Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Utah has sued Kalshi and Susquehanna-affiliated market makers, seeking injunctions, restitution and profits, alleging they helped sustain wagering despite Kalshi’s federal court defeat. The state’s action targets the prediction market and the firms it says kept the betting going after the court ruling.

TREE NEWS reports: Zcash rose 8.5% in 24 hours to $1,215.85, leading a broader crypto market rebound. Bitcoin gained 1.6% and reclaimed $83,000 as ETF money flowed back into the market.

TREE NEWS update: Revolut’s services began coming back online after an outage. The disruption affected the digital bank’s services, and the site indicated recovery was underway. No cause or duration was given.

TREE NEWS reports: Stablecoin transfer volume has quadrupled to $891 billion, with US banks and businesses expanding their adoption, Coinbase said in a report. The growth in transfers comes even as stablecoin market capitalization remains largely unchanged over the past year.

TREE NEWS update: Project Eleven has partnered with crypto insurer Relm Insurance to explore quantum risk in underwriting, making Relm a development partner for Project Eleven’s Strongpoint custody product. Neither company announced any change to how policies are priced under the exploratory deal.

TREE NEWS update: NEAR Protocol launched NEAR Business, a confidential multisig treasury management platform for crypto-native teams and institutions, supporting payroll, vendor payments, cross-chain swaps and fund allocation across more than 35 blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, with over 200 assets. Cross-chain transfers run through NEAR Intents, and the platform operates on NEAR’s private sharding infrastructure so transaction details stay confidential but auditable. It is free to use, charges a 0.35% swap fee and is currently invite-only.

TREE NEWS update: Mastercard has opened early access to its machine-to-machine payment system Agent Pay for Machines, giving developers initial buyer and seller APIs, a developer toolkit and a sandbox environment while the product remains in pilot and not yet commercially available. Mastercard previously completed end-to-end pilots with Cloudflare, Ant International, BVNK, AIsa, Base and Coinbase, including a demo at Cloudflare Connect in which an AI agent paid a service provider via Coinbase’s x402 protocol with Base as the on-chain settlement network. The system, first announced in June, supports card, bank account and stablecoin payments.

TREE NEWS reports: Ethereum staking reached a record 43.8 million ETH in the third quarter, nearly 36% of the total supply, even as staking yields fell to 2.63%. Solana staking also set a record at 440.5 million SOL, Bitwise said.

TREE NEWS reports: Ethereum staking reached a record 43.8 million ETH by the end of the third quarter, equal to 35.90% of total supply. Net inflows into staking totaled 1.99 million ETH in the quarter, the sixth consecutive quarter of net inflows. Gross staking yield fell to 2.63% from 2.81% the prior quarter, while active validators dropped to 881,000 from about 1.1 million, which Bitwise attributed to node operators consolidating validators after the Pectra upgrade.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase will list Axis Labs (AXIS), allowing users in supported regions to generate AXIS deposit addresses on its website, app and Coinbase Exchange, though deposits cannot be made until the token issuer unlocks transfers. The exchange added AXIS, a Base network token, to its listing roadmap on October 20.

TREE NEWS update: Former NBC News political director Chuck Todd is hosting NEXTPredict two weeks before the midterm elections. Todd has not yet publicly picked a side in the races. The event is positioned as an early test of whether prediction markets can outperform traditional pollsters.

TREE NEWS update: Optimum, an MIT-incubated network, said its block propagation layer mump2p is now live on Ethereum mainnet, with 16 node operators and about 1.4 million ETH in stake running it. Ether.fi has made mump2p standard across its validator set, the network said.

TREE NEWS update: OKX debuted OKX Shield in the U.S. on Tuesday, a new protection plan the exchange says is designed to bolster user trust. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the launch is a sign of trust. The company did not disclose further details on the plan’s coverage or terms in the announcement.

TREE NEWS reports: Bitcoin rose to $83,300 on Wednesday as strong US corporate earnings lifted stock markets, before reversing at a 21-day trend line. The move tracked gains in equities while oil prices fell.

TREE NEWS update: Mastercard has opened early access to AI agent payments and demonstrated the capability live at Cloudflare Connect. In the demo, an AI agent ran a sample ad campaign across nine payments to two merchants on a single approved budget. The move shows Mastercard testing agent-initiated transactions within its payments network.

TREE NEWS update: Mastercard has opened early access to its Agent Pay for Machines product, following pilot programs with Coinbase, Base, Cloudflare and other partners. The service is designed to let AI agents carry out payments on behalf of users. The early-access launch follows the completion of those partner pilots.

TREE NEWS update: Blockworks has asked the SEC to require token projects to disclose market-maker deals and promoter payments as part of its Regulation Crypto Assets rulemaking. In a comment letter, the firm said it wants line items from its own disclosure framework written into the rules, along with a new kind of SEC-recognized filing agent. The proposal targets payments that token issuers make to market makers and promoters.

TREE NEWS reports: Bitcoin faces resistance at the $87,000-$87,800 range and has traded below it after being rejected, Glassnode said. The on-chain analytics firm, which flagged the zone in a Charting Crypto report with Colin Basco and Coinbase Institutional, said a break above it would likely trigger violent price swings. A large cluster of sell pressure remains near $90,000, Glassnode added.