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Japan’s largest crypto exchange bitFlyer announced that it will introduce an anti-fraud measure called “Cooldown” on October 15. Individual customers within 90 days of completing identity verification will enter a 48-hour cooldown period after each JPY deposit, during which part of their crypto assets cannot be sent to external addresses.
The restricted amount equals JPY deposits made in the previous 48 hours minus JPY 100,000 (about $634); deposits of JPY 100,000 or less are unaffected. Quick Deposit is excluded because it already carries a seven-day transfer restriction. The measure does not affect JPY deposits or withdrawals, crypto trading, holding, or receiving assets.

Tether-backed Bitcoin payments infrastructure project Utexo plans to issue USDT on the Bitcoin network this month. Co-founder Viktor Ihnatiuk said the company has obtained a commercial license and will provide APIs, SDKs and cloud infrastructure for exchanges, wallets and payment providers. Built on RGB and Bitcoin’s UTXO model, Utexo will support private USDT transfers, native BTC-USDT swaps and BTC-backed lending without wrapping Bitcoin.
USDT was first issued on Bitcoin via Omni in 2014, before Ethereum and Tron became its main networks. Utexo also plans to expand USDT support to the Lightning Network after its Bitcoin launch.

According to the Italian media outlet Milano, in February 2026, former Fideuram Chairman Paolo Molesini received a WhatsApp message impersonating Carlo Messina, CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo Group, followed by a phone call using an AI-generated voice impersonating lawyer Paolo Nastasi. Fideuram is the private banking subsidiary of Intesa Sanpaolo, one of Italy’s largest banking groups.
Molesini then instructed the finance department to transfer approximately €95 million to accounts in mainland China, Hong Kong and other locations. Fideuram later recovered around €40 million, while Portuguese authorities froze an additional €13 million. At least €36 million was subsequently converted into crypto after multiple overseas transfers, and investigators are tracing the funds through international judicial cooperation.
Molesini was not investigated and resigned as chairman on March 12, citing “personal reasons.”

SlowMist issued a security alert stating that Aave v3 Loop Safe Module was exploited through an access-control vulnerability in FlashLoopAdapter’s open() and close() functions. The attacker allegedly bypassed Safe authorization and executed arbitrary modules to steal approximately 114.09 ETH from two Safe multisig addresses, while repaying around 1,300 WETH in debt to unlock collateral.

Tom Lee: ETH Could Be Much Higher Than $10,000 in the Next 12 Months
At Korea Blockchain Week on September 30, 2026, BitMine Chairman Tom Lee told CoinDesk he was unsure whether ETH would reach the $10,000 year-end target projected by Arthur Hayes, but said it could trade well above that level within the next 12 months. Lee called Hayes’ outlook conservative. He also used a hypothetical 25-fold rise in ETH to illustrate potential returns for BitMine shareholders; he did not present it as a specific price target. WuBlockchain notes that Tom Lee’s market forecasts are often optimistic, and his bullish price targets may not materialize. Actual market movements can differ substantially from his projections. During last year’s KBW, he predicted ETH would reach $10,000–$12,000; the crypto market subsequently suffered the “October 10 flash crash.”

According to Bloomberg, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved an immediate $139 million disbursement to El Salvador after granting a waiver for the government’s breach of restrictions on further Bitcoin accumulation. The IMF’s executive board completed the second and third reviews under the country’s $1.4 billion Extended Fund Facility.
The IMF said El Salvador’s economic activity had exceeded expectations and forecast growth of 4.5% this year and 4% in 2027. It also urged the government to halt further Bitcoin accumulation, continue reducing the state’s involvement in crypto, and fully transfer its remaining exposure to the Chivo crypto wallet to the private sector.

Global payments and financial technology giant Fiserv’s digital asset platform is now live with financial institution clients. Its first live use case is Roughrider Coin, a USD-backed stablecoin launched by the Bank of North Dakota, with VersaBank as issuer, Fireblocks providing infrastructure and Solana processing transactions. More than 90 banks and credit unions are expected to access it through Fiserv’s Commercial Center.

The Ethereum Foundation and Open Anonymity Project launched zkAPI, a privacy-preserving payment layer for metered APIs that is now live on Ethereum mainnet. Users deposit ETH, USDC, or other credits into an onchain vault and authorize spending with zero-knowledge proofs, allowing providers to verify payment without learning the payer’s identity or which deposit funded the usage. zkAPI can issue short-lived, spending-capped API keys and settle based on actual usage. It is initially focused on AI inference but can extend to other pay-per-use services. The system does not provide network or content anonymity, meaning IP addresses, timing patterns, and identifying information in prompts may still be linkable.

Galaxy Research found that 69.2% of roughly 2.9 million human-paced “retail” accounts on Polymarket’s international platform finished below break-even, with aggregate losses of $338.9 million. The analysis, based on onchain settlement data curated by Stork, showed that 15.2% of accounts did not trade again within 30 days after a loss, versus 6.1% after a win. About 44.1% of traders concentrated more than 60% of their activity in a single topic. Sports specialists made up 47% of specialists but had the lowest profitability rate at 25.1%, while tech and science specialists had the highest at 41.2%, though the sample was smaller. Profitable traders had a median position size of $13.96, versus $10 for unprofitable traders, while holding time showed no clear relationship with profitability.

Drift Foundation said DFX claims and redemptions are now live for users with verified losses from the April 1 incident, with 1 DFX issued for every 1 USDT lost. Each DFX represents a claim on the Recovery Pool, which currently holds about 3.11 million USDT and is funded by a share of Velocity’s daily net protocol revenue, up to 127.5 million USDT from Tether, up to 20 million USDT from strategic partners, and any recovered funds. DFX can be redeemed for USDT at a rate equal to the Recovery Pool balance divided by outstanding supply. Redeemed DFX will be burned and redemptions are final. The claim window closes at 00:00 UTC on January 1, 2028, after which unclaimed DFX will be burned.

According to a report by Castle Labs, onchain perpetual DEXs have seen their share of global perpetual futures trading volume surge from 0.11% in January 2023 to 12.33% in September 2026. Concurrently, onchain RWA perpetuals have experienced rapid growth, covering traditional assets such as equities, commodities, and pre-IPO instruments; monthly volume peaked at approximately $147.5 billion in July 2026, accounting for 19.6% of total onchain perpetual volume that month. As of September 24, total open interest across perp DEXs stood at roughly $14.64 billion, with Hyperliquid leading at about $8.32 billion (56.8%), followed by Aster at 9.7% and Variational at 6.2%.

NEAR Intents confirmed the security incident, attributing the loss to a bug in the interaction between Omni deposit/withdrawal infrastructure and its smart contracts. The team announced that the vulnerability has been patched, core services will resume within an hour, and all lost funds will be fully compensated, while deposits and withdrawals across EVM and other supported chains (BSC, Polygon, TON, etc.) will remain suspended for approximately 12 hours as security partners and law enforcement assist in asset recovery. Onchain sleuth ZachXBT flagged an ongoing exploit against NEAR Intents after its BSC hot wallet exhibited irregular outflows totaling over $3.8 million, with stolen assets swiftly routed to KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin.

Hyperliquid Policy Committee (HPC) has submitted its official response to the European Commission's targeted consultation on the evolution of MiCA, representing its first regulatory filing outside the United States. HPC urged the Commission to build upon existing EU frameworks rather than construct a new regime, advocating that instrument classification adheres to economic substance over form so that perpetual futures are governed under MiFID II via existing ESMA guidelines without new legislation.
The committee emphasized that perpetual trade on transparent central limit order books and should not be subjected to the rigid retail restrictions designed for bilateral contracts for difference (CFDs). Additionally, HPC called on EU regulators to recognize the native verifiability of public blockchains to eliminate redundant reporting requirements for data already recorded onchain, while ensuring European investors retain unrestricted access to global liquidity pools.

Author | WuBlockchain
According to RootData, 61 crypto venture-capital deals were publicly disclosed in September 2026, down 1.6% from 62 in August 2026 and down 35.1% from 94 in September 2025. The trend over the past year is as follows:
By sector, September broke down as follows: CeFi accounted for about 19.4%, DeFi about 22.6%, Privacy about 1.6%, RWA/DePIN about 14.5%, Tool/Wallet about 3.2%, and AI about 12.9%.
Total disclosed crypto VC funding in September 2026 was about $1.269 billion, up 71.1% from $742 million in August 2026 and down 79.2% from $6.096 billion in September 2025. The trend over the past year is as follows:
Note: Projects that did not disclose an amount are counted in the number of deals but not in the funding total. Because not every round is disclosed in the month it closes, these figures may still be revised. The ten largest rounds by amount were as follows:
In early September 2026, prediction-market platform Polymarket raised a new round led by 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of Donald Trump, is a partner. The post-money valuation was $21 billion, about 40% higher than roughly $15 billion in the previous round. 1789 Capital had already invested about $200 million and has now put in about $500 million in total.
Félix, a WhatsApp remittance platform for Latin American immigrants in the United States, raised $200 million in a Series B to extend its stablecoin-settled cross-border remittances into lending and savings. Andreessen Horowitz led an $87 million equity round, with QED Investors, Castle Island Ventures, Switch Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, and Endeavor Catalyst participating. General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund separately provided a $113 million credit facility. Users initiate transfers inside WhatsApp. The transfers settle in USDC in the background, and recipients are paid in local fiat currency.
Jeeves, a stablecoin banking platform for businesses, raised $110 million in a Series C led by CoinFund, with participation from AllianceBernstein, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, CRV, GIC, ParaFi, Vista, Wintermute, and Y Combinator, among others. The funds will be used to build stablecoin wallet infrastructure. About 50% to 60% of the company’s international payments now settle in stablecoins such as USDC and EURC.
Nasdaq Ventures made a $100 million strategic investment in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, valuing the company at $21 billion. The investment continues a partnership announced in March: Kraken will distribute tokenized stocks of Nasdaq-listed companies, representing real-world assets, on its own platform. The two sides plan to launch the related market infrastructure in the second quarter of 2027.
MoonPay acquired North Capital, a U.S. private-markets infrastructure platform, in an all-stock transaction at a valuation of more than $60 million. This was not a conventional cash financing, and the deal remains subject to regulatory approval. Once closed, North Capital will become a wholly owned subsidiary, bringing in broker-dealer, alternative trading system, transfer-agent, and investment-adviser businesses registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to support real-world assets and on-chain capital markets.
Blockchain market-data provider Kaiko raised $57 million in a new round led by S&P Global, bringing its total Series B funding to $110 million. Participants included Coinbase Ventures, Nasdaq Ventures, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, DRW, Royal Bank of Canada, and Susquehanna. The funds will be used to strengthen on-chain market data, indices, and data infrastructure, and to offer digital-asset indices with S&P Global.
The World Foundation said its affiliate, World Assets, Ltd., completed $49 million of over-the-counter sales of WLD over the past month. All tokens sold are subject to a one-year lockup. Some transactions have already settled, and delivery and settlement of the remaining WLD were expected to be completed in the week of the announcement.
On September 15, 2026, USD.AI said it had secured a $40 million revolving stablecoin debt facility from crypto-native asset manager K3 Capital. The facility is collateralized by sUSDai and can be drawn, repaid, and reused to support the launch of new products. USD.AI is developed by Permian Labs. Its loans run for about three years and amortize monthly. The facility follows an earlier $100 million stablecoin debt facility from Bullish.
On September 24, 2026, stablecoin infrastructure company HIFI announced a $37 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital. Matthew Miller, a managing partner at the firm, joined the board. The funds will be used to obtain additional licenses, expand teams in New York and overseas, and extend the product set from stablecoin payments to card issuance and real-world-asset capital markets. HIFI currently serves more than 10,000 businesses and 200,000 end users across about 87 countries, and has taken part in a DTCC repo pilot.
On September 9, 2026, cross-border stablecoin payments infrastructure company Latitude announced a $35 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from NEA, Coinbase Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, and OpenFX. The round follows an $8 million seed round earlier this year and brings total funding to $43 million. Latitude connects stablecoin settlement to local bank accounts and mobile wallets, so recipients are paid in fiat and do not need a crypto wallet.
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Citigroup raised its 12-month price targets for Bitcoin and Ether, lifting Bitcoin to $113,000 from $82,000 and Ether to $3,028 from $2,240, according to Reuters. Citi cited accelerating crypto market activity, a favorable macroeconomic environment, and resuming ETF inflows—projecting approximately $5 billion in net ETF inflows over the coming 12 months.
The bank noted that while the US Senate’s failure last week to advance The Clarity Act narrowed the legislative pathway for a comprehensive market structure framework, subsequent regulatory clarifications by the SEC helped curb negative market sentiment. Additionally, Bitcoin and Ether have rebounded nearly 40% and 68% over the past three months, supported by recent US Treasury buybacks of longer-dated bonds that weakened the dollar and rekindled upward momentum across digital assets.

According to SoSoValue, US Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded a total net outflow of $149 million on September 30 (Eastern Time), with none of the 12 ETFs logging net inflows. Concurrently, US Ethereum spot ETFs posted a total net outflow of $59.58 million yesterday, with zero net inflows across all 10 funds.

Michael Saylor Says Strategy Has No Fixed Target for Its Bitcoin Holdings
On September 28, 2026, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said in a Binance interview that Strategy has no fixed target for its Bitcoin holdings and will continue buying as it raises capital through equity and credit products. He said Strategy remains a net buyer of Bitcoin, although the difficulty of accumulating more will increase exponentially as BTC rises. At the same time, he said the company’s securities and stock price will grow alongside Bitcoin, creating a complementary dynamic balance between BTC, STRC and MSTR.

MetaMask, one of the world’s most widely used self-custodial crypto wallets, has begun proactively exiting affected staking validators following a security incident. On-chain researcher Kaden said about 17,000 validators representing roughly 523,000 ETH have been exited, while around 821 potentially affected validators remain active.
He identified 18 block rewards diverted from their intended fee recipients to a Tornado Cash-funded address, netting the attacker about 0.36 ETH. MetaMask said its staking service is non-custodial and that it does not control users’ withdrawal keys, while Kaden noted that compromised validator signing keys could still pose a slashing risk.