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The Financial Services Commission of South Korea has proposed regulatory guidelines for the issuance and trading of security tokens, intending to allow stocks, bonds, funds, and certain fractional investment securities to be issued and circulated in token form. The relevant regulatory framework is scheduled to take effect on February 4, 2027.According to the proposal, securities token issuance companies that directly manage client accounts must have a paid-in capital of at least 4 billion Korean Won and be equipped with dedicated compliance and technical personnel. The revision of capital market regulations will also introduce an over-the-counter trading license for bonds and limit individual investors' annual net purchases at each over-the-counter exchange to within 100 million Korean Won.The proposal will be open for public consultation from Friday until November 11, after which it will enter the approval process. South Korea previously announced a roadmap to advance the transition of securities issuance and trading to distributed ledger infrastructure in three phases.

Lloyds Banking Group and Visa completed their first stablecoin settlement test, settling a total of $750,000 in Visa payment obligations using USDC within 7 days, with funds arriving in as little as one hour.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed a reform plan aimed at expanding the channels for individual investors to participate in the private market. The proposal allows registered investment advisors to charge a performance fee of up to 20% based on fund performance, attracting more private management institutions to serve individual investors.SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stated that he hopes to explore ways to expand individual investor participation in the private market while preventing fraud and misconduct. The SEC also proposed to broaden the definition of "accredited investors."

Analyst Darkfost stated that the demand from Bitcoin retail investors (trading volume of $0 - $10,000) has rapidly disappeared during this round of BTC price increase, with a 30-day change rate shifting from over 17% to -3.5%.

The Illinois Department of Revenue has released the legislative draft details of a 0.2% digital asset transaction tax, clarifying that stablecoins will be considered taxable digital assets, while non-fungible tokens are not subject to taxation. The draft stipulates that DeFi transactions are generally exempt; however, fees paid by users that are deemed "valuable consideration," such as protocol fees for operating or maintaining the platform, may trigger taxation.Only network fees and exchange fees paid to liquidity providers do not trigger this tax. Cross-chain bridging conducted through digital asset brokers and paid with consideration will be regarded as taxable exchange activities. If centralized exchanges charge fees when transferring to self-custody wallets, it may also be subject to taxation. This tax law was approved in June and is set to take effect on January 1, 2027. The Illinois Department of Revenue is seeking public comments on the draft, with a deadline of October 30.

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research Department's South Korea stock analyst Chris Cha stated in a report on September 23 that KOSPI has the conditions for a short-term tactical breakout, but the continuous flow of liquidity from South Korean retail investors into the cryptocurrency market will make the index's subsequent upward movement more reliant on foreign capital and local institutions reconfiguring. The report noted that concerns about the Federal Reserve's interest rates have been partially digested by the market, and risk appetite has shifted towards proxy AI themes.The report pointed out that South Korean memory chips provide fundamental support, with fourth-quarter DRAM contract prices expected to grow double digits quarter-on-quarter, and the ramp-up of HBM4 capacity will continue to limit the supply of standard server DRAM. Samsung Electronics' large shareholder returns, continuous buying by institutions, and foreign capital turning into net buying may drive KOSPI towards the resistance zone of 7000 to 7200 points.The report also indicated that the capacity of local South Korean retail investors to absorb has weakened. After Bitcoin returned to $85,000, cryptocurrency trading in South Korea has heated up. According to DefiLlama data cited in the report, Upbit's single-day spot trading volume on June 13 was approximately $770 million, which rose to $1.817 billion on September 22, an increase of about 136%. Based on the total trading volume of $3.27 billion on that day across South Korea's five major trading platforms, Upbit alone accounted for over half. Goldman Sachs believes this will make KOSPI more reliant on foreign and institutional buying in the future, and October is a critical window to test whether foreign capital will continue to increase its investment in South Korean semiconductor and AI assets.

According to CoinDesk, while Wall Street giants like JPMorgan and Citi have processed huge amounts of money through blockchain, tokenized payment services are still primarily aimed at institutional clients and licensed networks. JPMorgan's Kinexys blockchain platform has processed over $3 trillion, and Citi Token Services handles billions of dollars in cross-border payments daily, neither of which is open to regular savings users.The UK challenger bank Monument Bank is attempting to fill this gap. The bank has a balance sheet size of approximately $2.4 billion and plans to tokenize up to £250 million (about $335 million) of retail customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight. These deposits will still earn interest, be fully backed by the bank, can be exchanged 1:1 for pounds, and are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The project utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to protect customer data and meet regulatory requirements, allowing users to engage without needing to understand or directly use cryptocurrencies.Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that most tokenization projects are currently internal bank projects and have not yet truly allowed retail users to participate directly in tokenization. In the long term, the bank plans to offer fractional private equity, tokenized structured products, and Lombard loans to customers through regular banking applications under compliance, and is considering licensing related infrastructure to other banks through its subsidiary Monument Technology.

Commissioner Hester M. Peirce of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made a statement regarding the committee's approval of the "innovation exemption."This exemption is a temporary, conditional arrangement that allows "tokenized securities venues" (TSV) to trade NMS "National Market System" stocks on-chain: TSV provides automated market maker liquidity pools and sets participant admission standards, and is exempt from the definition of "exchange" under the Securities Exchange Act; specific suppliers providing liquidity to TSV are exempt from the definition of "dealer." If issuers do not wish for their stocks to trade on TSV, they can choose to opt-out. The exemption is aimed at U.S. entities, and both existing institutions and new entrants can participate.Peirce emphasized that the committee does not presuppose that parties relying on this exemption necessarily fall under the definitions of "exchange" or "dealer," but rather hopes to first observe who is using it and how it is being used before making regulatory judgments.Peirce clearly delineated the boundaries of this order: it is not about decentralized finance. Systems that are driven by automated software and are truly decentralized do not raise fundamental concerns of securities regulation, namely that intermediaries trusted by investors may be foolish, careless, or compromised; investors using permissionless smart contracts for peer-to-peer transactions do not fundamentally require an exemption. TSV is merely one model of on-chain securities trading, and the committee is open to other models, as on-chain trading models that can comply with existing Securities Exchange Act requirements may not require an exemption at all.

In August, U.S. retail sales increased by 1.2% month-on-month, higher than the expected 0.8%. The previous value was revised from -0.6% to -0.5%.

According to CoinDesk, London challenger bank Monument Bank has postponed its £250 million (approximately $330 million) project to tokenize UK retail bank deposits for several months, as the bank has been unable to find a local crypto custodian that meets the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) standards and can handle zero-knowledge privacy proofs.Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that the bank originally planned to tokenize customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight, hoping to launch the world's first tokenized deposits two months ago, but it is now expected to take another two months, with a retail customer launch in November. To meet regulatory requirements, the bank expanded its search for custodial partners to overseas, ultimately finding a Canadian custodian approved by the FCA.Midnight is a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain project funded by Charles Hoskinson, which keeps customer information within the Monument system through zero-knowledge proofs while allowing the bank to prove compliance on-chain and provide audit records to regulators. Monument Bank announced the project in March this year, planning to offer tokenized private equity, structured products, and automated Lombard loans to "mass affluent" customers with investable assets ranging from £50,000 to £5 million.Bhandari stated that customer deposits will continue to earn interest, fully backed by Monument, and can be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for pounds, protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), with a limit of £120,000 per person or company.

The meme coin LAPTOP, launched by Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President, announced the airdrop details on social media, with 20% of the total supply of LAPTOP tokens to be distributed for free to the community. Among this, 2% is reserved for users who incurred losses in Trump-related meme coins and other designated groups, 8% is allocated to Hunter Biden Substack subscribers as of September 6, 2026, and another 10% is set aside for future community airdrops.Claims will open on September 9, 2026, at 8:00 AM (Eastern Time), and community users will have 30 days to claim from the launch date. LAPTOP is a meme coin created for entertainment and community engagement purposes and does not represent any equity, ownership, or other economic interests.

According to Bitcoin News monitoring, Liquid Federation released an incident report stating that attackers exploited a cache vulnerability in the Elements range proof verification to mint approximately 4,000 unbacked L-BTC, which were then exchanged for real BTC through the authorized exit anchoring path via SideSwap. The Liquid authority considered the related transactions valid and released approximately 4,000 BTC from the federal reserve.Before the incident, Liquid held about 4,205 BTC, and the minimum reserve dropped to 197 BTC before operations were suspended. The self-identified white-hat attackers have since returned 3,400 BTC, with about 598.5 BTC still unreturned. No private keys were leaked, and the exit anchoring mechanism itself operated as designed. Liquid is currently still offline, and Blockstream is preparing to release an emergency version of Elements v23.3.4 and is working to restore the network with 1:1 Bitcoin reserve support.

The IDC report "China Retail Cloud Market Share, 2025" shows that Alibaba Cloud ranks first with a market share of 30.4%. Infrastructure is the largest component of the retail cloud market, with Alibaba Cloud maintaining the top position with a 37.5% share.Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive AI technology system covering "Chip---Cloud---Model---Application" to retail enterprises, offering products and services that include infrastructure, data platforms, large models, and industry applications. The integration of AI technology with retail business processes covers scenarios such as smart marketing, intelligent shopping guides, smart customer service, user insights, product operations, and supply chain management.Adidas has created a dedicated AI product design platform based on Alibaba Cloud's artificial intelligence platform PAI and the Qianwen large model. Anta, in collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, has developed the "AI Planning" intelligent agent platform based on the Lingyang AgentOne and the Qianwen large model. Coach, L'Oréal, LAWSON, China Duty Free Group, and Xiaopei Pets have also accessed related capabilities for intelligent upgrades.