Flash News

TREE NEWS update: S&P Global has agreed to acquire smart contract security firm OpenZeppelin, extending the ratings and analytics group from financial risk assessments into onchain technology risk. OpenZeppelin will keep its name and its audit team after the deal. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

TREE NEWS reports: The Federal Reserve has delivered its first interest rate increase since 2023, a move that barely dented cryptocurrency prices. Bitcoin bounced as markets turned their attention to the central bank’s next policy step. What the Fed does next could change calculations on Wall Street.

TREE NEWS reports: The CLARITY Act is not dead after failing a key Senate vote, but its path forward is narrowing with time running short and Democrats still demanding changes. The crypto market structure bill now faces a shrinking window to secure the support needed to advance.

TREE NEWS update: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken a developer-friendly no-action stance on software developers who build crypto trading tools, giving them regulatory breathing room. The move follows a similar step by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as US regulators continue to shift their approach to crypto.

TREE NEWS reports: Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said bitcoin ETFs hold an edge over gold ETFs because the bitcoin investor base is younger. As the market matures and volatility and correlation with other assets stabilize, bitcoin will attract more large-scale capital, he said. Dozens of wholesalers familiar with both crypto and traditional investors are now promoting and educating the market, a sales force gold ETFs lack.

TREE NEWS reports: The meme coin ‘Lobster’ on BNB Smart Chain rose past a $246 million market cap, setting a new all-time high. It was last quoted at a $238 million market cap. Meme coin prices are highly volatile and investors should exercise caution.

TREE NEWS reports: Crypto analyst Ali said ETH is trading at the lower boundary of a pre-formed price channel on the 4-hour chart, a short-term support zone, after several days of heightened volatility. The market is now watching whether ETH can rebound to the channel’s midline and push toward the upper boundary near $2,570, with a high-volume close above that level potentially opening the way to $2,700 and even $3,000.

TREE NEWS reports: Trader Bonk Guy said in a post on his personal channel that Arc has been one of the best-executed chain launches, plugging into platforms including FOMO and DEX Screener from day one, with launchpads Argus, Tolly, Lift and Long. He cautioned that Arc is not the next Robinhood, BNB or Solana and that users treating it as a comparable chain could take losses.

TREE NEWS reports: Bitcoin posted modest daily gains and traded near $76,500 as US stocks rebounded following the Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate hike since July 2023. The move marks the Fed’s return to tightening after a pause, with crypto tracking the broader risk-asset recovery.

TREE NEWS reports: Robinhood Chain’s cumulative transaction count has passed 750 million, Robinhood Crypto said on September 18. The company said more developers are launching projects on the chain and its user base continues to grow, though the network remains at an early stage.

TREE NEWS reports: Zcash (ZEC) swung more than 20.84% on September 18, triggering $66.74 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours. Short positions accounted for $58.90 million of the total, while long liquidations reached $7.83 million. The single largest liquidation order was worth $6,990,340.

TREE NEWS update: Zcash-focused miner Fortitude has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its chief executive. The company said Leverton will lead Fortitude as it expands its mining operations and moves toward a planned public listing. No timeline or listing venue was disclosed.

TREE NEWS reports: Avalanche Treasury CEO Smith said there is not enough blockspace to absorb demand from AI agents, warning that Layer 1 blockchain capacity could be overwhelmed. Smith also expects traditional financial markets to shift to 24/5 trading by mid-2027, which would require new blockchain infrastructure to support round-the-clock settlement.

TREE NEWS reports: OneKey founder Yishi Wang said his security team Anzen Labs built a complete USB supply-chain attack chain using AI with one engineer over two weeks, work that previously took two to three senior researchers about two months. In an interview, Wang also detailed the $1.5 billion Bybit hack, tracing it to malware planted in Safe’s official frontend after a Lazarus social-engineering breach of one engineer’s computer, combined with blind signing on a Ledger device.

TREE NEWS update: A Turkish court has jailed the chairman of Destek and barred the chairman of Tera from leaving the country. The detentions mark an escalation in Turkish authorities’ scrutiny of the two firms’ leadership. No charges or further details were immediately disclosed.