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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.

Google Quantum AI published in Science: The Willow processor reduced errors by approximately 40-fold through “magic-state distillation,” producing T states with 99.99% logical fidelity. This method acts like a filter, injecting noisy magic states and eliminating defects through multiple rounds of checks before amplification. Approximately 8% passed the experiment, meaning more than 90% of attempts had to be discarded to retain one distilled state. This technology could potentially reduce the difficulty of breaking RSA-2048. Willow used up to 54 qubits.

On October 16, Farcaster was acquired by Neynar’s Network School for an undisclosed amount. Rish and Manan will leave, while the rest of Neynar’s employees will join Network School and continue development. Neynar acquired Farcaster from Merkle Manufactory earlier this year in a transaction that also included the token platform Clanker, whose future remains undecided. Farcaster will be renamed the “Network State Protocol,” based on a network of voluntary digital communities, and will introduce “social smart contracts” and on-chain access NFTs as credentials.

MSCI is considering classifying Strategy, Japan’s Metaplanet, and other digital asset treasury companies as non-operating entities, which could result in their exclusion from global investable market indexes. JPMorgan estimates that passive funds tracking MSCI indexes could be forced to sell approximately $2.8 billion worth of MSTR shares; if other index providers adopt the same rules, outflows could reach $8.8 billion. Strategy’s comparative analysis shows that tracking funds hold approximately 3.1% of its shares outstanding. The final decision is expected to be announced around October 16, with implementation beginning on November 30.

Citizen Lab discovered the first spyware infection delivered through targeted online advertising, requiring no clicks or downloads. Loading the ad was enough to cause infection. The operation was called AdFection. It affected at least 45 Al Jazeera devices and was suspected to be linked to Israeli advertising companies Discover-Tech and Candiru. An analysis of approximately 4 billion ad-bidding records showed that Discover-Tech ads appeared on around 200,000 websites and apps worldwide, but exposure did not necessarily result in infection. The ad networks involved have been taken down.

Chainalysis says that in 2026, the United States will become a net recipient of Bitcoin, with institutions continuing to buy while retail investors sell overall. Dollar stablecoins hold dollars for people without U.S. bank accounts, while Americans use Bitcoin as a scarce store of value. Since the launch of spot BTC ETFs in 2024, the United States’ share of global Bitcoin activity has continued to rise. Stablecoins are creating new use cases for dollar-denominated liabilities in peer-to-peer and cross-border transactions, while the GENIUS Act allows issuance backed by U.S. Treasuries and requires reserve disclosures.

Polygon Labs announced the official release of Bor v2.10.3, which fixes two high-severity denial-of-service vulnerabilities in BlockSTM V2 parallel execution: an uncapped Keccak-256 cache and repeated recomputation of smart contract code hashes during parallel execution. The team said that v2.10.1/2, which enabled the feature by default, was affected, but the vulnerabilities have not been exploited on the mainnet or Amoy testnet.

Sweden’s central bank advised lawmakers to prepare for possible legislation to launch a digital krona, citing the ECB’s progress on the digital euro and the growing use of foreign-currency stablecoins. The central bank said the ECB plans to launch a digital euro pilot in 2027 and may roll it out to the public in 2029. Sweden’s competitiveness could be affected if its payment system lacks a digital krona; dollar-pegged stablecoins widely used in Sweden could reduce demand for the krona, although the short-term risks are limited. Implementing a digital krona would take at least five years, excluding the time needed for legislation.

ME News reported that one of the biggest losers in the Ledger theft was actually a scammer, who lost more than 60 BTC, worth approximately $4.8 million. The funds came from a “task scam” that hired people to fabricate sales and reviews; after their balances went negative, participants were required to invest their own money to receive payment. On September 22, the perpetrators transferred the funds to three Ledger addresses. On October 9, all three addresses were emptied, and the funds were transferred to the same wallet, which was revealed to be linked to the stolen funds.

ME News reported on October 16 (UTC+8) that publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies CleanSpark and BitFuFu saw their September Bitcoin production decline month over month, while Canaan’s production remained unchanged from August. CleanSpark mined 529 BTC in September, down nearly 11% from 593 BTC in August; BitFuFu produced 167 BTC, down 4% from 174 BTC in August; and Canaan mined 44 BTC, the same as in August. As of the end of September, CleanSpark held 13530 BTC, down from 13703 BTC at the end of August. The company said it sold 2 BTC on the spot market and sold BTC through the exercise of call options at an average price of $72928 per BTC.

Multiliquid, developed by Uniform Labs, has raised approximately $8 million across its seed and pre-seed rounds. The latest round was led by Polychain, with participation from Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, Circle Ventures, and others. Multiliquid enables swaps between tokenized assets and stablecoins through single atomic transactions and is now deployed on Ethereum and Solana.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju has launched Analyst Consensus, an analyst consensus platform that aggregates more than 1.3 million opinions from 878 analysts across platforms such as X, Substack, and Seeking Alpha, including 140,000 related to Bitcoin. The platform uses AI to identify and label bullish or bearish sentiment, combining it into a single indicator that reflects market consensus. It covers major altcoins beyond Bitcoin and some stocks. The platform is currently available for free, with plans to expand its asset and analyst coverage.

ME News Review: Crypto markets remain locked in a bull-bear tug-of-war, with analysts leaning bullish while speculative capital shifts toward defense and risk appetite comes under pressure. BTC briefly fell below $80,000, while an AI sell-off dragged down risk assets. Inflation data could hurt risk appetite, and uncertainty over rate expectations is rising as the Federal Reserve’s policy blackout period approaches. Derive.xyz said the probability of BTC rising to $100,000 before Christmas fell to 9.7%; long-term bullish bets are retreating, short-term hedging demand is surging, and institutions are reassessing their macro risk exposure.

DeFi Development Corp. raised the annual dividend rate on its CHAD preferred stock from 13% to 14%, effective November 2. CHAD has a $10 par value, with its annual dividend increasing from $1.3 to $1.4, paid on business days. The proceeds will be used to expand its Solana treasury and generate returns through staking and validator nodes. The CEO said the move could broaden investor participation and scale CHAD, creating a leading digital credit instrument and enhancing value for common shareholders. The company added approximately 22,070 SOL last week, bringing its total holdings to approximately 2,590,000 SOL. CHAD reached a record high this week, and a buyback program was approved.

ME News, October 16 (UTC+8) — The Australian Treasury released a draft bill on crypto asset tax transparency and accompanying explanatory materials, with public consultation open until October 28. The draft aims to provide a legal basis for incorporating the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework into Australian law, while also establishing a domestic crypto-asset reporting regime covering transactions involving Australian residents and updating the existing Common Reporting Standard. (Source: Foresight News)

ME News reported on October 16 that Patrick Collison posted on X that, more than a year after Privy joined Stripe, its assets had grown 25-fold, monthly active users had tripled, revenue had increased ninefold, and monthly transaction volume had reached nearly $25 billion. Ramp, Deel, Klarna, and others are building embedded banking capabilities based on Privy. Stripe has integrated Privy into Treasury, Link, and Connect, and plans to launch Link balances. Privy’s wallet infrastructure now supports transactions by AI agents, while Stripe and others are building a unified API to enable stablecoin balances, fiat on- and off-ramps, and bank card payments.

Aztec has announced its post-quantum roadmap, with enhanced development libraries and contract solutions to be rolled out in phases starting in 2027 to address “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. Full post-quantum migration is planned for 2030, covering proof systems, account authentication, keys, validator signatures, and Ethereum settlement. The plan includes selecting post-quantum signatures in March 2027, selecting post-quantum public-key encryption in July 2027, completing benchmark testing for constrained note transmission on mainstream proof systems in November 2027, and ultimately finalizing a post-quantum proof system.

ME News, October 15 (UTC+8) — According to CoinMarketCap market data, BTC has surpassed $82,000 and is currently quoted at $82,022, up 0.5% over the past 24 hours. (Source: CoinMarketCap)

Mastercard and BVNK have launched the Global Money Platform, integrating payment networks with BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure through a single API. Designed for banks, fintechs, and businesses, it supports multi-currency fiat and stablecoin accounts, real-time conversion, stablecoin-linked cards, and payments to local bank accounts through Mastercard Move. The platform is now available for open use through BVNK, marking the first major integration since Mastercard acquired BVNK in August 2026.

Cross River Bank is partnering with Ripple to integrate the U.S. dollar stablecoin RLUSD into its core banking system and facilitate transactions through the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Fintech customers can use RLUSD payments through a single API and transfer funds freely between USD and RLUSD, supporting 24/7 cross-border payments and settlement. Currently available only in select states.