Category: Business

In a recent podcast, CZ cited $HYPE’s past token distribution and asset custody structure as a reason for the delay in its Binance spot listing.

According to CZ’s statements, $HYPE’s distribution and custody arrangements may not have met the risk management requirements that Binance was looking for in its listing processes at the time.

However, CZ also noted that conditions may have changed in the current situation. This statement suggests that $HYPE’s previous absence from the Binance spot market may not be explained solely by listing requests or market conditions. Nevertheless, CZ did not publicly share a detailed technical explanation for Binance’s past assessment.

$HYPE Listed on Binance!

Shortly before CZ’s statements, Binance announced that it would list $HYPE with the seed tag “$HYPE/USDT, $HYPE/USDC and $HYPE/TRY” trading pairs on September 24, 2026.

As you may recall, in August, US President Donald Trump stated that US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins was working to bring Hyperliquid to the US market.

*This is not investment advice.

Bitcoin $BTC$83,900.87 traded at $83,164 in the European morning, down 0.57% since midnight UTC while the rest of the crypto market was mixed, with 50 constituents of the CoinDesk 100 higher and 50 lower.

The 24-hour pictures is weaker as bitcoin lost around 1%, falling from a peak of $84,400 during Tuesday’s U.S. session. The CoinDesk DeFi index (DFX) fell 2.3%, the worst performance in the index family, as aave AAVE$160.60 retreated 4.4% after leading Tuesday’s gains with an 11% jump.

Traditional markets were firmer, with S&P 500 futures up 0.27% and the Stoxx 600 up 0.74% in morning trade. That came even after the 30-year Treasury yield crossed 5.6% on Tuesday, its highest since June 2002, and the 10-year reached a fresh 2007 high near 5.3%, according to CNBC. Brent crude traded at $96.43 after falling on Tuesday, well below the $100 level that accompanied Monday’s crypto selloff.

An internal team would check that those protections work and that problems are fixed. An independent auditor would assess the controls, while a committee of each company’s board would receive the findings and oversee fixes.

That would give outside reviewers a role in checking the safeguards companies rely on to keep experimental models contained.

Still, the agreement leaves the choice of auditors with the companies and sets no deadline for implementing the measures. Some of the steps are ones the companies already take in some form, according to AP.

Read More: OpenAI says its new ‘Astra’ AI can build attacks without human help

How AI agents are playing havoc

The accord follows a string of incidents in which experimental AI agents broke into computer systems they were never cleared to access, including OpenAI test agents that reached servers run by Hugging Face, a platform where developers share AI models.

An OpenAI agent also accessed an Australian government Medicare portal on June. 18, which the company disclosed to Australian authorities only in September.

Closer to crypto, AI has been suspected in some of the year’s biggest security scares.

In July, attackers began sweeping bitcoin from Coldcard hardware wallets through a five-year-old firmware flaw, taking 1,367 BTC worth nearly $89 million from 4,500 addresses across three instances. Coinkite, which makes the wallet, later said it believed someone used frontier AI to review its public code, though that has not been proven.

Following shareholder criticism, Metaplanet on Sept. 11 reduced the potential share pool by 41% to 188.2 million, which the company said extinguished over $220 million in potential warrant value. It ended automatic adjustments for equity issued after Sept. 1, 2025, and added staggered exercise restrictions running through 2031. Shares already received through exercises remain locked up until August 2031.

The changes improved fully diluted bitcoin per share by approximately 8.8%, the company said. Exercised and unexercised rights represent approximately 12.5% of total shares, according to directors.

CEO Simon Gerovich, the only director holding the rights, did not participate in the review’s deliberations or resolutions, the directors said.

However, the letter does not address the 64 million shares Gerovich received by exercising rights in August, before the Sept. 11 reset, or concerns about MMXX Ventures. MMXX Ventures is a Metaplanet shareholder whose share sales and Gerovich’s personal economic interest in the entity have also drawn investor questions. Metaplanet has previously said those shares will not be returned because exercises were valid under the terms in force at the time.

Metaplanet shares closed 2% higher on Wednesday at 286 yen.

Read More: Metaplanet CEO breaks silence but shareholders say the hard questions remain unanswered

The ruling follows prison sentences imposed in July 2025 after an FCA prosecution. Bedi received five years and four months, while Mavanga received six years and six months.

How the Fraud Reached Investors

Between February 2017 and June 2019, Bedi and Mavanga cold-called consumers and persuaded them to put money into fake crypto investment opportunities. They operated through companies including CCX Capital and Astaria Group LLP. The FCA’s account of their 2024 convictions describes a professional-looking website used to offer investors high returns.

The pair had already been sentenced for the fraud when the FCA pursued the orders for repayment. Bedi pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to breach the general prohibition under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, and money laundering offenses. Mavanga pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to breach that prohibition, and possessing false identification documents with improper intent.

Unexpected approaches and offers of unusually high returns are among the warning signs associated with crypto investment fraud. In this case, the cold calls led investors toward opportunities that did not exist. The scheme ran for more than two years, from February 2017 to June 2019.

What the Orders Mean for Victims

Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, a confiscation order requires an offender to pay the benefit gained from criminal conduct or the value of available assets, whichever is lower. The FCA said Bedi and Mavanga have three months to pay. Failure to do so could add up to five years to Bedi’s prison term and two years to Mavanga’s.

The FCA said it will return money collected through the orders to affected investors. Its announcement establishes a path to repayment, while the amount victims ultimately receive depends on the funds recovered. Anyone affected by this scheme who has not heard from the regulator can contact the FCA Consumer Helpline.

People seeking the return of stolen funds can also face fraudulent recovery offers from criminals posing as officials. The FCA has separately warned about fake communications claiming to come from the regulator. In this case, the agency says it has contacted identified victims and will distribute funds recovered through its court action.

MIM held outside protocol addresses comes to nearly $22 million. “In other words, the protocol sits on approximately $21 million of bad debt, and MIM’s effective backing is below $0.04 (>95% unbacked),” the proposal says.

Why the Repeg Died

The team had studied raising interest rates across cauldrons to force liquidations, generate buying pressure and push MIM back toward $1. Abracadabra ran that playbook in June, when it hiked rates across all cauldrons, halted Curve bribes and suspended direct incentives after MIM fell about 50% below peg.

The proposal now rejects that approach. Liquidations would bleed value to liquidators through the MIM discount and liquidation fees, producing what it calls a “small, short term (minutes-long) price increase in MIM, that would benefit only the fastest sellers.”

With no way to repeg MIM, the proposal says, the protocol cannot function, because there is no point in borrowing MIM below peg. Work on a neobank product is tied to MIM and therefore adds no value to the project.

LayerZero is retiring its V1 relayer on Dec. 15. That puts roughly $1 million of collateral in the Stargate USDC and Stargate USDT cauldrons at risk, according to the proposal.

Ether and a Merkl Claim

Under the plan, collateral in eligible cauldrons would be emptied using the deployStrategy and setStrategy functions, which the team says should recover about 99.75% of it, then swapped into ether.

A snapshot of MIM balances and cauldron positions would be taken no earlier than Oct. 15. A Merkl contract would then distribute ether pro rata: borrowers receive the value of their collateral minus their MIM debt at $1 per MIM, and MIM holders split what is left, which the proposal puts at about $0.04 per MIM.

Unclaimed funds get swept after six months and redistributed to MIM holders who did claim, up to $1 per MIM, then to borrowers in proportion to their debt. Immutable positions stay untouched and withdrawable onchain. The interface stays up but will not be actively maintained.

The team engaged legal counsel before drafting the plan. Without a recovery path, the proposal says, the protocol “should be unwound and liquidated, or become at risk of facing users enforcing a liquidation via legal actions,” and failing to rescue funds at risk “could constitute legal liability.”

The Vote Closes Wednesday

Voting opened Sept. 29 at 05:24 UTC and closes Sept. 30 at 17:24 UTC. Two addresses have cast ballots: one voted for with about 100 million staked SPELL, the other against with about 523,000.

Turnout stands at 3.4% of the space’s 3 billion quorum. The 11 proposals posted to the space before this one, going back to December 2024, each drew more than 3 billion votes.

The proposal was submitted by an address that is not listed among the Snapshot space’s admins or members. Abracadabra’s X account has not posted since July 6. The abracadabra.money landing page carries a banner for “Abracadabra V2” and describes MIM as “a stablecoin with its value pegged to the USD, aiming to maintain a consistent 1:1 ratio.”

MIM is up 33% over 24 hours and trades roughly 97% below its $1 peg, CoinGecko data show. It is down 49% over seven days. SPELL is up 20% over 30 days.

Three Hacks and a Handover

Abracadabra lost $6.5 million to a rounding bug in cauldron logic in January 2024 and $13 million in a March 2025 attack on GMX-linked vaults on Arbitrum. A third exploit hit deprecated Cauldron V4 contracts on Ethereum in October 2025. The team said at the time that 1.79 million MIM were minted by the attacker and that it “bought back from the Market the entirety of affected MIM, completely reversing the effect of the attack.”

Control of the protocol changed hands in June. A Snapshot vote that closed June 4 transferred operational stewardship, treasury management and development to an entity called Anubis, listing Greg Dewitt on operations and Paul Parker and Glenn Kennedy as directors. The proposal named dao5, founded by Tekin Salimi, as a strategic partner through Alapin Holdings, alongside Nemesis Trading, and said Jack Niewold would serve as project lead. The Rodman Law Group acted as counsel to Anubis. Two addresses voted, both in favor, with a combined 5.5 billion votes.

That June proposal set out to “revitalize Abracadabra as a leading DeFi protocol” and listed expansion of utility and demand for SPELL among its priorities. The current proposal says the situation the team found “was far worse than initially expected, as not all the collateral present represents valid MIM backing.”

DefiLlama puts Abracadabra’s deposits at about $5 million.

More than $220 million in crypto positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with long traders suffering most of the losses, according to Coinglass data.

Bitcoin’s open interest slid 2.20% over the last 24 hours. A fall in open interest alongside a price increase typically suggests short sellers are buying back contracts to close losing positions.

Investor sentiment leaned toward “Greed,” according to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.

The global cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.96 trillion, up 0.30% over the last 24 hours.

Stocks Extend Losses

The stock market continued its downward trend on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 131.59 points, or 0.26%, to close at 51,349.9.The S&P 500 dropped 0.16% to end at 7,670.84,while the Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.09% to close at 26,797.54.

Bond yields , while talks aimed at ending the war in Iran made limited progress.

The returns on long-dated 10-year Treasury notes climbed to 5.29%, its highest level since 2007, while the 30-year yield rose above 5.6%, reaching its highest level since June 2002.

Bitcoin Rally Showing Cracks?

On-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant noted that Bitcoin profit-taking has reached its highest level since Dec. 2024, a signal that demand is “fading.”

“The bull market is intact, but the rally is showing cracks. $80,000 is the first support to watch,” CryptoQuant added.

Blockchain research firm Santiment highlighted that wallets holding 10-10,000 Bitcoin accumulated 41,025 $BTC over the past 10 days, increasing their share to 67.93% of the total supply.

However, retail wallets under 0.01 $BTC have remained largely “flat” since the $87,000 price peak.

“The current divergence is encouraging, but it isn’t a guaranteed price signal,” Santiment stated. “That combination has repeatedly appeared before stronger Bitcoin moves.”

Photo Courtesy: Marc Bruxelle on Shutterstock.com

An ETF is a fund you buy and sell like a stock. For anyone who never wanted a crypto exchange account or a wallet, that is the whole appeal: the tokens sit inside the fund, and the shares show up next to everything else in your brokerage app.

The timing is hard to miss, especially conisdering Near has been on a roll lately, skyrocketing since May.

It is not the first spike this year. Near jumped 28% in 24 hours in May on privacy, AI and scaling upgrades, then slid back toward $2 over the summer. Near currently trades for just above $5 at a $6.5 billion market capitalization. To put that in perspective, though, the token is still down some 75% from its all-time high above $20.

What Near actually is

Near is a layer-1 blockchain, meaning a base network that other apps are built on, in the same category as Ethereum and Solana. Its main network went live in 2020.

The AI angle traces to co-founder Illia Polosukhin, a co-creator of the Transformer, the architecture behind ChatGPT-style models. Near launched an AI research lab in May 2024, led by Polosukhin and co-founder Alex Skidanov.

Bitwise’s pitch leans on AI agents, software that takes actions for you, like paying for things or booking a trip.

“We’re moving toward a world in which AI agents increasingly act on our behalf, coordinate with one another, and participate in the economy,” Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said in a statement. “We believe this shift—to an agentic economy where more and more happens through AI agents—could unlock an enormous new frontier for the global economy. $NEAR is building a platform for that future.”

Bitwise adds that Near Intents, a service for swapping assets across different blockchains, has handled more than $32 billion in volume.

Bitwise’s fund also stakes tokens. Staking means locking up tokens to help validate a network’s transactions, and in return the network pays rewards, a bit like interest but paid in more tokens. Bitwise says its in-house team will stake the fund’s Near to capture average rewards of about 5%, which accrue to shareholders as a rise in the fund’s value per share.

Nothing about that is guaranteed. Bitwise’s disclosures say rewards can change, and staking carries “slashing” risk, meaning penalties when a validator breaks the network’s rules. The fund also holds only one asset, and Bitwise warns investors could lose a significant part or all of their money.

Bitwise filed Delaware paperwork for a Near fund in April 2025, when the token traded at $2.61. Grayscale followed in January 2026, filing to convert its existing Near trust into an ETF while Near sat around $1.54.

The road got smoother in September 2025, when the SEC approved generic listing standards that let exchanges list qualifying crypto funds without a separate approval for each one. Litecoin, Hedera, and Solana funds followed that October, including Bitwise’s Solana staking ETF.

Bitwise charges 0.75% a year for NRR, or $75 on every $10,000 invested.

Investors later faced frozen accounts and withdrawal problems, according to the agency.

TSAI Allegedly Sold Fake Trading Bots

TSAI allegedly raised at least $2.8 million from 1,715 investors by offering AI trading bots priced between $100 and $500,000. The SEC said the program also offered payments for referring new investors.

The agency alleges the bots did not exist and that deposits were routed into consolidation wallets. Investors seeking withdrawals were allegedly asked to pay additional verification fees or taxes.

The SEC is seeking court orders to halt the alleged schemes, recover investor funds and impose financial penalties. The allegations have not been adjudicated by a court.

Crypto trades around the clock, every day of the year. This has put pressure on the U.S. stock market, which still trades around a weekday session, even as brokerages and alternative trading systems have expanded equity trading well beyond the traditional 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. window.

Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have filed to expand their trading hours, while Robinhood launched its 24 Hour Market in 2023. That service still stops on weekends. Robinhood now plans to fill that gap by offering a selection of stocks and ETFs on Saturdays and Sundays through Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system.

“More assets, and then more hours,” Fatehpuria said, describing Robinhood’s strategy.

Perhaps the bigger break with the traditional brokerage model comes from Robinhood Agents, which the trading platform announced earlier this year.

Customers will be able to create an AI agent inside the app, selecting a model from OpenAI or Anthropic, and give it access to a separate trading account. The agent can analyze markets, build watchlists and trade stocks, options and crypto.

It can eventually do that repeatedly without waiting for a new prompt. A feature called Loops will allow customers to give an agent standing instructions to monitor markets and execute a strategy when specified conditions occur.