Flash News

TREE NEWS reports: TD Cowen raised its price target on Strive by 27%, citing the company’s bitcoin buying spree, with the firm saying warrant-related stock pressure is easing. Strive plans fresh funding to purchase more bitcoin. The bitcoin-buying strategy and the warrant overhang were the focus of the TD Cowen note.

TREE NEWS reports: US stocks closed lower on October 17, with the Dow down 0.48%, the Nasdaq down 2.39% and the S&P 500 down 1.14%. Crypto-linked names led the declines: Riot Platforms (RIOT) fell 11.22%, MARA dropped 9.61%, Strategy (MSTR) slid 9.45%, BitMine (BMNR) lost 7.26%, SanDisk (SNDK) fell 6.59% and SKHY declined 6.48%.

TREE NEWS update: A hacking group called Calif demonstrated an untethered jailbreak on an iPhone 18 Pro running iOS 27.0.1 at the Hexacon conference in Paris. The jailbreak survived a device reboot, a step beyond the tethered exploits typical of recent iOS releases. No exploit tool or bug details have been made public yet.

TREE NEWS update: Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the USDC issuer plans to enter roughly 40 emerging and developing markets, citing rising demand in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Allaire gave the figure in comments to Reuters. The stablecoin issuer is targeting markets where dollar-denominated digital assets are seeing growing use.

TREE NEWS reports: MARA Holdings shares dropped 10.12% in intraday trading on October 17, changing hands at $7.48. The decline hit the bitcoin miner’s stock during the session.

TREE NEWS update: SEI perpetual futures are now trading on CFTC-regulated OG.com. The dollar-settled contracts carry no expiry, a 100-SEI minimum order size and funding that is recalculated every eight hours. The listing extends US-regulated derivatives access to the SEI token.

TREE NEWS update: MSCI will classify “non-operating companies” as ineligible for its indexes starting Nov. 30, a rule aimed at firms whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset. The finalized criteria put bitcoin treasury giant Strategy at risk of index removal.

TREE NEWS reports: Ledger device tampering has now been reported at two additional resellers, after German stock inspections found no signs of interference. The company said it has not verified a drain linked to a device purchased outside Southeast Asia. Ledger’s authenticity check cannot detect the added hardware.

TREE NEWS reports: Taylor Monahan, co-host of Uneasy Money, said recent Ledger loss reports she has handled involve owners who panicked and then fell for bad ads, fake apps, phishing and scam calls, not tampered devices. She said the cases she handled in recent days followed that pattern. The post was published on Unchained.

TREE NEWS update: Starknet says it is “actively considering becoming an L1,” leaving Ethereum to become what it calls the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as the target. The announcement came as a post on X. StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has explained the plan, saying the network is weighing the exit.

TREE NEWS reports: At least two industry-aligned political action committees have spent more than $52 million on advertising opposing Sherrod Brown’s return to the Senate in Ohio. The spending marks an escalation by crypto-backed PACs in the 2026 midterm cycle.

TREE NEWS reports: Stablecoin-based cross-border business payments cost 84% less than traditional transfers.xyz data. The figures show stablecoin transfers also settle faster than traditional international bank wires. The savings apply to cross-border business payments specifically.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase will power stablecoin-backed card programs for Marqeta’s customers under an expanded partnership between the two companies. The deal builds on Marqeta’s prior work powering Coinbase’s U.S. debit card offering in 2020. No financial terms or launch date were disclosed.

TREE NEWS reports: Ether fell below $2,400 on October 17, trading at $2,399.64 per token, down 1.29% over 24 hours. The move puts ETH under the $2,400 level intraday.

TREE NEWS update: Circle said 59 cents of every dollar of first-half 2026 revenue went to USDC distribution partners and transaction costs, with 34 cents spent on licenses, banking and other infrastructure, leaving 7 cents of net profit per revenue dollar. The stablecoin issuer disclosed the breakdown in a post responding to unnamed new stablecoin issuers.

TREE NEWS update: A federal judge refused to let the CFTC reopen the $5 million settlement it reached with Gemini, rejecting the agency’s argument that a shift in enforcement priorities and misconduct allegations inside its enforcement division justified unwinding the deal. Gemini signed the agreement weeks before trial. The ruling leaves the settlement in place.

TREE NEWS reports: NEAR Intents published a postmortem attributing a $3.8 million exploit to a deposit bug, and said all affected users have been made whole. The protocol also removed deposit notifications after a separate critical bug report.

TREE NEWS reports: Former Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpelès said at least two people reported tampered Ledger devices as early as December 2025, while security researcher Joe Grand said he told Ledger on March 4, 2026 that a Nano X contained a malicious hardware implant. Ledger confirmed Grand’s finding and said it is investigating internally. Both questioned why Ledger did not promptly warn customers; Ledger declined further comment on Grand’s report and pointed media to its public statement on X.

TREE NEWS reports: Bitcoin bounced, with technical indicators suggesting the bullish trend remains intact. Prediction market traders, however, are sending mixed signals on where the price goes next. The divergence leaves the near-term direction of the largest cryptocurrency unresolved.