Cointelegraph

Anthropic announced that it had filed S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering on Nasdaq, marking a significant step for artificial intelligence companies.
A Monday S-1 filing with the SEC suggested that Anthropic could be aiming for a mid-November IPO, listing its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol ANT. The company disclosed more than $16 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026 and an $80 billion net loss over the same period.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by many former executives of AI company OpenAI. Reports have suggested that the company could raise up to $100 billion for an IPO, giving it a $2 trillion valuation. OpenAI has already delayed its own IPO plans, with CEO Sam Altman reportedly saying in September that 2026 was an “ill-advised moment” to pursue a public offering.
The company behind the AI assistant Claude reported holding more than $112 billion in cash and cash equivalents, along with $19 billion in short-term investments, as of June 30.

The National Basketball Association has named Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction market exchanges and signed an information-sharing agreement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) aimed at protecting the integrity of basketball-related markets.
According to Monday’s announcement, the agreements will give Kalshi and Polymarket access to official NBA data supplied by Sportradar, the league’s designated data distribution partner, for settling authorized markets. Both platforms will have rights to use NBA intellectual property and conduct promotional activities in the United States.
The partnerships include integrity safeguards, prohibiting NBA and team personnel from trading NBA event contracts and requiring cooperation on suspicious trading investigations.
Beyond the two exchanges, the NBA expanded its existing agreement with DraftKings to cover prediction markets and said it expects to announce similar arrangements with other industry operators in the coming weeks.
In a separate announcement, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said the agreement with the NBA would strengthen information sharing to address insider trading and fraud in prediction markets. The NBA joins Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League in establishing similar arrangements with the regulator.
States challenge federal oversight of prediction markets
The NBA’s agreements come amid an ongoing legal battle over whether federal commodities rules supersede state gambling laws governing sports prediction markets.
The dispute has produced conflicting court decisions. In September, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kalshi in a case involving Ohio and Tennessee, following a similar decision by the 9th Circuit. An earlier ruling by the 3rd Circuit, however, allowed Kalshi to continue operating in New Jersey while its appeal proceeds.
State enforcement actions have continued. On Oct. 20, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown sued Kalshi, alleging that the platform had facilitated illegal betting in the state since 2024. Utah officials are seeking to recover an estimated $30 million to $60 million in profits allegedly earned by Kalshi and other defendants.
Kalshi event contract. Source: Kalshi
The US Supreme Court has been asked to review the New Jersey dispute, with 39 states and Washington, DC, supporting the petition. The National Football League, which has not entered into commercial partnerships with prediction market exchanges, also backed the petition, arguing that certain sports event contracts threaten game integrity because they are susceptible to manipulation. The justices have not yet agreed to hear the case.
Magazine: AI agents help rescue ETH’s Glamsterdam fork, ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ site: Hodler’s Digest

Government officials in South Korea are reportedly weighing a delay of the country’s cryptocurrency tax policy, currently expected to be implemented in January 2027.
According to a Monday report from South Korean news outlet Newsis, the crypto income tax could be pushed to 2029 in part because it’s the earliest that officials will be able to share information on taxes related to digital asset exchanges with the US.
The policy, which would impose a 22% tax on crypto gains — 20% from income and 2% as part of a local tax — for investors earning more than 2.5 million Korean won ($1,883) annually has already seen several delays since it was first proposed in 2020.
“We are discussing postponing the implementation of virtual asset taxation,” said an official from the Blue House presidential residence.
The US is scheduled to begin participating in the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework in 2029, while South Korea will implement the rules starting in 2027. A South Korean official reportedly said that the country was considering another delay for the crypto tax as the US “accounts for nearly half of the virtual asset market.”
As of Monday, South Korea’s National Tax Service listed Jan. 1, 2027 as the start date for the crypto tax.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has partnered with prediction market platform Kalshi in a deal that will allow the exchange to offer event contracts tied to the financial index provider’s benchmarks.
According to Monday’s announcement, Kalshi will become a preferred platform for contracts linked to S&P DJI indices, with settlement based on official index values published by the company.
S&P DJI will also explore developing indexes using Kalshi’s prediction market data, potentially tracking expectations around economic developments, political outcomes and sporting events. The gauges would use prices from Kalshi’s event contracts to measure market expectations about future outcomes, rather than tracking the performance of traditional financial assets.
The companies did not disclose a timeline for either initiative. S&P DJI did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details.
The agreement follows moves by traditional financial market operators into prediction markets. Intercontinental Exchange, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, committed up to $2 billion to Polymarket in October 2025.
In March, Nasdaq filed to offer prediction market-style contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 Index, before partnering with Kalshi in August to provide market surveillance technology.
S&P Global completes OpenZeppelin acquisition
S&P Dow Jones Indices parent, S&P Global, separately announced Monday that it completed its acquisition of blockchain security firm OpenZeppelin, expanding its risk assessment capabilities for digital assets. The deal was first announced in September and financial terms were not disclosed.
OpenZeppelin provides smart contract security audits and development tools. Its open-source contract libraries underpin more than $38 trillion in value transferred, while its security team has conducted over 900 engagements, according to S&P Global.
OpenZeppelin will continue operating as its own business unit under founder Demian Brener, who will report to Yann Le Pallec, president of S&P Global Ratings.
S&P Global has also expanded its digital asset risk assessment work beyond smart contract security. Earlier this month, S&P Global Ratings launched a framework for evaluating crypto lending vaults across six risk categories, including blockchain security, liquidity and governance.
Magazine: AI agents help rescue ETH’s Glamsterdam fork, ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ site: Hodler’s Digest

Internet users are still vulnerable to cyber exploits stemming from the PHP vulnerability, particularly through smaller websites that could take weeks to adopt the upgrade shipped last Wednesday, according to bug bounty platform Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador.
“This is the vulnerability apocalypse” running on schedule, where finding vulnerabilities became cheap, but fixing them remains expensive, Amador told Cointelegraph.
“For the next few weeks, treat any site you log into as if it could already be compromised,” said Amador, warning users to avoid reusing passwords and to exercise caution when connecting their cryptocurrency wallets to websites. He also urged users to revoke unrecognized token approvals.
The comments come nearly a week after the PHP Foundation acknowledged that it delayed fixing a critical security flaw first identified in 2024, due to a shortage of resources. PHP developers released emergency patches for two critical vulnerabilities on the same day, but websites still need to independently upgrade.
In an interview published by Cointelegraph in June, Amador warned that the proliferation of frontier AI models changed the cybersecurity playing field in favor of attackers, causing a “vulnerability apocalypse” that led to the resurgence in decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks.
Percentage of programs with a confirmed critical vulnerability by time live.
Source: Immunefi
Immunefi is the world’s largest bug bounty platform that paid out $140 million in bounties across 650 protocols to date, according to its homepage.
PHP flaw drew millions of exploit attempts within hours
According to Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince, the network saw millions of exploit attempts in the 24 hours after the PHP vulnerabilities were publicly revealed and thousands of attempts even before their disclosure, he wrote a Thursday X post.
About one in five websites worldwide routes traffic through Cloudflare, according to the internet infrastructure company, which helps websites load faster and protect users from cyber threats.
Research service W3Techs estimates that PHP powers about 69% of websites with a known server-side programming language. The vulnerabilities may allow attackers to spread malware or inject malicious scripts into websites around the world.
The FBI’s Cyber Division also warned that the vulnerabilities may allow malicious actors to “remotely execute code in PHP core, potentially compromising sensitive data and networks,” according to a Wednesday X post.
Magazine: How a ‘Wrong Number’ message turned into a $3.4M crypto scam

Michael Saylor’s Strategy refrained from buying or selling Bitcoin last week, choosing instead to spend $204.9 million on STRC preferred stock buybacks.
Strategy repurchased 2.07 million shares between Monday and Friday, reporting no Bitcoin (BTC) transactions or stock sales through its at-the-market offering program, according to its Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company said its Bitcoin holdings remained at 848,517 BTC, acquired for $64.02 billion at an average price of $75,446 per coin. At Monday’s US equities open, the biggest cryptocurrency was trading hands at roughly $79,992 apiece.
Strategy’s US dollar reserve remained unchanged from the previous week, at $4.83 billion, Its USD Cash balance fell around 46% to $242.4 million from $447.3 million after management used $204.9 million to repurchase STRC shares.
Since October began, Strategy has spent about $664 million repurchasing STRC preferred shares, compared with $72.3 million buying 851 BTC.
The pause came as Bitcoin fell toward $80,000 last week after reaching $84,777 on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko.
Strategy’s common stock (MSTR) fell 2.2% to $142.80 in Monday’s premarket activity, while its STRC preferred shares edged down 0.01% to $99.35, according to Yahoo Finance.

Bernstein analysts expect prediction markets to become one of the incremental earnings drivers for trading platform Robinhood Markets (HOOD), potentially surpassing its crypto-derived revenue.
Prediction markets could drive up to $1.7 billion in business for Robinhood by 2028, surpassing the projected $1.6 billion in crypto-based revenues for that year, according to a Bernstein analysts’ forecast shared with Cointelegraph on Monday.
The analysts expects Robinhood’s prediction market revenue to increase to $1.7 billion in 2028 from about $650 million this year, accounting for roughly 18% of Robinhood’s projected $9.4 billion in total 2028 revenue.
The forecast comes a day ahead of Robinhood’s third-quarter 2026 report and shows that prediction markets are becoming a growing revenue source for the retail-focused trading platform.
Bernstein expects Robinhood’s Q3 revenue to increase 13% quarter-over-quarter to around $1.5 billion, driven by growing equity notional volumes, options volumes, event contract volumes, along with a recovery in crypto trading volume.
Bernstein raised Robinhood’s revenue estimates by 3% for 2026, 4% for 2027 and 3% for 2028, while keeping its $160 price target unchanged, citing higher equities and crypto revenue assumptions.
The Nasdaq-traded shares were poised to open down on Monday, with premarket activity paring the stock price down to $93.60, according to Yahoo Finance. HOOD stock is down more than 29% over the past 12 months.

Aviva Investors, the asset management arm of UK-based insurer Aviva, launched a tokenized share class of its Sterling (GBP) Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
The development adds a tokenized share class of the company’s largest fund of approximately 22 billion British pounds ($29.4 billion) in assets under management on XRPL and allows investment in the fund in tokenized format, Ripple and Aviva revealed in a joint announcement on Monday.
It is the asset manager’s second tokenized fund, after Aviva expanded its USD Liquidity Fund to the XRPL network earlier in July.
Aviva said this makes it one of Europe’s largest asset management providers of tokenized money market funds, with about 86 million pounds invested across its two tokenized share class offerings.
Aviva made an 50-million-pound investment in the Sterling Liquidity Fund’s new tokenized share class, according to the announcement. The expansion is part of a broader collaboration between Aviva and Ripple, seeking to bring more tokenized funds to the XRP Ledger.
The XRP Ledger ranks as the ninth-largest blockchain network for tokenized assets, with $642 million in total distributed real-world asset value and about 2,900 unique holders, according to RWA.xyz data.

Bitcoin (BTC) begins the last week of October fighting to hold $80,000 support ahead of a busy week of US macro data and earnings reports.
Key points:
Markets see the Fed holding interest rates in their current 3.75-4% range at its meeting on Wednesday as Brent crude cools to $110 per barrel.
South Korea’s KOSPI Composite Index resumes downside ahead of a major round of US corporate earnings results.
Bitcoin is on track to end October down 4%, copying 2025 performance, as $80,000 support appears weak.
Markets see Fed rate-hike pause with oil still above $100
The US Federal Reserve is in focus for macro analysts this week as it will decide the next move on the federal funds rate on Wednesday. Markets will be watching the rate decision by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), as well as language used by Fed chair Kevin Warsh at the accompanying press conference.
Markets have little doubt over what officials will decide, seeing over 90% odds that rates will stay in their current 3.75-4% range. FedWatch data shows consensus favoring a 0.25% hike at the December FOMC meeting.
Fed target-rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: CME Group
Commenting, economist Robin Brooks argued that such expectations were a gift to Warsh, who would not need to fight external demands to change course.
“After very contentious Fed meetings earlier in 2026, this week’s meeting gets zero interest in markets, which price only 12% odds of a hike. That’s nothing versus how markets tried to push Warsh into hiking back in July. A temporary reprieve for Warsh,” he summarized.
In separate analysis last week, Brooks saw a rate pause as all but inevitable, even amid rising oil prices and growing concerns over military escalation in the Middle East. Brent crude reached $117 per barrel on Friday, its highest level since March 19, before dropping to around $110 on Monday. Even a rise to $125, however, would not force the Fed to change course, he continued.
“The debt crisis in France would escalate sharply, anxiety around all the AI and data center debt would increase and the S&P 500 would tumble. That just isn’t a setting where the Fed is itching to hike,” Brooks wrote.
“If anything, financial conditions would be tightening sharply, so the last thing you’d want to do is hike.”
CFDs on Brent crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
On Thursday, new US macro data will be released in the form of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, known as the Fed’s “preferred” inflation gauge. Last month, PCE came in lower than expected at 3.4% year-on-year, but analysts explained that the drop was a result of changes to the way certain index elements are calculated.
KOSPI struggles as markets prepare for US tech earnings
Nerves about prospects for the AI sector continued to pressure equities on Monday ahead of the week’s first Wall Street open.
After attempting to recoup some of its losses late last week, South Korea’s KOSPI Composite Index closed down 1.5% on Monday at 5,469 points. On Friday, the tech-heavy index fell as low as 5,308 points — a level not seen since late July.
KOSPI Composite Index one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The low came as a result of significant tech-stock selling as foreign capital sought safety. Last week, stronger-than-expected US earnings reports ultimately failed to lift the mood, with attention instead drawn to Tesla’s reduced Q3 capital expenditure. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 25,955 points on Friday, its lowest daily close since Aug. 3.
Nasdaq Composite Index one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Speaking to CNBC on Monday, JPMorgan Asset Management’s Raisah Rasid was unfazed by the state of the AI trade.
“It’s really about investors thinking, ‘Look, we’re not rewarding capex anymore; what we are rewarding is return on capital. I think that’s what’s happening with AI,’” she said.
Further Q3 earnings are due out this week, with Microsoft and Alphabet both reporting after the market close on Wednesday, while Amazon and Intel follow on Thursday. In total, around 20% of S&P 500 companies will report during the week, while Thursday also sees the release of US Q3 GDP numbers.
Bitcoin “Uptober” sentiment meets 4% month-to-date losses
Bitcoin is on track to end October down 4% if the monthly candle closes near current levels around $80,000.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Data from CoinGlass shows that despite average October upside for BTC/USD totaling 26.1% since 2010, earning the nickname ‘Uptober’, both this year and last have bucked the trend. After falling 3.9% in October 2025, Bitcoin went on to lose another 17.5% in November, once more going against historical patterns that have seen average November returns of 35%.
BTC/USD monthly returns. Source: CoinGlass
Almost $150 million of long positions were liquidated over two hours on Saturday as Bitcoin fell to $79,145. The $80,000 level failed to offer support on lower time frames despite its status as a psychological boundary. CoinGlass shows a $73 million wall of bids keeping price above $79,300, with asks centered around $81,000.
BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Market participants are increasingly cautious about a rebound under current macro conditions. Benjamin Cowen, founder of crypto analytics platform Into the Cryptoverse, described Bitcoin’s trips to $87,000 in late September and early October as a “fakeout.”
BTC/USD should continue to see weakness through the end of the year, he told X followers on Monday, citing historical precedent and calling for downside pressure around US midterm election years.
As Cointelegraph reported, the resistance zone around $87,000 contains important price points: the 2026 yearly open at $87,490 and 20-month moving average at $87,165.

The value of tokenized shares of Securitize (SECZ) have lost more than half their value in less than a month as the gap with market leader Circle (CRCL) widens.
The market capitalization of SECZ tokens fell from a high of $430.4 million on Sept. 28 to $208.6 million by Sunday, according to Token Terminal. The NYSE-traded shares closed Friday down 2.1% at $7.80 apiece, with a market cap of $1.27 billion.
Tokens tracking Circle’s shares have gained about 20% in market value since Sept. 28 to reach $383.6 million, reclaiming the top spot in the $3.3 billion tokenized stock market.
The decline in tokenized SECZ coincided with a sell-off in Securitize’s underlying shares on the NYSE, which erased gains that followed the Oct. 8 launch of its stock trading platform on Solana. Citi downgraded SECZ from Buy to Neutral on Oct. 13 amid concerns about tokenization revenue.
Securitize helps asset managers including BlackRock issue securities on blockchains. The company brought its own common shares onchain alongside its July 2 NYSE listing, becoming the largest tokenized equity at the time.
SECZ remains the largest individual tokenized stock as Circle’s total is spread across products from several issuers. Binance’s CRCLb on BNB Chain leads those offerings at $154.1 million.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) attracted around $301 million in net inflows last week, snapping a two-week outflow streak despite heavy withdrawals late in the week.
The funds lost about $228 million the previous week and $680 million the week before. October’s net outflows stood at about $314 million, according to Farside Investors data.
Bitcoin ETFs drew $1.08 billion between Monday and Wednesday as Bitcoin (BTC) climbed to a weekly high of $84,777 on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko. Investors then withdrew about $774 million on Thursday and Friday as BTC retreated toward $80,000.
ETF investors have tended to sell into Bitcoin declines, according to research published Thursday by market maker DWF Labs. The company found net outflows during seven of eight Bitcoin sell-offs of at least 15% since US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024.
“ETF investors aren’t the dip buyers people think they are,” DWF said.
At the time of publication, Bitcoin traded at $80,025, down around 3.3% over the past seven days. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to a “Neutral” reading of 50, down from “Greed” at 59 a week earlier.
US spot Ether ETFs recorded a fourth consecutive week of net outflows, shedding about $221 million last week, according to Farside Investors data.

Elon Musk warns that over 200 specialist AI cloud providers could fail or consolidate as lenders tighten up their purse strings.
Musk said Sunday on X that lenders had largely stopped providing financing to companies without substantial revenue streams outside AI data centers. He said SpaceX had secured $40 billion in debt financing for GPUs because of its investment-grade status and revenue from its Starlink satellite internet and rocket businesses.
“That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation. Some will make it through, but not many,” he said.
A neocloud is a specialist cloud company that rents out computing power for AI, usually through data centers packed with powerful GPUs.
Musk’s warning follows an October forecast from research firm Gartner that more than 80% of neocloud providers will cease operating independently by 2030, as the industry struggles to generate sufficient returns on massive AI infrastructure investments.
The warnings could also have implications for Bitcoin miners that have pivoted into AI infrastructure. For example, IREN has expanded into AI cloud services, renting computing power to customers, while Core Scientific provides data center hosting for neocloud customers such as CoreWeave.
In its forecast, Gartner said AI providers are expected to spend nearly $1 trillion on infrastructure in 2026 and another $6 trillion between 2027 and 2030, but said there is insufficient revenue to deliver profitable returns on all those investments.
The pressure could be particularly acute for neoclouds, which must earn enough from AI computing services to sustain their operations. Larger cloud companies have more diversified revenue streams that could support AI investment for years, Gartner said.
Even strong market growth may not be enough. Gartner forecasts spending on AI-optimized infrastructure-as-a-service will rise from $66 billion in 2027 to $174 billion in 2030, but said most providers could struggle to recover their investment before the current generation of AI chips is replaced.
SpaceX sees sharp jump in AI revenue
Musk’s comments came days after SpaceX reported that its “Super Intelligence” business generated $7.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 830% from a year earlier and accounting for more than half of the company’s $14.6 billion in quarterly sales.
The company attributed the growth to new cloud services agreements, its acquisition of Cursor and increased adoption of its Grok AI model.
Magazine: AI agents help rescue ETH’s Glamsterdam fork, ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ site: Hodler’s Digest

Hong Kong has named Nasdaq-listed Solana Company (HSDT) a strategic enterprise under a government program aimed at attracting businesses that support the city’s economic development.
Solana Company said Thursday that it was among the seventh batch of businesses selected by Hong Kong’s Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES) and the only blockchain infrastructure company onboarded by the office in 2026.
Hong Kong’s government confirmed the addition of 18 enterprises to the program last week, bringing its total to 142.
A Solana Company spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the designation gives it a single point of contact across government agencies and regulators, expedited pathways for recruiting overseas talent and introductions to local institutional partners.
Solana Company operates staking and validator infrastructure and advises financial institutions on blockchain adoption. It also holds Solana (SOL) as part of its digital asset treasury strategy.
The company said it plans to establish validator operations in Hong Kong under Pacific Backbone, an initiative to build a low-latency blockchain infrastructure network across the Asia-Pacific region.

Crypto hardware wallet maker Keystone has disclosed a website security breach that exposed customer information to attackers, raising concerns about targeted scams and physical attacks.
Keystone said Saturday that it detected suspicious activity earlier in the week and confirmed Friday, after reviewing API activity with Shopify, that an unauthorized third party had accessed customer shipping information. This included names, contact details, shipping addresses and other order details, such as items bought.
“We’ve blocked access, fixed the vulnerability, opened an investigation, and are emailing affected customers,” said the company.
Keystone warned that the exposed information could be used for targeted phishing attacks. However, security researcher Taylor Monahan also raised concerns that leaking shipping addresses could expose customers to physical attacks and kidnappings.
Blockchain security firm CertiK recorded 52 verified wrench attacks worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 33% from 39 during the same period last year. Such crimes, commonly called “wrench attacks,” involve using physical threats or violence to force cryptocurrency holders to surrender their assets.
“Again, we’re truly sorry to everyone affected,” Keystone said. The company did not disclose how many customers were impacted.
Keystone questioned over promise to delete customer data
The breach has also raised questions about Keystone’s handling of older customer information.
In a 2023 blog post, Keystone said it had reduced its customer data retention period to 180 days following security incidents affecting other hardware wallet manufacturers.
However, some customers said they received breach notifications despite purchasing their devices more than two years ago, raising questions about what information Keystone retained and whether the notifications indicate that older order records were not deleted as promised.
An X user going by “OG DEGEN” said they received a call from a scammer claiming they were law enforcement investigating a fraud case. The user suspected the caller obtained their information through a Keystone order placed in 2024, based on the personal information the caller referred to.
“I think their plan was to convince me that my private keys had been exposed and then send me a phishing link to supposedly reset them,” they wrote on X.
Another X user, trintaetres, also said they received the email notification despite buying the device over two years ago.
Cointelegraph contacted Keystone to ask how customer information from purchases made more than 180 days earlier could have been exposed despite its previously announced retention policy, and how many customers were affected. The company did not respond by publication time.
Magazine: AI agents help rescue ETH’s Glamsterdam fork, ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ site: Hodler’s Digest

Standard Chartered-backed stablecoin venture Anchorpoint says it will take a cautious approach to opening its Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin to retail users, declining to confirm a launch date after rival HSBC rolled out RedCoin, according to the South China Morning Post.
The venture released its institutional stablecoin product in August and previously indicated a retail offering could arrive as early as the end of 2026.
Anchorpoint CEO Dominic Maffei declined to confirm that timeline at a Friday press conference, saying the company would take a prudent approach.
“We believe it’s important to build the market out in a long-term, sustainable manner,” Maffei said, adding that rushing a launch “does not make sense.”
The update comes after HSBC launched its Hong Kong dollar-backed RedCoin on Friday for the 3.3 million users of its PayMe app.
Anchorpoint grew out of a partnership between Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and telecommunications provider HKT, which was announced in February 2025, following their joint participation in Hong Kong’s stablecoin issuer sandbox in July 2024.
Animoca’s role is to bring its blockchain expertise and industry network to the venture and help develop uses for the stablecoin across the Web3 ecosystem.

European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the digital euro that is set for a pilot next year has the potential to give the bloc “sovereignty” over a payments infrastructure that currently requires dependency on external, non-European third parties.
Cipollone said in an interview with Italy’s Milano Finance published by the central bank on Saturday that because the bloc is critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning. He did not cite specific third parties.
“In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties. We saw this with energy and we’re seeing it today with defense. And the same is true for payments,” he said.
The pilot will use real transactions by ECB and national central bank staff. With 36 market operators, including seven from Italy, collaborating on preparations, the ECB is inviting e-commerce and mobile-commerce operators to participate.
“The smooth functioning of payment systems is one of our responsibilities. If we are critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning,” Cipollone said.
To be sure, sovereignty doesn’t mean shutting third parties out, Cipollone said. “It means having the power to choose and knowing that, for an essential service like payments, Europe can also rely on its own strength.”
In an April public lecture held in Latvia, Cipollone said that Europe’s reliance on non-European payment providers creates a strategic vulnerability. He said two-thirds of euro-area card transactions are governed by non-European companies, and that the digital euro could reduce that dependence and provide European-controlled payment infrastructure.
The ECB Governing Council can only decide on issuing a digital euro only after legislative negotiations in Brussels conclude.
“We hope that the regulation will be adopted by the end of the year, enabling the ECB’s Governing Council to issue a formal decision on issuance,” Cipollone told Milano Finance .
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Blockchain has become an issue in this week’s Israeli elections after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that the country could turn to cryptocurrency to avoid strains on the economy from any potential international financial sanctions.
He told a local television interviewer that Israel is exploring the use of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies as a means of circumventing potential banking sanctions.
“Blockchain is an alternative to sanctions,” the prime minister said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 economic network on Friday.
His calling blockchain a “national strategic tool” signals a pivot in the government’s stance on the digital currency industry, from an investment event into part of the country’s economic defense strategy, reported CryptoJungle, Israel’s largest crypto media platform.
A dozen Western countries have announced sanctions targeting goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank in response to Jewish settler attacks on Palestinians and an increase in settlement construction approved by Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Those sanctions could extend into Israel proper, economists and industry figures told The Times of Israel last month.
Several of the candidates seeking to replace Netanyahu in the Oct. 27 elections, as well as the head of the Bank of Israel, were quick to challenge the prime minister’s statement.
“The BibiCoin vision is a threat to national security,” wrote Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot in a Saturday morning X post, using a play on Netanyahu’s nickname. The Bank of Israel in a statement rejected Netanyahu’s proposition, saying that cryptocurrencies “cannot be used as a route for bypassing sanctions.”
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Sharp reaction on the street and in the media
At Saturday evening’s anti-government rally in Tel Aviv, several onlookers weighed in on Netanyahu’s blockchain statement.
“An economy that runs on the dark web makes us no better than our enemies,” said Aryeh Cohen, holding a sign that said in English “enough Bibi’s B.S.” Another rally attendee who gave only her first name, Pnina, told Cointelegraph “what’s next, the Bank of Israel living ‘neath the law.”
Media critics also lambasted the idea of use of crypto to skirt sanctions.
“The crypto element deserves particular scrutiny. Digital currencies can indeed move value outside some traditional banking channels,” wrote Yediot Ahronot columnist Nadav Eyal in an X post. “But they are not a substitute for a national financial system. They don’t provide credit lines to banks, they don’t replace international capital markets, and they don’t persuade foreign companies to violate sanctions that bar them from doing business with Israel.”
“Crypto & blockchain-based solutions are not the tool for bypassing sanctions,” Ben Samocha, founder of CryptoJungle, told Cointelegraph on Sunday. “As demonstrated by the US Treasury against Iran, blockchain investigation allows tracking illicit funds, blocking their fiat gateway, and even freezing them.” He said that the Israeli economy is not fit to bypass sanctions using crypto.
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Six more companies have reportedly filed objections to having their stocks listed in tokenized form on the proposed platform as part of a joint venture between cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
According to a Friday Reuters report, the proposed stock platform, called OKXICE, had 22 companies total objecting to having their US stock listings tokenized. Among the most recent objections reportedly included Wells Fargo, Arm Holdings and Intuit, adding their names to Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet in the last week.
Notably, 16 of the companies were listed on Nasdaq, while only six of the stocks were available on the NYSE. Nasdaq released guidance for companies considering the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) innovation exemption for trading tokenized stocks in September, noting issuers “must be cautious about their participation,” saying “consequences for liquidity, price discovery, and long-term shareholder value may not become apparent until well after the experiment is underway.”
Speaking to Cointelegraph on Tuesday, OKXICE co-chair and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that company expected there to be more objections in an effort to avoid being the first ones testing the stock model. The venture proposed 62 companies listing tokenized stocks when it filed with the SEC earlier this month.
Cointelegraph reached out to Intuit for comment on the company’s decision to opt-out of the initiative, but did not receive an immediate response. Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Arm Holdings declined to comment.

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is preparing to overhaul its voluntary disclosure program, with plans to reduce penalties and accelerate the resolution of tax violations, including those involving cryptocurrencies, according to a Friday report by Forbes.
IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman said the agency aims to introduce the revised program before December, with a target of resolving cases within 120 days of taxpayers completing the required submission process.
The overhaul would reportedly not establish a separate disclosure process for digital assets. Koopman told attendees at the UCLA Extension Tax Controversy Conference that the IRS would handle digital assets through the same voluntary disclosure procedures used for other forms of tax noncompliance.
The IRS official also indicated that penalties under the revised program would be substantially lower than those currently imposed, although he did not provide specific figures. The agency is considering allowing taxpayers to settle outstanding liabilities through installment plans or offers in compromise.
The proposed changes would mark a shift from the existing process, which can take a year or longer to complete, according to Forbes. The IRS’s current voluntary disclosure program is intended for taxpayers whose willful failure to comply with tax laws could expose them to criminal prosecution, rather than those who made unintentional reporting errors.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are considering a separate voluntary disclosure program aimed at crypto taxpayers, including those who made unintentional reporting errors. Section 502 of the proposed Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act would establish a process for correcting past violations with defined penalties, unlike the IRS’s existing program, which primarily addresses willful tax noncompliance. The bill cleared the House Ways and Means Committee in September.
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Initia halted its layer-1 blockchain and rollups after blockchain sleuths reported an exploit that allowed an attacker to mint tokens without authorization and drain more than $2.6 million in crypto assets.
The network was halted at 3:41 p.m. UTC on Friday following a security incident, Initia said in a post on X. The team said it was working with security researchers, validators and exchanges to determine the full extent of the impact.
Blockchain security researcher Spreek first flagged the exploit on Friday, reporting that an attacker had minted tokens without authorization and converted approximately $2.6 million into other assets, with additional funds still being moved.
DeFi platform D2 Finance later reported that the attacker exploited a vulnerability to mint 2 million AUSD tokens without sufficient backing. The attacker then used cross-chain transfers to withdraw approximately 1.4 million AUSD, 105 Ether (ETH) and 1.08 million USDC (USDC) to Ethereum.
The stolen assets were subsequently consolidated into an Ethereum wallet holding approximately 1,135.5 ETH, worth $2.73 million, according to D2 Finance. The firm attributed the exploit to a vulnerability in a Move function that allowed the attacker to create unbacked tokens and exchange them for assets on Ethereum.
Source: Initia
Initia is a layer-1 blockchain designed to support a network of interconnected rollups, known as Minitias. Its native token, INIT, briefly fell to around $0.115 on Friday before rebounding above $0.15, according to CoinGecko data. The token was trading near $0.1496 at the time of writing, an increase of about 14% over the previous 24 hours.
Initia has not publicly confirmed the estimated losses or the precise cause of the exploit, and the extent of the impact on users and the timeline for restoring network operations remain unclear. Cointelegraph was unable to contact Initia for additional comment through its official X account.
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