Flash News

TREE NEWS reports: Cloudflare’s Will Papper said Ethereum’s original sharding design, abandoned because it was “way too difficult for DeFi,” could still work for stablecoin payments since “a dollar is a dollar.” Speaking on Unchained Premium, Papper said the company is looking for a blockchain capable of carrying internet-scale traffic.

TREE NEWS update: The Cosmos Hub produced no blocks for 24 hours and 48 minutes before restarting, and 1.23 million ATOM has since been moved from the Neutron attacker’s wallet. The attacker bought voting power for 20,199 USDC and staked it 12 minutes before an expedited Neutron proposal closed.

TREE NEWS reports: Roughly $15.6 billion in Bitcoin options are due to expire on Friday, with Deribit’s strike-by-strike data showing an options book heavily stacked with calls. One price level is drawing hedging pressure from both sides of the market at once.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase has launched fixed-rate loans letting users borrow USDC against bitcoin, with the interest rate and repayment date locked at origination. The product, built on decentralized lending protocol Morpho, is the first enterprise deployment of Morpho Midnight, with Coinbase handling the app experience, Morpho the credit infrastructure and Base the settlement. Coinbase’s existing Morpho variable-rate loans have surpassed $1.4 billion in active borrowings against roughly $3 billion in collateral.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase now lets users borrow USDC against Bitcoin at a fixed rate and repayment date, the exchange said, in what it called the first enterprise-scale deployment of Morpho Midnight. The product marks a shift away from the variable-rate norm of on-chain lending.

TREE NEWS reports: Hyperliquid bought back and burned 34,280 HYPE tokens over the past 24 hours at a volume-weighted average price of $95.25, worth about $3.26 million. Cumulative burns have now permanently removed 48.89 million HYPE, equal to 4.89% of maximum supply. The exchange generated $60.58 million in revenue over the past 30 days.

TREE NEWS update: Bitwise has launched the first exchange-traded product tied to Lighter, giving European investors brokerage access to the LIT token. The product expands Bitwise’s lineup of ETPs linked to decentralized derivatives platforms, and lands amid rivalry between Lighter and Hyperliquid.

TREE NEWS reports: Crypto exchanges liquidated $507 million in futures contracts over the past 24 hours, with long positions accounting for $361 million and shorts $146 million, CoinGlass data shows. Bitcoin liquidations totaled $145 million and Ethereum $104 million. The largest single liquidation was a $10.041 million ETHUSDT order on Binance.

TREE NEWS update: U has launched a DeFi Hold to Earn leaderboard campaign with Binance Wallet, offering a total prize pool of 150,000 $U. Participants must register on the campaign page, swap at least 100 $U on BNB Chain (BSC) via Binance Wallet, keep holding at least 100 $U, and activate the assets in the DeFi yield module to join the pool.

TREE NEWS reports: Crypto exchanges liquidated $225 million across the market in the past hour, with $219 million of that from long positions and $6.62 million from shorts, Coinglass data shows. Ether accounted for $59.87 million of the liquidations and Bitcoin $57.49 million, reflecting a sharp downside move that wiped out leveraged longs.

TREE NEWS reports: Cross-border stablecoin transfers rose 78% even as the broader crypto market contracted 37%, with Chainalysis attributing the growth to trade, remittances and savings use. The data provider’s findings show stablecoin payment rails expanding while overall crypto activity declines.

TREE NEWS update: Galaxy has added $100 million in Sky’s sUSDS savings token to its treasury and approved the token as collateral for institutional loans. Galaxy also bought SKY tokens, deepening lending ties between the two firms. The move expands institutional use of Sky’s savings product as collateral in crypto lending markets.

TREE NEWS update: Bitcoin lending protocol Zest Protocol published on-chain proof of its mainnet deployment, disclosing three Bitcoin transactions and seven Ethereum transactions for an independently verifiable demo of its Bitcoin-collateralized vault. The product locks Bitcoin in a Bitcoin mainnet vault without wrapping or bridging and supports borrowing stablecoins on EVM chains such as Ethereum. The feature remains a mainnet prototype, not yet fully open for deposits and borrows, with a roadmap moving from pre-signed transactions to BitVM verification.

TREE NEWS reports: The largest LIT short on Hyperliquid is holding a 3x leveraged position of 2.528 million LIT tokens with an unrealized loss of $10.118 million, as LIT broke above $5.3 to a new high. The same whale also holds short positions in AVAX, ETH, SOL and HYPE, with total position value of about $14.634 million and a return on investment of roughly negative 139.6%.

TREE NEWS reports: A Bankless essay by David Feld argues bitcoin could underperform the broader market in the next cycle, citing unresolved quantum risk, potential selling pressure from Strategy’s shift to active capital management, and a saturated buyer base after ETF and strategic-reserve catalysts. It points to tokens with real revenue and buyback mechanisms — Hyperliquid’s roughly 97% fee-funded HYPE repurchases exceeding $1 billion, plus Uniswap, Lighter, Aave, shturl.c and Ethena — as the cycle’s likely leaders.

TREE NEWS reports: HyperLiquid has launched a contract tied to Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), drawing domestic market attention. Analysts describe a structural split in crypto trading, with centralized exchanges under regulatory pressure while decentralized offshore platforms expand through mechanism innovation, broader use cases and traffic growth.

TREE NEWS update: CME plans to launch standard and Micro futures on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) on October 19, pending regulatory review. The BCH standard contract covers 250 BCH and the Micro 25 BCH; the UNI standard contract covers 10,000 UNI and the Micro 1,000 UNI. The products are intended for price discovery and risk management. BCH and UNI drew market attention after Bitcoin broke above $87,000 on September 21.

TREE NEWS update: Jupiter has launched perpetual futures markets for HYPE, ZEC, SpaceX (SPCX), SK Hynix (SKHYNIX), SanDisk (SNDK) and JUP, the Solana-based DEX aggregator said on X. Users staking at least 69 JUP get priority trading access. The markets are currently in Beta, with more to be added later.