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U.S. stocks closed higher on Wednesday, with technology shares strengthening, Dell surging, and oil prices stabilizing. U.S. Treasury yields approached 5%, and global stock markets may face a 5%-8% correction. Trump said the strikes on Iran would end soon and that the Strait of Hormuz would be renamed the Trump Strait. The former British prime minister warned that failure to control debt would force emergency spending cuts. The Beige Book said the U.S. economy grew moderately, with AI and data centers serving as key supports. Tron’s USDT supply surpassed Ethereum’s for the first time. Broadcom’s Q3 results exceeded expectations, and its AI revenue guidance was raised. Robinhood Chain generated $3.75 million in daily fees, exceeding the combined total of Solana, ETH, and Base.

Germany’s savings banks will enable cryptocurrency trading in their mobile banking app starting October 19, initially supporting five assets: BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and POL, but no stablecoins or meme coins. DekaBank will execute trades, with custody provided by Boerse Stuttgart. The trading fee is €0.99 per transaction. DSGV expects an average of 30–40 banks to join each month; around 230 have expressed interest. The rollout is expected to be largely complete in the first half of 2027, potentially reaching around 50 million customers.

The U.S. DHS is requiring civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek and third-party services based on its models and barring new purchases, citing the risk that the models could send sensitive data back to China and pose multiple threat vectors. States and agencies had already imposed restrictions, and the FCC will also vote on a ban. DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based startup whose open-source model launched on 2025-01-27 at a cost of less than $5 million, once causing Nvidia’s stock price to fall. The U.S. House says it may send data to Chinese authorities and use large quantities of chips. V4-Pro trails GPT-5.5 Pro and is available for free download under the MIT License. This week, DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash.

NVIDIA used 8,192 GPUs on JUPITER at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany to complete a full simulation of a 104-qubit fault-tolerant processor, setting a record for the largest simulation of its kind. The simulation validated the feasibility of the magic-state cultivation method, significantly reduced the number of qubits required, and shortened the simulation time from weeks to days, potentially bringing forward the realization of practical quantum computers by several years.

ME News reports that on October 20 (UTC+8), Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted on X that U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s “analysis” of Tether’s sanctions report overlooked one point: Since 2023, Tether has frozen the relevant addresses an average of four weeks before the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) formally designated them for sanctions, and in 99% of cases, the freezes were completed before Chainalysis flagged the addresses. He said Tether’s actions reduced the volume of stablecoin transactions related to Iran by 94%. Previously, on September 28, Blumenthal released the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’

ME News, October 20 (UTC+8) — With stronger U.S. economic growth and easing concerns about the Federal Reserve’s independence, the outlook for the dollar has improved. Lombard Odier \& Cie has turned bullish on the dollar, reversing its previous bearish stance. The firm lowered its euro-to-dollar forecast from $1.14 to $1.09 and raised its dollar-to-Swiss franc forecast from CHF0.83 to CHF0.85, while shifting its view on the dollar against emerging-market currencies to neutral. This is the latest move by Lombard Odier to further soften its bearish stance on the dollar; in June, the firm raised its recommended dollar allocation from underweight to neutral. (Source: PANews)

ME News reported on October 20 (UTC+8) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that he had instructed the Israeli military, Mossad, and the Military Intelligence Directorate to “overthrow the Iranian regime.” Netanyahu cited U.S. President Donald Trump’s public support for him, saying Trump believes the core task at present is to eliminate the existential threat Iran poses to Israel. (Source: ChainCatcher)

ME News reports that on October 20 (UTC+8), Nasdaq-listed SharpLink (SBET) said it had deployed a total of $400 million in ETH to the two liquid staking protocols Ether.fi and Lido. The company said both amounts had been fully deployed to improve the yield efficiency of its ETH treasury. Under a plan announced in August, SharpLink intended to stake $200 million in ETH through Lido and receive wstETH, with the assets held in custody by Anchorage Digital. The other portion of the funds was deployed through Ether.fi to Consensys’s Linea network, where it was also restaked in partnership with EigenCloud to earn DeFi yields and incentives. Sha

Mastercard launched its Stablecoin Security risk intelligence service at Money20/20 USA to help financial institutions assess stablecoin payment risks, trace fund sources, and identify potential links to financial crimes such as fraud and sanctions violations before funds move on-chain. The service can be integrated with banks’ anti-fraud and compliance systems via API. Its first partners are Borderless.xyz and Keyrails. It will launch first in North America, with global commercialization expected in 2027, and BVNK will be added next year.

StoneX reiterated its Buy rating on Galaxy Digital with a $57 price target, saying its AI data center business is undervalued and its digital asset business is not reflected in the valuation. Market concerns are focused on rising borrowing costs at CoreWeave and its $35.6 billion in outstanding debt as of the end of June.

loanDepot analyst Jeff DerGurahian said in a report that a combination of rising oil prices and a weak stock market could keep U.S. mortgage rates around 7% in the fourth quarter. Weak equities, particularly the tech sector, are drawing buyers back into the bond market, but high oil prices are heightening inflation concerns and could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise rates at least once this year. DerGurahian said rates will remain at current levels until one side gains the upper hand.

Financial technology company Ramp submitted an application to the U.S. OCC on October 16 to establish Ramp National Trust Bank. If approved, the trust bank charter would allow it to provide fiduciary investment management and digital asset custody services under a unified federal regulatory framework. However, the proposed entity would not accept deposits or make commercial loans.

AnchorWatch Trust Company (ATC) has launched in Nevada, offering qualified custody for Bitcoin to fiduciaries, public companies, trusts, and high-net-worth individuals. Monthly fees are capped at $10,000 and priced according to vault size. Clients can choose between two models: ATC holds the keys alone, or ATC, BitGo, and CoinCorner each hold a key. Optional A+ insurance provides up to $370 million in coverage per client for losses involving violence, kidnapping, and ATC fraud, subject to underwriting approval.

ME News, October 19 (UTC+8) — U.S. White House National Economic Council Director Hassett said that prices for goods such as beef and eggs have fallen, but September consumer price data show that overall inflation still requires policy attention. Hassett said, “Looking back over the past three months, inflation seemed to be completely under control, but now it appears to be picking up again and requiring some intervention.” He said, “This is either a temporary rebound in a downward trend or just temporary volatility.” Hassett also said he respected the central bank’s independence and that Warsh would “do what he thinks is right.” Hassett said, “People are very optimistic about the economy’s performance and are increasing their spending. Of course, that’s exactly what the Fed needs to pay attention to.” (Jinshi) (Source: ODAILY)

ME News reported on October 19 (UTC+8) that, according to SoSoValue data, as of 8 a.m. Eastern Time on October 19, 2026, globally listed companies (excluding mining companies) made total net purchases of $360 million worth of Bitcoin last week, an increase of 1,500% from two weeks ago. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) purchased 267 Bitcoin last week at a price of $82,900, spending approximately $22.1 million and bringing its total holdings to 848,517 Bitcoin. Japanese-listed company Metaplanet did not purchase any Bitcoin last week. In addition, three other companies announced Bitcoin purchases or their Bitcoin holdings last week. Asset manager Strive announced on October 19 that it spent last week...

Cboe Global Markets announced expanded trading hours for options on select U.S. stocks and ETFs, adding pre-market trading (ET 7:30-9:25) and after-hours trading (16:00-16:15). The expanded hours cover 29 symbols, including Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Robinhood, and Intel, as well as major ETFs such as SPY, QQQ, and GLD.

ME News reports that on October 19 (UTC+8), Bitcoin infrastructure protocol Echo Protocol announced in a post on X that it would gradually wind down operations due to business adjustments. In the announcement, the team thanked the community, partners, and users for their long-standing trust and support, and pledged to complete the subsequent wind-down process transparently and responsibly.
All of Echo Protocol’s core businesses have now stopped accepting additional funds. The lending protocol has halted new deposits and borrowing, as well as interest accrual. The strategy and LSD businesses have also stopped accepting new deposits and staking.
The team has now opened channels for repayments, withdrawals, and necessary asset liquidations, and urged users to act as soon as possible: lending users should repay their debts, unlock their collateral, and withdraw their assets; strategy and LSD users should initiate withdrawals and claim their assets promptly; users holding aBTC can continue to use it.

ME News reports that on October 19 (UTC+8), Section 502 of the U.S. House bill, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357), requires the U.S. Treasury Department to establish a voluntary digital asset disclosure program within 12 months after the bill takes effect. The program would allow taxpayers to correct past cryptocurrency tax filing errors by submitting amended returns, paying any additional taxes and interest, and paying the penalties set by the program. Taxpayers would generally be required to submit amended returns within 24 months after the program is established.
The provision sets two penalty tiers: taxpayers who declare under penalty of perjury that the violation was neither fraudulent nor willful would pay a penalty rate of 0% on the first $25,000 of tax owed per year if they file within 12 months after the program is established, and 5% on any amount above that; taxpayers who do not make this declaration, the first

ME News, October 19 (UTC+8) — According to CoinMarketCap market data, BTC has fallen below $82,000 and is currently trading at $81,960, down 1.0% over 24 hours. (Source: CoinMarketCap)

ME News reported on October 19 (UTC+8) that cross-chain aggregation protocol LI.FI tweeted that it had launched its Smart Execution feature suite, now available to all integrators. The suite primarily includes three features: Quote Simulation simulates transactions based on current on-chain state before returning same-chain routes, filtering out routes that may revert while adding an average of only about 35 milliseconds of latency; Smart Slippage calculates slippage tolerance for each token based on real-time market data, replacing a uniform slippage setting, while user-set slippage still takes precedence; and Smart Deposit Address (Smart Deposit