Cointime

Second loses 0.75 bitcoin in hack; user funds unaffected
Second, a project implementing the Ark Protocol, disclosed that its server was exploited on Monday, resulting in the loss of 0.75 bitcoin in its own funds, worth about $62,300. The team said user funds were unaffected and the issue was fixed within hours. The attacker then continued trying to withdraw more funds from the project and launched a denial-of-service attack. On Tuesday, Second said the attack may have reduced the ability of Bark-based wallets to receive Lightning Network transfers. Second said the vulnerability was in the boarding process on the Ark server, allowing the attacker to register and exit the relevant boards using only their own signature, while also spending the same batch of VTXOs in the node via the Lightning Network. The attacker also tried to use bitcoin associated with a September 19 security vulnerability in Blink Wallet, but the attempt failed.

Justin Sun: The integration of crypto and AI agents will be a key use case over the next five years
Justin Sun, founder of TRON, appeared at the main venue of TOKEN2049 Singapore and spoke with Kevin Follonier, founder of the podcast When Shift Happens, about his experience in the crypto industry, the convergence of AI and blockchain, and the “Justin Sun Prize.” He said that the integration of cryptocurrency and AI agents will be one of the most important application scenarios over the next five years. As software technology that can be continuously improved, crypto is superior to the traditional banking system, which has long stagnated, and the next generation of users will be more inclined to use crypto services. TRON is building a financial network for the AI economy. Its protocols hold approximately $100 billion in assets and process $20 billion to $30 billion in transactions per day. It is also advancing the tokenization of U.S. stocks and the AI routing platform B.AI. Justin Sun recently launched the “Justin Sun Prize” to reward contributors in mathematics and AI more frequently, with a top prize of $1 million for a single problem. He said he would channel crypto’s achievements back into science, which would in turn benefit the ecosystem.

DHH’s claim that the Rust version is nearly 150 times faster faces skepticism: If AI writes the code, does readability still matter?
DHH, creator of the famous Rails web development framework, asked AI to port his company 37signals’ chat software Campfire to Rust, Go, and Elixir. In initial tests, the Rust version handled about 36,000 chat room page requests per second, compared with just 240 for the original Ruby version. DHH has long favored Ruby, valuing its development speed and readable code. Now he is reconsidering: if AI writes the code and humans no longer read it line by line, is it still worth sacrificing runtime speed for ease of development? Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch strongly agrees. Vercel once spent 15 months porting about 70,000 lines of Go code in its build tool Turborepo to Rust. Although the team felt Rust was better suited to low-level system operations, the cost of doing the migration by hand was so high that the return on investment sparked internal debate. Rauch argues that AI has lowered the cost of writing code, so languages that once made development easier for humans may no longer be the most cost-effective choice for businesses. But DHH’s benchmark results soon came under fire. After examining the code repository, Elixir creator José Valim found that the Rust version had received hundreds of commits and multiple rounds of performance tuning, while the Elixir version had remained largely at its initial port. The two versions also use different architectures: Elixir consolidates database operations in a single process, while Rust uses optimizations such as concurrent reads and caching. This makes it difficult to establish how much of the performance gap is actually due to the languages themselves. DHH responded that he had asked top AI agents to get as much performance as possible from each language. If an agent can’t find ways to optimize Elixir, he said, that too is a problem developers would face in practice. The community then continued optimizing the different versions. Updated results from a unified test on October 8 showed that the Rust version handled about 106,000 chat room page requests per second, while the Go version handled about 53,000—leaving Rust still roughly twice as fast.

SemiAnalysis: ByteDance accounts for nearly one-fifth of China’s data center capacity
Semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis published a survey of China’s data centers, tracking more than 1,000 facilities operated by over 60 companies. The report estimates that China’s data center capacity will exceed 24 GW by the end of 2026, second only to the United States, at 56 GW. ByteDance accounts for nearly one-fifth of that capacity, making it the country’s largest data center tenant. The company has leased more than 4 GW of data center capacity from providers including ChinData, ZDATA and GDS. According to the report, as of early 2026, ByteDance still accounted for about 90% of ChinData’s revenue. ByteDance has also begun accelerating its own construction of large data centers in Shanxi, Anhui and Inner Mongolia to reduce its reliance on external providers. The report also says that although China’s data centers have long been considered to have high vacancy rates, AI data center capacity is still in short supply. Many older facilities lack sufficient power and cooling capacity to accommodate high-power AI servers, while newly built large AI data centers are being leased up quickly. For a 100 MW data center, excluding IT equipment such as servers, construction costs are about $300 million in China, compared with about $1.5 billion in the United States; facilities of similar size in China are typically delivered in around 12 months. Unlike the power supply and permitting challenges facing the United States, the more significant bottleneck to expanding AI data centers in China is the supply of advanced chips.

U.S. storage stocks mostly fell in premarket trading, with Micron down 1.62%
On October 8, market data from BIT (Bit.com) showed that most U.S. storage stocks were lower in premarket trading: STX fell 1.43% to $796.01; WDC fell 1.21% to $400.50; SNDK fell 1.19% to $1,672.36; and MU fell 1.62% to $1,070.39.

Crude oil prices jump nearly 4% intraday as inflation pressures heat up again
On October 8, according to Bitget market data, Brent crude futures rose 4.1% intraday to $104.33, while WTI crude rose 3.9% to $91.7. Rising oil prices signal higher inflation. To bring inflation back to its “2%” target, the Federal Reserve made its first rate hike since 2023 last month. Several Fed presidents have publicly said that further rate hikes would be reasonable. Earlier reports said the Pentagon had asked U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to complete preparations for resuming major combat operations against Iran. However, Trump has yet to make a final decision or set a specific date for any strikes. Officials said that if operations resume, they could take place before the U.S. midterm elections on (November 3), or even before the Israeli elections on (October 27).

Waller: More rate hikes are still needed; remain flexible
Federal Reserve Governor Waller said that more rate hikes are still needed, but that the pace of hikes should remain flexible.

79AU’s operational hot wallet suspected of private key leak, with losses of approximately $12.5 million
According to monitoring by Defimon Alerts, 79thVault may have lost approximately $12.5 million on BNB Chain due to a private key leak. The team’s operational hot wallet typically makes only small transfers to the reward pool, but recently this address transferred 2.01 million 79AU from the trading pair to an external address in 7 transactions, in amounts of 10,000, 100,000, 100,000, 300,000, 500,000, 500,000, and 500,000 tokens. The attacker sold the tokens back into the same trading pair through approximately 95 swaps, reducing the pool’s USDT reserves from $15.2 million to $3.9 million, and cashed out 16,249 BNB, worth approximately $12.5 million. In addition, the operational key transferred 3.79 BNB to the same external address, while another 500,000 79AU was sent to a different address.

Solana core developer says there is no need to urgently move assets; a prototype for post-quantum migration is already in development
Jacob Creech, a developer at Anza, Solana’s core development team, said that unlike users of some blockchains, Solana users do not need to urgently move their assets in response to AI-accelerated codebreaking or the threat of quantum computing. He explained that Solana uses the Ed25519 signature algorithm, with signing keys derived from a secret seed through hashing. Even if elliptic-curve cryptography were broken in the future, attackers would not be able to use that to directly recover the original seed. Creech said that, in theory, Solana could introduce a hash-based proof of seed ownership in a single network upgrade, allowing the original owner to verify their identity and migrate to a more secure signature scheme. Anza has developed a related proof-of-concept prototype. He also stressed that Solana remains secure for now and already has a technical roadmap for addressing future cryptographic threats.

Data: A certain smart money wallet appears to have reduced its HYPE position by $11.77 million in 10 days; selling would yield a $11.26 million profit
According to monitoring by ai_9684xtpa, since September 28, the wallet has deposited a total of 131,421 HYPE to Kraken at a price of $89.56. Selling now would yield a profit of $11.26 million, with a cost basis as low as $3.87.

Justin Sun: AI agents using cryptocurrency are expected to become mainstream, while banks will gradually exit the market
On October 8, Justin Sun said at TOKEN2049 that he expects banks to gradually exit the market, as people born after 2000 will no longer waste time banking. Within five years, AI agents using cryptocurrency will become the industry's largest application.

AI chipmaker Biren Technology plans to raise another $515 million
According to Bloomberg, Shanghai-based Biren Technology (HKEX stock code: 6082) plans to raise about HK$4.04 billion (US$515 million) to support its artificial intelligence business. The company plans to place 130 million new shares at HK$31.08 each, according to filings with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The placement price represents a discount of nearly 10% to Wednesday’s closing price. Bloomberg reported that Biren is one of a group of GPU developers backed by Beijing, and that the fundraising is part of a wave of fundraising by Chinese AI companies.

Greece plans to impose a 10% tax on cryptocurrency capital gains, with annual gains of up to €500 exempt
Greece is preparing legislation to impose a 10% tax on cryptocurrency capital gains. A draft bill was published on Thursday local time and has entered a public consultation period. It is expected to be submitted to parliament for review in November. Under the draft, individuals would be exempt from tax on up to €500 in cryptocurrency capital gains per year, equivalent to about $559.95. Greece currently has no comprehensive tax framework for cryptocurrencies. Officials said it is difficult to accurately estimate the size of the country’s cryptocurrency market because the vast majority of investors use overseas platforms, and the government has not yet made a specific forecast of the revenue the new tax would generate.

Samsung reportedly to cut smartphone production by up to 30% in Q4 2026
IT Home, citing an October 8 report by Money Today, says Samsung Electronics’ Mobile eXperience (MX) division plans to cut smartphone production by up to 30% in the fourth quarter of 2026. Several people familiar with the IT industry said Samsung’s MX division had notified multiple partners, asking them to reduce product supply by 20% to 30%. IT Home noted that the original report did not specify whether the 30% reduction was quarter over quarter, year over year, or relative to previously expected production. Samsung had originally planned to produce as many as 270 million smartphones for the year, relying on new products such as the Galaxy Z Fold8. After the steep cut in the fourth quarter, full-year production is expected to fall to just over 200 million units, a greater reduction than the market had previously anticipated. According to IDC, smartphone shipments in the first and second quarters of this year were 62.4 million and 62.7 million units, respectively. Its earlier forecast put shipments at 59 million units in the third quarter and 52 million in the fourth, a roughly 12% decline from the third quarter. Money Today reported that rising memory prices are the main driver of the production cuts. TrendForce data shows that in the second quarter of this year, the 12GB low-power DRAM (LPDDR5X) used in smartphones was priced at $145 to $146, up 175% from the same period last year. The report also said that AI demand is pushing up memory prices, and smartphone DRAM prices are expected to rise by around 20% more in the third quarter, reaching as much as $180. IT industry sources said Samsung’s phone sales are currently no longer profitable, and that cutting production is a strategy to maintain overall profitability.

AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs in funding talks: valuation of at least $40 billion
Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug discovery company under Alphabet led by Demis Hassabis, is in early talks about a new funding round at a valuation of at least $40 billion, potentially reaching $50 billion. The company completed a $2.1 billion Series B round in May this year. The report also notes that AI applications in biopharmaceuticals are still at an early stage, and more work is needed before they can reach clinical trials and bring products to market. The talks are still in their early stages, and specific terms and investor details have not been disclosed.

WTI crude oil rises to the $90 mark, up 1.89% intraday
On October 8, according to Bitget market data, WTI crude oil rose to $90 per barrel, up 1.89% intraday.

b A whale holds a long position of 98,000 ETH; a drop to $2,446 could put a $252 million position at risk of liquidation
On October 8, according to monitoring by Lookonchain, a whale currently holds a long position of 98,089 ETH, worth approximately $252.3 million. If the price of ETH falls to $2,446.48, the position will reach its liquidation price; a further drop to $2,424.47 would also put the related position at risk of liquidation.

Cointelegraph denies sale rumors: CoinDesk report based on false information and contains multiple factual errors
On October 8, Cointelegraph posted a response on X to a recent CoinDesk report, saying, “We are not for sale,” and accusing the report of being based on false information and containing multiple factual errors. Cointelegraph said it welcomes scrutiny but will not remain silent about “presenting speculation as fact,” and questioned whether CoinDesk was creating controversy to attract readers, promote events, or respond to business pressures. Cointelegraph called on CoinDesk, its publisher, and its editorial leadership to correct the report, explicitly acknowledge the errors, and give the correction the same prominence as the original report, rather than quietly revising the wording while continuing to let the original report stand as credible. Cointelegraph also stressed that media credibility should be built on accuracy and accountability, not on sensational headlines designed to attract attention. Earlier today, CoinDesk reported that the prominent crypto media outlet Cointelegraph was seeking a buyer, though the asking price had not been disclosed. After Google imposed a manual penalty on Cointelegraph in October 2025, its organic search traffic fell by about 80%, and the website briefly disappeared from Google search results. Similarweb data shows that its monthly visits fell from more than 12 million in December 2024 to just over 700,000 in early September 2026. Founded in 2013, Cointelegraph has more than 200 employees and has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Cointelegraph denies sale rumors: CoinDesk report based on false information and contains multiple factual errors
On October 8, Cointelegraph posted a response on X to a recent CoinDesk report, saying, “We are not for sale,” and accusing the report of being based on false information and containing multiple factual errors. Cointelegraph said it welcomes scrutiny but would not remain silent about “presenting speculation as fact,” and questioned whether CoinDesk was creating controversy to attract readers, promote events, or respond to commercial pressure. Cointelegraph called on CoinDesk, its publisher, and its editorial leadership to correct the report, clearly acknowledge the errors, and give the corrections the same prominence as the original report, rather than quietly changing the wording while continuing to uphold the original report’s credibility. Cointelegraph also stressed that media credibility should be built on accuracy and accountability, not on sensational headlines designed to attract attention. Earlier today, CoinDesk reported that prominent crypto media outlet Cointelegraph was seeking a buyer, though the asking price had not been disclosed. After receiving a Google manual action in October 2025, Cointelegraph saw its organic search traffic fall by about 80%, and its website briefly disappeared from Google search results. Similarweb data shows that its monthly visits fell from more than 12 million in December 2024 to just over 700,000 in early September 2026. Founded in 2013, Cointelegraph has more than 200 employees and has not yet responded to a request for comment.

TSMC's third-quarter revenue grew 50%, reaching a record high
TSMC reported third-quarter revenue of NT$1.49 trillion (approximately US$46.71 billion), up 50% year over year, setting a record high and exceeding market expectations of NT$1.46 trillion. Strong demand for AI applications drove the growth.