Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered have backed crypto exchange OKX in a funding round that values the company at $25 billion, the same valuation it held seven months earlier. A London quantitative hedge fund also joined the round. The NYSE’s owner had invested at the identical $25 billion price seven months ago.

TREE NEWS update: Rep. Don Davis introduced a bill that would impose fines of at least $10,000 on candidates who trade on their own races, with the measure also covering spouses, children and campaign committees. The bill comes five weeks after Kalshi fined and suspended Davis’ Republican opponent for betting on her own race.

TREE NEWS update: The CFTC has revealed a plan to regulate crypto exchanges. The plan is framed as providing clear rules of the road for the industry, though the material does not specify the rules’ contents or timing. The briefing poses what the plan means and its overall impact but offers no further details.

TREE NEWS reports: A whale unstaked 3,659 ETH ($9.93 million) that had been staked for a year and, ten minutes later, transferred 5,513 ETH ($14.97 million) to the Kraken exchange. The combined transfer suggests the address may be preparing to sell or reposition its holdings on the exchange.

TREE NEWS update: Rep. Don Davis introduced legislation barring federal candidates and their families from trading prediction market contracts tied to their own elections. The bill targets contracts that let candidates bet on the outcome of races they are running in. It applies to federal candidates and their family members.

TREE NEWS update: Hong Kong’s government has reiterated that it will submit an amendment to its crypto asset licensing bill before the end of 2026. The commitment was restated in a roundup of market developments that also included Multicoin Capital naming HYPE as its largest holding, Pump.fun holding $2.8 billion on-chain of which $2.19 billion is PUMP tokens, and Fortitude securing priority allocation of Bitmain’s next-generation Zcash miners in a purchase that could reach $100 million.

TREE NEWS update: BIT has appointed Jack Derong as its new group chief marketing officer. Derong previously served as CMO of OSL Group and head of global marketing at Futu, and will lead BIT’s global marketing strategy and market expansion to strengthen brand influence and market position.

TREE NEWS update: Vitalik Buterin highlighted Nethermind’s ongoing work to improve Ethereum’s efficiency and execution speed. Nethermind core developer Ben Adams said the client’s Beacon Chain plugin has completed syncing and is ready for the Glamsterdam fork on Sepolia, running Ethereum’s execution and consensus layers as a single application without notable extra memory overhead. The Ethereum Foundation confirmed Glamsterdam activates on Sepolia on October 6, with Nethermind 2.1.0 already supporting the upgrade.

TREE NEWS update: Gate CMO Kyle Chiu joined the closing roundtable at CoinFerenceX on Oct. 6, discussing the theme “The Next Cycle: Bold Predictions for 2027.” Chiu said that by 2027 the “crypto exchange” category will no longer exist, with only exchanges remaining, as the industry’s boundaries blur. He cited Gate’s work in digital asset trading, multi-asset services, payments and global expansion.

TREE NEWS update: Adam Iza, a 26-year-old crypto figure, was sentenced to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay $23,402,800 in restitution for defrauding Meta of more than $37 million and concealing the proceeds through crypto custodians. The sentence runs concurrently with a prior 15-year term for attempted bitcoin robbery, so his time served will not increase. Five former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies were convicted in connection with the scheme.

TREE NEWS update: Adam Iza, described as a crypto ‘godfather,’ was sentenced to six years in prison for a $37 million fraud involving Meta. Iza hired off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to obtain warrants and personal data on his rivals, then moved the proceeds through crypto custodians.

TREE NEWS update: Hong Kong’s government has reaffirmed it will submit an amendment to its crypto asset licensing bill before the end of 2026, creating a licensing regime covering digital asset trading, custody, advisory and management services. Financial Services and the Treasury Secretary Christopher Hui said the amendment responds to developments in fintech. The HKMA has begun processing stablecoin issuer licence applications and in April granted its first such licences to Anchorpoint Financial and Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

TREE NEWS update: Hong Kong officials are sticking to an end-2026 deadline for a crypto licensing bill, with regulators planning a regime covering four categories: digital asset trading, custody, advisory and management services. The framework would extend licensing requirements beyond exchanges to firms providing custody and advisory services.

TREE NEWS update: Circle has added Aave as a lending option for bitcoin-backed borrowing in its Mint platform, extending the existing Morpho-based service. Borrowers using the new option remain exposed to liquidation under third-party protocol rules.

TREE NEWS update: Polymarket is rebuilding its core smart contracts under a new Protocol V2, replacing a stack of add-on contracts built on 2019 Gnosis code with a single modular system, its head of protocol said. A handful of live markets are already running on V2 through October, with the switchover targeted for Nov. 2.

TREE NEWS update: Ethereum client Prysm released version 7.2.1, setting its validators to Sepolia’s new 200 million gas limit by default, hours before the Glamsterdam test. The previous version left the limit at 60 million unless operators changed it manually. The change aligns Prysm validators with Sepolia’s updated gas limit ahead of the test.

TREE NEWS update: The CFTC has opened public comment on its first crypto rules covering margined and leveraged retail trading. Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM would give exchanges a new, optional federal registration path, while plain spot crypto markets would remain largely under state oversight.

TREE NEWS reports: Binance’s bitcoin reserves have fallen by nearly 40,000 coins since Sept. 20, marking the exchange’s largest BTC outflow since mid-2023, while whales have deposited stablecoins back into their exchange wallets. The shift points to large holders moving bitcoin off the exchange and parking stablecoin capital there instead.