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According to Bloomberg, Absa Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa, has become the first bank in Africa to offer Bitcoin custody services, primarily targeting institutional clients, and will also provide custody services for other digital assets. Rob Downes, the head of digital assets at Absa's Corporate and Investment Banking division, stated that Bitcoin is the largest asset under custody at the bank, with plans to include more asset classes in the future. Absa did not immediately respond to Bitcoin Magazine's request for comment.Many banks around the world are gradually integrating or launching Bitcoin-related products and services. Some banks in the United States and Europe have begun offering crypto asset custody for institutional clients. In 2022, BNY Mellon became the first large bank in the United States to offer digital asset custody services; this month, Deutsche Bank announced plans to launch Bitcoin custody services for European businesses and institutional clients later in 2026.Africa has a large base of crypto-native users. A report by Chainalysis in 2025 shows that South Africa's on-chain value reached $36 billion, ranking second in Sub-Saharan Africa, only behind Nigeria's $92.1 billion; South Africa ranks 30th in the global crypto adoption index. Unlike Nigeria, the South African market is characterized by more institutional features, with a relatively clear regulatory framework that has issued hundreds of licenses to virtual asset service providers, attracting professional investors and traditional financial institutions.

According to The Defiant, the asset tokenization protocol Centrifuge has confirmed that three tokenized funds JAAA, JTRSY, and HYB have been launched on Arc.These three funds cover U.S. Treasury and credit assets, and direct participation in fund investments is limited to non-U.S. professional investors.

Layer 2 network Blast announced that it will cease operations due to the ongoing maintenance costs of the network exceeding the revenue generated by L2. The team believes there is no credible path to achieve economic sustainability.Blast advises all users to withdraw on-chain assets and balances in the Blast PWA to the Ethereum mainnet and plans to shorten the withdrawal waiting time to 24 hours. However, the team will first process the withdrawal of Lido assets held by Blast, which is expected to take about a week, during which the withdrawal function will be temporarily unavailable.Users can complete withdrawals through the regular Blast interface before October 26. After that, assets can still be withdrawn, but it will require direct interaction with the Blast Bridge contract on Ethereum L1. The team will announce specific operational instructions before the deadline.

The Chief Information Security Officer of Slow Fog Security, 23pds, stated that Alex Shevchenko, the General Manager of NEAR Intents, indicated that the exploiters of the NEAR Intents vulnerability transferred 1 BNB to the recovery wallet and left a message expressing willingness to cooperate and requested the other party to provide a Signal contact.This transfer came from the same address that previously moved approximately 3.8 million USD. About an hour ago, that address also transferred 0.295 ETH on the Ethereum network and sent the same message.

The G7 leaders' statement reaffirms the commitment not to impose export restrictions on energy and energy products among the seven countries and calls on all producing countries to avoid implementing bans that could exacerbate market tensions.

Bitcoin Treasuries posted on platform X that Strive's SATA Bitcoin accumulation has been initiated, and sufficient funds have been raised to purchase over 1,270 Bitcoins this week. STRC is approaching a face value of 100 USD.

According to CoinDesk, Hester Peirce, a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has completed her term today. She served in the agency for over 8 years and voted against the committee's decisions to take enforcement actions instead of creating industry-compliant rules multiple times, and she was an early proponent of the token safe harbor proposal.Hester Peirce previously led the Crypto Task Force and stated that the SEC's duty to protect investors includes using regulatory authority to provide regulatory boundaries for the rapidly expanding digital asset industry.

Tesla (TSLA.O) deployed 13.7 gigawatt-hours of energy storage products in the third quarter.

Tesla's third-quarter delivery volume was 486,532 vehicles, while the market estimate was 463,761 vehicles.

The Ronin Waypoint wallet will soon cease operations, and users must complete asset transfers before the final migration deadline on October 16, or assets left in the Waypoint wallet may become inaccessible. This migration primarily involves users utilizing social logins, keyless wallets, or MPC wallets.Users can choose to migrate their assets to a Ronin Stash that supports email or social login, or they can transfer them to a Ronin Wallet protected by a mnemonic phrase. Users who only use mnemonic phrase wallets are not affected by this migration. Additionally, bAXS and Badges need to be handled separately through the official Axie migration page, and this operation can only be completed once.The official reminder for users is to confirm that the target wallet has received the assets after migration and to check if there are any missing assets in the Waypoint wallet.

Due to the disruption of capacity expansion plans in the Middle East caused by the war between the U.S. and Iran, OPEC+ has postponed the oil capacity assessment work. This assessment aims to determine the oil production quotas for 2027, which was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of September 2026, and is now expected to be completed by mid-November.

Circle disclosed that it has responded to the European Commission's targeted consultation on MiCA. Circle stated that MiCA has provided a first-mover advantage for Europe, with approximately 30 types of electronic currency tokens authorized. However, among the top 25 stablecoins by global market capitalization, only 3 are regulated by MiCA, namely USDC, USDG, and EURC, indicating a gap in the regulatory scope of MiCA that fails to cover the largest global tokens.Circle suggests maintaining a multiple issuance structure, where globally circulating stablecoins are jointly issued by EU entities authorized under MiCA and foreign regulatory entities. It also recommends establishing an equivalence and recognition system for foreign regulatory stablecoins similar to EMIR, CSDR, and MiFIR, with the regulatory authority of the issuer's jurisdiction primarily responsible for supervision, while the EU level conducts equivalence recognition and EBA entity approval. Regarding reserve requirements, Circle believes that MiCA's requirement for issuers to deposit at least 30% of reserve assets in commercial bank deposits will increase bank credit and counterparty risk, supporting the European Central Bank to reconsider this requirement, and suggests removing two concentration rules from the EBA technical standards.

HL HUB (Community) posted on platform X that Hyperliquid expects to receive its first AQAv2 reserve yield distribution tomorrow. Approximately $14.5 million in passive income generated from USDC reserves will flow into the Assistance Fund for the purpose of repurchasing HYPE.It is reported that the revenue sharing mechanism of AQAv2 stipulates that Hyperliquid stablecoin deployers must allocate 90% of the reserve income from the stablecoin to the Hyperliquid protocol, and these earnings will be used 100% for the repurchase and destruction of HYPE tokens.The stablecoin reserve income distribution is settled on a 30-day cycle, and the income will automatically transfer to the Assistance Fund on the 8th day after the cycle ends. The formal revenue accrual will begin on August 26, and the first income payment will occur on October 3.

Bitget PoolX has launched a new locking activity, where users can lock XAUT, SOL, or XRP to participate in the distribution of 100,000 BGB airdrop.As of the time of writing, the yield rate for the SOL locking pool is reported at 47.12% APR, the yield rate for the XRP locking pool is reported at 38.39% APR, and the yield rate for the XAUT locking pool is reported at 23.88% APR.The locking channel is open from October 2 to October 9.

Regarding the previous incident where the FlashLoopAdapter vulnerability caused a loss of approximately 114 ETH from two Safe multi-signatures, Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the contract with the vulnerability is not the Aave v3 contract, but rather a third-party external adapter built on top of Aave, which does not affect Aave v3 itself.Previously, SlowMist disclosed that the FlashLoopAdapter has an access control vulnerability, which attackers exploited to bypass permission checks and transfer assets from two Safe multi-signatures that enabled the module, ultimately resulting in a loss of approximately 114.09 ETH.

According to CoinGlass data, the total liquidation amount across the network in the past hour reached 122 million USD, with long positions liquidated at 2.6114 million USD and short positions liquidated at 119 million USD.During the same period, BTC liquidations were approximately 88.327 million USD, ETH liquidations were approximately 18.2665 million USD, and SOL liquidations were approximately 5.1455 million USD.

According to the official announcement, Bithumb will launch the US Korean Won trading pair, with trading expected to open at 15:00 local time.

According to Whale Alert monitoring, the USDC Treasury address minted 250 million USDC on the Solana chain, worth approximately 250 million USD.

HIVE Digital Technologies Executive Chairman Frank Holmes stated in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine that governments around the world will continue to print money, potentially reaching 100 trillion dollars, which makes him optimistic about Bitcoin and gold. He pointed out that Bitcoin miners already possess the electricity, land, and substations required for AI, and referred to Bitcoin mining as a "tier one data center."Holmes introduced that HIVE had previously used GPUs for mining Ethereum to enter the AI field, and he believes the next wave of AI factories will be built on mining infrastructure from Paraguay to Canada. He also discussed how ETFs can transform Bitcoin from "fear trading" to "love trading," as well as how players and the younger quantitative trading community are driving Bitcoin adoption.Additionally, he mentioned Binance's 19 billion dollar liquidation and 350 trillion dollars in money supply, 40 trillion dollars printed during the COVID-19 pandemic, global MMT risks, Bitcoin mining in China with 1.4 trillion dollars in loans, central banks purchasing gold, the Central Bank of Paraguay and Bitcoin mining exports, and computing power as a commodity, along with Canada's AI advancements and the electricity advantages of Bitcoin miners.