Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Aztec has relaunched its private payments wallet zk.money, capping every transfer below $2,500 and hiding balances and recipients for stablecoin payments. The wallet went live before a fix for a critical proving-system flaw Aztec disclosed in August.

TREE NEWS update: More than 99% of BAL cast backed a plan to shut down Balancer, ending bug bounty coverage on Oct. 30 and opening treasury claims in May 2027. Payouts to holders are estimated at about 16 cents per BAL. The vote winds down the DeFi protocol and puts its remaining treasury on a fixed claims timeline.

TREE NEWS update: CME Group has introduced micro SUI futures contracts sized at one-tenth of its standard SUI futures. The smaller contract is aimed at traders whose positions may be oversized relative to their conviction, since a correct market call can still produce losses when the position is too large.

TREE NEWS update: Aztec Labs has relaunched zk.money, its self-custodial wallet on the Aztec Network, allowing users to make private stablecoin payments using readable tags. The wallet’s return marks another privacy boost for Ethereum, where Aztec’s zero-knowledge infrastructure lets transactions be shielded from public view. The relaunch was announced by Aztec Labs.

TREE NEWS update: BTCNow has rolled out an installment plan that lets users lock in bitcoin at the price on the day of purchase and pay it off over 60 fixed monthly installments across five years. Unlike dollar-cost averaging, the bitcoin price does not change with each payment; the coins are held in trust by BitGo until fully paid. There are no margin calls or forced liquidations if bitcoin falls, and BTCNow plans a nationwide US rollout in the coming months.

TREE NEWS update: Balancer token holders have voted to approve a liquidation plan for the DeFi protocol and rejected a proposal to launch an official fork chain. Under the plan, pausable pools will switch to withdrawal-only mode from October 30. BAL holders will have to wait until late May 2027, when they can redeem their tokens for protocol treasury assets.

TREE NEWS update: BAL holders have approved a wind-down of Balancer, and the protocol has set shutdown dates. Roughly $52.4 million remains in its V2 and V3 pools, with withdrawals to stay open. Treasury redemptions are scheduled to begin in May 2027.

TREE NEWS reports: A Hyperliquid whale closed several profitable long positions an hour ago, booking $1.604 million in gains. The AAVE long earned $941,000, the ZEC long $400,000, the JUP long $216,000 and the ENA long $47,000. The trader’s cumulative profit now stands at $12.65 million.

TREE NEWS update: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office denied government support for Sivar, a new dollar-stablecoin payments and remittance app, calling the reports “fake news.” Coinbase said Sivar is launched by Modveon and settles transfers on Base for a flat $2 fee, with cash-out at over 1,000 locations in El Salvador. Coinbase said more than 25,000 Salvadorans signed up before launch.

TREE NEWS reports: DeFi researcher Ignas said on X that tokenomics innovation, which he had feared had stalled, is in fact returning as the crypto industry tries to give tokens real value. The analysis, posted on September 30, argues that new designs are being tested rather than abandoned. Ignas did not name specific projects or tokens in the post.

TREE NEWS update: Morgan Stanley has opened a digital asset lab to test DeFi vaults outside its core systems. The executive said DeFi vaults are a focus of the new lab and called the technology too nascent to put on the bank’s platform untested. The lab operates separately from Morgan Stanley’s production infrastructure.

TREE NEWS reports: Jeffrey Huang, known as “Machi Big Brother,” has fully closed his PUMP long position for a profit of about $827,000. 30. His remaining positions are a 25x long on 35,182 ETH with $278,000 unrealized gain, a 40x long on 450 BTC down $347,000, and a 10x long on 225,000 HYPE down $1.255 million.

TREE NEWS update: Robinhood Crypto said token swaps of more than $0.50 made through Robinhood Wallet on Robinhood Chain will carry no gas fees, with the promotion running until Dec. 31, 2026. Specific eligibility conditions are set out in the official rules. The waiver applies to swaps executed on the company’s own chain via its self-custody wallet.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase has added HYPE and ZEC as collateral for loans of up to $100,000, with the Morpho-powered borrowing product running on Base. The offering is available to eligible US users outside New York.

TREE NEWS update: Sentora has proposed launching Aave V4 markets on Ethereum that would lend RLUSD, PYUSD and OUSD, offering the Aave DAO a 50% revenue share. Under the plan, Sentora would control risk outside the mandate of Aave’s risk service providers.

TREE NEWS update: NEAR Intents said it froze $503,000 in funds tied to the Bitget hack, with roughly $166,000 having already passed through its swap system. Bitget said NEAR Intents waived its share of the recovery bounty. The freeze marks a recovery step in the exchange breach.

TREE NEWS update: Cosmos Hub stopped producing blocks for about 25 hours after validators controlling more than one-third of total voting power halted their nodes to stop roughly 1.7 million ATOM linked to a Neutron governance exploit from being swapped cross-chain. The chain froze at block height 33,086,740 on Sept. 22, then restarted Sept. 23 at 12:00 UTC after over 67% of voting power installed Gaia v28.3.0, which moved 1,227,121 ATOM from the attacker’s address into a 4-of-6 community multisig.

TREE NEWS reports: Ondo Perps CEO David Wells said the US perpetual futures market presents a huge opportunity and that exploring it makes sense for Ondo, though he did not confirm whether the company will launch a perpetuals product in the United States. A US-facing perpetuals product could differ from what Ondo offers outside the country, he said.

TREE NEWS update: Ethlabs said Chainlink’s cross-chain protocol CCIP 2.0 can shorten Ethereum transaction confirmation times to 12 to 24 seconds using Ethereum’s fast confirmation rule. The speed-up is an optional setting that must be actively enabled and carries different security guarantees than the default path. Ethereum’s full finality guarantees and CCIP’s default wait times remain unchanged.