operation

According to CoinDesk, informed sources revealed that the custody bank giant BNY is in talks with Payward, the parent company of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, for a broad collaboration covering digital assets and financial market infrastructure. The potential agreement may involve areas such as crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments, and infrastructure, with related services provided through Payward Services, which targets banks, exchanges, and asset management institutions.One source indicated that part of the proposed collaboration may be similar to the infrastructure component of the recent agreement Payward reached with Nasdaq. Negotiations are still ongoing, and there is no guarantee that an agreement will be reached; both Payward and BNY declined to comment. BNY, formerly known as Bank of New York Mellon, provides custody, asset services, clearing, and wealth management services to institutional clients and has been developing tokenized deposits to support near real-time on-chain settlements among institutional market participants.Reaching an agreement with BNY would further promote Payward's efforts to connect digital asset businesses with traditional financial institutions. Last month, Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Payward at a valuation of $21 billion, expanding the collaboration between the two parties in tokenized stocks. Under the agreement, both parties will continue to develop the operational and commercial infrastructure for Nasdaq stock tokens, and Payward will also adopt Nasdaq's market surveillance technology in its cryptocurrency, stock, tokenized stock, futures, and options trading venues, with both parties expecting to launch Nasdaq stock tokens in the second quarter of 2027.

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 After that, assets can still be withdrawn, but it will require direct interaction with the Blast Bridge contract on Ethereum L1.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.

As of the end of September, the Digital Renminbi International Operation Center has added 39 domestic and foreign financial institutions applying to access the "Digital Currency Cross-Border Settlement Comprehensive Service Platform" (CBETS).This platform supports bilateral connections with foreign currency authority payment systems and legal digital currency systems, and allows foreign financial institutions to connect directly, covering trade and cross-border personnel exchanges.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the establishment of the "Autonomous Combat Command" to enhance the U.S. military's scalable autonomous and robotic combat capabilities.The command will cover drones, artificial intelligence, and command and control systems. The Pentagon plans to double its spending in the autonomous combat field, proposing an investment of $74 billion in the budget request.

According to Al Arabiya TV, the Iraqi Hezbollah announced that with the end of the coalition mission, all military operations will be suspended starting today, and negotiations will begin regarding the issue of weapons.

According to the official announcement, the Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network developed by Blockstream has initiated an independent external security audit for Elements v23.3.4, providing additional security verification for the recovery of Peg-out operations.Meanwhile, the Liquid Federation is coordinating an update to the PAK list, including replacing existing key entries and ensuring that all Peg-out keys are securely stored in cold wallets. The official statement indicates that progress on the recovery will be announced later.

According to official news, Tether announced a partnership with the fintech company Shiga to utilize its open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK) to launch self-custody financial products for individuals and institutions in Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.The two parties will launch two core products: the self-custody wallet ENTA for individuals and businesses, which supports deposits in fiat currency or Bitcoin, and holds and transfers Tether (USDT), Bitcoin, and Tether Gold (XAUT); and the infrastructure Pulse for banks and financial institutions, aimed at assisting institutions in customizing digital asset services for specific payment channels and fund settlement processes, and supporting institutions in deploying in a private environment to retain key control.In addition, Shiga is currently completing the final approval process for the digital asset license in Nigeria, and once approved, will conduct compliant digital asset trading, brokerage, and custody services in the country.

The Bitcoin DeFi project Omnity Network announced that it will gradually cease operations due to depleted operating funds. Its products RichSwap and Satsman will stop operations within the next 30 days. The team reminds RichSwap liquidity providers to withdraw liquidity as soon as possible and states that it will upgrade the smart contracts and lift existing lock-up restrictions so that users can withdraw funds without limitations.A specific timeline for operations and liquidity withdrawal guidelines will be announced soon, and support channels will remain open for 30 days during the transition period to assist users in completing related operations. Although the project will cease operations, core team members will continue to support the Bitcoin ecosystem and plan to participate in related development through personal and developer collaborative organizations.

Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated that as the two largest economies in the world, China and the United States benefit from cooperation and suffer from conflict. The economic and trade teams of both sides have reached a new joint arrangement, including the establishment of a Trade and Investment Council, the formation of an Agricultural Working Group, and a reciprocal tax reduction of 30 billion dollars, which has stabilized the economic and trade relations and market confidence between the two countries.

The Sui ecosystem decentralized finance protocol AlphaFi announced the initiation of an orderly shutdown procedure. It has now entered maintenance mode, halting new deposits and loans. Existing users can still close positions and withdraw assets.Previously, some loan positions in AlphaLend that used ALPHA as collateral experienced severe under-collateralization, leading to bad debts for the protocol. Currently, the related bad debts have been fully covered, and the protocol is solvent, ensuring user fund safety. AlphaFi will continue to cooperate with the Sui Foundation to investigate and recover related debts, and will officially exit the Sui ecosystem after the last user completes their withdrawal.

Anthropic announced a $12 billion artificial intelligence computing partnership with Akamai.

According to The Block, the Solana Foundation announced the appointment of Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees as General Manager of Payment Business to expand institutional adoption and payment operations. Conlan previously worked at Binance for three years and held senior management positions at companies such as OKX; Raees comes from Polygon Labs and will be responsible for collaborating with payment companies, enterprises, and ecosystem partners to promote Solana as a global payment infrastructure.The Solana Foundation stated that this year, Solana's stablecoin trading volume has exceeded $50 trillion, the on-chain real-world assets (RWA) scale has surpassed $4.5 billion, and the supply of tokenized stocks has exceeded $620 million.

On September 24, the official homepage of the local AI assistant QClaw displayed that due to business adjustments, QClaw will stop new user registrations starting today and will officially cease operations on December 24. The official statement indicated that user data migration will be supported, and migration users will receive point subsidies.According to Jiupai News, on March 10 of this year, Tencent launched the entire "Lobster" product matrix, covering general users, developers, and enterprise users. The products include WorkBuddy, QClaw, Tencent Cloud Lighthouse, intelligent agent development platform ADP, Tencent Cloud Desktop, and more. Tencent announced at that time that QClaw was in internal testing.Tencent introduced that QClaw is a local AI assistant launched based on OpenClaw, supporting one-click installation on Windows and Mac, and can be remotely controlled through WeChat conversations. After users send commands via WeChat on their phones, the assistant can automatically operate the computer to perform tasks and return results.

The cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX has ceased trading, deposits, and opening new positions, retaining only the withdrawal function. The platform announced on social media platform X that as of this Tuesday at 04:00 UTC, the aforementioned services will no longer be available. Users can still log in and withdraw their balances through the official website, but deposits have been confirmed as impossible. BitMEX was co-founded by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed in 2014, known for promoting perpetual contracts as mainstream trading tools in the cryptocurrency derivatives market.BitMEX urges customers to withdraw their funds as soon as possible and states that account fees will be charged to users with completed KYC certification who still have a balance, billed monthly, at a standard of 1% annualized on assets or a minimum equivalent of $50, whichever is higher. The company emphasizes that this shutdown does not freeze customer assets, and the withdrawal channel remains open during the liquidation process.BitMEX announced its closure in July this year, following a strategic assessment by its parent company HDR Global Trading, as the exchange's market share in the perpetual contract market it helped create continued to decline. According to research data from CoinDesk, the monthly trading volume of centralized cryptocurrency exchange derivatives reached $3.4 trillion in August, with an annual scale potentially reaching $50 trillion. Previously, BitMart also announced its shutdown in July after nine years of operation due to market conditions.

Recently, discussions surrounding the shutdown of projects invested by a16z have intensified. According to RootData's investment and financing data, after deduplication by project, five institutions—Coinbase Ventures, YZi Labs, Pantera Capital, a16z, and Paradigm—cover a total of 993 independent invested projects, of which 216 are marked as shut down, accounting for a cumulative ratio of 21.75%.Looking at the institutions individually, Pantera has a shutdown rate of 24.76% (51/206), Coinbase Ventures at 22.69% (98/432), a16z at 20.09% (43/214), Paradigm at 19.49% (23/118), and YZi Labs at 13.56% (32/236).Although a16z is at the center of public opinion, it is not the institution with the highest shutdown rate in the sample. Among its 148 lead investment projects, 29 are marked as shut down, accounting for 19.59%, including Linera, which recently announced its closure, and Universal, which has announced its entry into the shutdown process, indicating that even leading institutions cannot eliminate operational risks for projects.

Vietnam plans to issue licenses to the first batch of cryptocurrency service providers under a pilot legal framework in 2026, allowing the first digital asset platforms to begin operations. Nguyen Duc Chi, Deputy Minister of Finance of Vietnam, met with Mariana Kuhnel, Executive Director of the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA), in Vienna to discuss bilateral cooperation and the exchange of financial regulatory experiences.Vu Thi Chan Phuong, Chairwoman of the State Securities Commission of Vietnam, stated that the regulatory mechanism will cover service providers and investor transactions, focusing on risk management, investor asset protection, and anti-money laundering. Kuhnel proposed that both parties hold an online technical seminar and strengthen coordination through the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

Layer1 public chain Linera team members announced on Discord that their token sale on Sonar received nearly $900,000 in token fundraising commitments, but did not reach the minimum threshold required to complete the sale, and all token sale funds have been refunded to users. The team then attempted to seek emergency financing to maintain project progress towards the mainnet launch but was unable to raise the necessary funds.Currently, the team is gradually shutting down applications and the Discord community. User point balances will be retained, but the team cannot promise any future rights for the points. The team still hopes to complete protocol development and launch applications in the future.According to the tokenized asset platform RootData, Linera has raised a total of $12 million in funding, with investors including a16z Crypto, GSR, Tribe Capital, Flow Traders, Laser Digital, and others.

According to Cointelegraph, in response to a previous report by The Wall Street Journal regarding European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde pressuring Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to block Binance's MiCA license application, a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that they "do not comment on speculative reports" and reiterated their intention to seek long-term compliance under the EU MiCA framework.Previously, Binance applied for a MiCA license in Greece in January 2026. In mid-June, reports indicated that the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) planned to reject the application. Binance subsequently withdrew the application a few days before the MiCA deadline on July 1, stating that they would seek authorization from other EU member states. The European Central Bank and the Hellenic Capital Market Commission have not responded to the related reports.

Amazon announced that it will raise the minimum starting hourly wage for core operations employees in the U.S. (delivery drivers and fulfillment center employees) to $20, with an average hourly wage approaching $24, and a $1 increase for eligible employees.Udit Madan, Amazon's Senior Vice President, stated in the company blog: After accounting for the value of industry-leading benefits, the average total compensation exceeds $32 per hour. This pay raise investment exceeds $1.5 billion.New benefits include Day 1 Financial low-cost banking system, eligibility for First Tech Federal Credit Union membership, a 20% in-store discount at Whole Foods Market, and a 10% discount on Amazon grocery orders. Existing benefits include free Prime membership, prepaid education programs, and healthcare coverage.

Crypto In America host Eleanor Terrett reported that seven Democratic senators, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Ruben Gallego, and Angela Alsobrooks, stated that they are "committed to passing the Clarity Act in a bipartisan manner."This statement comes as both sides are making initial efforts to restart bipartisan negotiations and assess the willingness of all parties to return to the negotiating table and push for the passage of the Clarity Act before the end of the year. This information comes from three informed sources.