitcoin face a legal setback after a UK court ruled that Chinese law governs their claims. Chinese fraud victims seeking to recover 61,000 Bitcoin seized by the British government have lost a key legal battle after London’s High Court ruled that Chinese law, rather than English law, should govern claims to the assets. On Monday, Justice Mark Turner rejected arguments for applying English law or a combination of English and Chinese law to the victims’ ownership claims. The judge ruled that Chinese law must determine whether the claimants have property rights in the seized Bitcoin, leaving the validity of claims for subsequent proceedings. “The relevant damage occurred in China. The Applicants parted with their money in China,” Turner wr…
Ledger detailed how LTE-enabled implants exposed wallet recovery phrases as CryptoBilis halted sales and Trezor and OneKey cut ties with the reseller. Malicious implants in Ledger wallets sold by CryptoBilis captured users’ recovery phrases from device screens and transmitted them over cellular networks, the French hardware wallet maker said. Ledger Donjon, the company’s security research team, found that the implants used a microcontroller to decode the 24-word phrases displayed during setup and transmitted the data over LTE networks using an embedded SIM (eSIM), according to a Tuesday X post by Ledger. The implants did not compromise the devices’ security chips or alter transactions, Ledger said.
Blur’s planned website closure revived criticism of the royalty policies and token rewards that helped it overtake OpenSea during the NFT boom, but hurt creators. Nonfungible token marketplace Blur, which once overtook OpenSea as the largest NFT marketplace by trading volume, says it is shutting down its website next month — and some NFT collectors couldn’t be happier. Blur made the announcement on X on Monday, its first post on the platform in more than a year. It said the frontend will shut down on Nov. 12, while its onchain marketplace will remain operational. Blend, a peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending protocol, will also stop matching new loans. Blur said borrowers have until Nov. 12 to repay outstanding loans or allow them to default. It also promised a withdrawal interface after th…
Binance will discontinue its mining pool and related services on Nov. 10, urging miners to move to alternative pools before the shutdown. Crypto exchange Binance is shutting down its mining pool and related services in November, ending an operation that has been running for over six years. On Tuesday, Binance said it would discontinue Binance Pool on Nov. 10. The shutdown also covers Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, Transaction Accelerator and related features, including mining pool APIs and hashrate notifications. After the deadline, Binance said it would disable its mining endpoints and disconnect miners from the pool. The exchange will no longer accept hashrate submissions or credit mining shares received after the cutoff. Affected products will stop generating rewards and yields.
Authorities said the restrictions are aimed at unregistered exchanges and have acknowledged that customers could have difficulty withdrawing assets. South Korean authorities have approved measures to block domestic access to 27 websites operated by unregistered crypto exchanges and other virtual asset service providers, including KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex and Bitrue. In an announcement on Tuesday, South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) said the decision followed reviews by the Korea Media and Communications Standards Commission on Oct. 6 and 7. The list also includes CoinW, BTCC, BitMart, BingX, DigiFinex and others. The block applies to crypto platforms that have not registered under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, the country’s anti-money…
Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said its newest models are a step toward “personal superintelligence.” Meta has unveiled two new artificial intelligence models, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, which it called its most capable models to date and a step toward “personal superintelligence.” Meta on Monday said the models introduce two capabilities Meta calls Active Memory and Active Focus. The first carries relevant information across conversations, and the second helps the agent sustain work on difficult tasks. Independent evaluation platform Artificial Analysis scored Wonder Full at 56 on its Intelligence Index and the standard Wonder at 52, both at maximum reasoning effort.
The optional feature hides transaction details until their order is finalized, preventing bots from exploiting pending trades. Layer-1 blockchain Aptos has launched an optional new feature that could help shield traders from attacks involving maximal extractable value (MEV), including frontrunning and sandwich attacks. On Monday, Aptos said its Encrypted Mempool feature is now live on its mainnet, allowing users to opt in to keep pending transactions encrypted until their block ordering is finalized. Aptos said the feature was built for institutions submitting large transactions to the chain, traders wanting to avoid MEV risk, AI agents and builders. “When you send a transaction on any major chain today, anyone watching the network can see the details before it executes, the function you…
The defunct exchange acquired a 20% stake in Genesis Digital Assets before FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022. The investment company SWI Group has raised about $900 million in capital as part of plans to scale its data center and AI computing capacity, which includes a mining operation previously tied to cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In a Monday notice, SWI Group said the 800-million-euro, or about $900 million, capital raise would fund its AI and data center expansion plans in Europe and the United States. The group reportedly now has majority control over one of FTX’s mining companies, Genesis Digital Assets, which will now be a part of the network of data centers’ computing capacity. SWI announced in June that it had acquired “significant shareholding” in Genesis for $500 million.…
With just 22 days until the US midterm elections, a crypto-aligned committee has announced another major ad expenditure to support “pro-crypto” candidates in 2026. Affiliate entities of Fairshake, the US political action committee (PAC) funded largely by contributions from investment banking company Cantor Fitzgerald, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Ripple Labs, reported millions of dollars worth of ad buys to support candidates they considered in favor of pro-digital asset policy with the country’s midterm elections less than a month away. On Saturday, filings with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) showed a combined $2.7 million in spending on media by the Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress PACs. The two Fairshake affiliates reported expenditures on media and direct mai…
A Tempo report examines how proposed US accounting rules could change corporate stablecoin holdings, with direct redemption rights determining which tokens qualify as cash. A new report from Stripe-backed blockchain Tempo argues that a proposed US accounting change could remove a major barrier to corporate stablecoin adoption by allowing qualifying tokens to be classified as cash equivalents on company balance sheets. The report examines an Accounting Standards Update the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) proposed in August that could make stablecoins more practical for corporate treasury operations. Under current accounting practices, stablecoin holdings may not count toward a company’s reported cash reserves, affecting liquidity ratios and loan covenants even when the tokens ar…
The Bitcoin mining industry needs roughly $50 billion to complete planned AI infrastructure projects, with IREN, Riot Platforms and HIVE Digital facing major funding gaps. Bitcoin mining companies expanding into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing face sharply different borrowing costs as lenders scrutinize large-scale data center projects, adding to the industry’s growing financing challenges. According to the latest Miner Weekly newsletter from BlocksBridge Consulting, securing major AI customers has only been part of the challenge for miners. Companies must also raise billions of dollars to purchase computing equipment, build facilities and secure the power infrastructure needed to fulfill their contracts. “[B]ig lenders have become more selective about data center lo…
Bitcoin price action stayed rangebound after failing to sustain above $84,000 into the Wall Street open on rising oil prices. Bitcoin (BTC) gave back early-week gains into Monday’s Wall Street open as doubts compounded over a Russia-Ukraine “energy ceasefire.” Key points:
Evernorth’s share price rose by 5% as investors welcomed the Nasdaq debut of the first pure-play XRP digital asset treasury. The newly listed shares of XRP-focused treasury company Evernorth Holdings (XRPN) jumped as much as 5% on their Monday Nasdaq stock exchange debut, according to Yahoo Finance data. Earlier on Monday, the company named former Coinbase Asset Management Co-Chief Investment Officer Hugo Jeandesboz as its new chief investment officer. He will lead treasury strategy, including treasury allocation, liquidity management and the active management of Evernorth’s XRP holdings, according to a Monday announcement. Evernorth deploys its XRP holdings to earn additional income through decentralized finance (DeFi) yield strategies.
The discovery of an unauthorized Ledger hardware implant reignited debate on whether Bitcoin ETFs are safer than self-custodying Bitcoin via hardware wallet devices. The newly discovered Ledger exploit has stirred broad industry debate over the safety of hardware wallets compared to effectively custodying Bitcoin holdings through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Bitcoin analyst Plan B said his then-controversial decision to move his Bitcoin (BTC) holdings to ETFs in 2025 was the right call in light of the recent Coldcard and Ledger exploits. “Zero regrets” about my ETF decision, wrote the analyst in a Monday X post. Large holders have been converting self-custodied assets to ETFs for “enhanced security” for years, which is one of the main “selling points” for ETFs, 21Shares co-founder Ophelia…
Michael Saylor’s Strategy said Bitcoin holdings reached 848,250 BTC after its latest purchase, while maintaining a $4.88 billion cash reserve. Strategy bought 250 Bitcoin for $21.5 million last week, marking a second consecutive weekly decline in purchases as its Bitcoin holdings reached 848,250 BTC. The company funded $21 million of the purchases through sales of its common stock and the remaining $500,000 with existing cash between Monday and Sunday, according to an announcement published on Strategy’s website. Strategy also continued repurchasing shares of its STRC preferred stock, spending $192.4 million during the week, up from $176.3 million the previous week.
ASIC’s proposal would extend leverage limits and protections against negative balances to certain derivatives settled in digital assets. Australia’s securities regulator wants to extend leverage limits and other retail investor safeguards to certain trading contracts settled in crypto. On Monday, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) proposed expanding the rules for contracts for difference (CFDs), which let traders bet on price movements without owning the underlying asset. The rules generally cover contracts settled in cash or by offsetting obligations between the parties. ASIC wants to add contracts settled by transferring digital assets, including those tracking non-crypto assets, provided they meet the other criteria for a CFD.
Bitcoin traders braced for inflation-based volatility after BTC price action preserved key weekly support around $82,500. Bitcoin (BTC) starts the third week of October by defending support at $82,500 ahead of key US inflation data. Key points: US inflation data is in traders’ crosshairs this week ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s Oct. 28 meeting on interest-rate policy.
Payward received full market approval from Dubai’s VARA to expand its digital asset services in the UAE, building on the preliminary approval received in May. Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has received approval from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for its local entity, Payward FZCO, to provide crypto services. At launch, Kraken’s clients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be able to access spot and margin trading in UAE dirham (AED)-denominated pairs and make direct deposit withdrawals, Payward announced on Monday. The company is targeting launch in the coming weeks. VARA’s public register shows that the regulator issued Payward FZCO a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license on Oct. 6, enabling it to offer management and investment…
Standard Chartered has launched custody for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger and plans to let institutions use the tokens as trading collateral. Standard Chartered has launched institutional custody services for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, with plans to expand its use as trading collateral. The UK-based multinational bank announced Monday it rolled out RLUSD support on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) through its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) branch, giving eligible institutional clients access to its digital asset custody infrastructure. Standard Chartered plans to extend its collateral-mirroring model to LMAX Group, an institutional trading company, allowing clients to use RLUSD as trading collateral while keeping the tokens in the bank’s custody.
Jeonbuk Bank reportedly began offering Bitcoin-backed loans to corporate customers, with a third-party custodian holding the cryptocurrency used as collateral. South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank, a subsidiary of JB Financial Group, reportedly started issuing Bitcoin-backed loans to its corporate customers. Local outlet EDaily reported Monday that Jeonbuk Bank became the country’s first commercial bank to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as collateral for won-denominated lending. The bank is reportedly limiting the service to businesses seeking operational capital, while a specialized custodian holds the BTC used as collateral. The lending arrangement follows amendments to South Korea’s Civil Enforcement Rules that took effect on Oct. 1. According to the Supreme Court, the rules establish procedures for seizi…
