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According to PR Newswire, BitMine increased its holdings by 12,535 Ethereum last week. As of October 18, 2026, its total Ethereum holdings reached 6,041,481, accounting for approximately 4.9% of the total Ethereum supply.Currently, the total value of cryptocurrencies, cash, and other investment assets held by BitMine is approximately $15.1 billion, which includes $582 million in cash and securities, 215 Bitcoin, $180 million in equity assets from Beast Industries, and a $74 million investment in Eightco Holdings (ORBS). Additionally, the number of Ethereum staked remains at 5,067,309 (84% of total holdings), valued at approximately $12 billion, with a current annualized staking yield of about $309 million.Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine, stated in the company's weekly report that in recent weeks, investor risk appetite has contracted due to concerns over AI financing and AI model security issues, the escalation of the US-Iran conflict, anxiety over the US midterm elections, and a general rise in global bond yields. This has led to a sell-off of AI stocks (including semiconductor and memory chip stocks), further resulting in deleveraging in the Korean and Taiwanese markets, which are dominated by semiconductor and memory chip stocks.He pointed out that crypto assets are widely held in the US, South Korea, and Taiwan, and as investors in these regions reduce their risk exposure, it naturally creates spillover pressure on the crypto market. However, historically, when fundamentals remain robust while prices decline, it often presents an attractive risk-reward opportunity. Given that crypto assets benefit from the modernization of global financial infrastructure and AI intelligence, he believes this time is no exception.

Metaplanet founder and CEO Simon Gerovich announced that the transaction between Metaplanet and Super League Enterprise, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLE) has been formally approved at the company's shareholder meeting.This move marks a key step for Metaplanet in transforming from a Bitcoin treasury company to a global Bitcoin-native financial platform.It is reported that Metaplanet injected 2,100 Bitcoins and $2.5 million in cash into the NASDAQ-listed company Super League Enterprise (SLE), with a total value of approximately $134.6 million, in exchange for a controlling stake. In return, Metaplanet received approximately 44.86 million newly issued shares of common stock (at $3 per share), as well as preferred stock and warrants. After the transaction is completed, Metaplanet will hold about 95.7% of SLE's issued common stock, becoming its controlling shareholder.According to Gerovich, after the transaction is completed, Superplanet will serve as Metaplanet's Bitcoin treasury platform listed in the United States, which will enable it to directly access the U.S. capital markets and gain more agile and flexible financing capabilities. Strategically, combined with Metaplanet Securities established in Japan, this approval will provide the company with complementary platforms in the two most important capital markets globally (the U.S. and Japan).This will not only facilitate its international financing and capital allocation but also further advance its business expansion in areas such as Bitcoin treasury, financial services, financial products, and asset management. Gerovich stated that this is a new milestone on Metaplanet's long-term growth path, and the company will continue to update the public on the latest progress regarding the completion of this transaction.

According to CoinDesk, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that he is personally developing a new programming language for the Cardano network and collaborating with Input Output Global engineer Lucas Rosa. Lucas Rosa is a co-creator of Aiken, one of Cardano's main smart contract languages. Hoskinson posted on the X platform that this will be the first programming language to combine user transaction completion intentions with cryptographic proofs.It is reported that the language will support three tools: transaction intent, data with carry proofs, and Groth16 proofs. Transaction intent allows users to specify the goals they want to achieve, while leaving the specific steps to the application, for example, traders can request that a token be exchanged for another only when the final price meets certain conditions, without specifying the exact path.Data with carry proofs can attach cryptographic evidence to information, proving that it complies with specific rules, allowing other applications to verify without recalculating. Groth16 is a widely used proof system that can generate small-sized, fast-verifying proofs, demonstrating that conditions have been met without exposing private data.With the combination of the three, developers can build applications that coordinate transactions, check complex conditions, and pass verified information between services, ultimately verified by Cardano with a small proof. Currently, Cardano developers mainly use Haskell-based Plutus and Aiken to write smart contracts, while Input Output Global, founded by Hoskinson, has its own privacy blockchain Midnight with its language Compact. The name, public code, and release date of this new language have not yet been announced.

The Hyperliquid Policy Council (HPC) stated that it has submitted a comment letter to the U.S. SEC in support of its proposed Regulation Crypto Assets and suggested 5 adjustments to the final rules to further clarify the regulatory boundaries regarding token issuance, airdrops, secondary market trading, and safe harbors.

According to Bloomberg, Spencer Applebaum, General Partner and Co-Head of Venture Capital at Multicoin Capital, stated that unlike institutions such as Paradigm, Framework Ventures, and Haun Ventures, which are expanding their investment scope beyond the crypto space, Multicoin will not extend its investment scope to pure AI projects, as its strengths lie in the crypto field, and believes that many investors are "forcing" a search for intersections between crypto and AI.The $422 million venture capital fund raised by Multicoin in 2022 has been deployed slowly due to the decline in valuations of startup projects following the collapse of FTX. Spencer Applebaum also mentioned that HYPE remains the largest position in Multicoin's hedge fund. Currently, Multicoin's assets under management stand at $2.7 billion.

Siemens stated that it is collaborating with NVIDIA to promote the development of AI-driven autonomous factories.

Snapshot posted on platform X, stating that ENS is voting to activate ENSv2 on the Ethereum mainnet through an on-chain proposal that includes 15 calls. This proposal is executed in one go by the execution contract controlled by the ENS DAO, which, if passed, will freeze new registrations of version 1 while allowing un-migrated domain names to continue renewing.After the upgrade, ENSv2 will allow owners to customize the subdomain registry and grant resolution rights individually without transferring domain ownership. In addition, ENS Labs will synchronize eligible domain names, open v2 registrations and migrations, and transfer the remaining management rights to the ENS DAO.

Ethereum research forum researcher Pierre proposed a faster, aggregatable, and quantum-resistant privacy pool solution.This solution ports a Tornado Cash-like privacy pool to the hash-based SNARK system Flock, which may possess post-quantum security, and uses SHA-256. The solution replaces large circuits with small "single compression" circuits.

According to Cointelegraph, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has added nine crypto asset service providers (CASP) to the registration list of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), including the Austrian entity MEGE zweite of BingX, the Italian subsidiary of YouHodler, and Openbank Deutschland under Santander, bringing the total number of registered CASPs to 375.

NVIDIA has requested Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology to use TSMC's 3nm process for the production of NVHBM, while the core bare chips will utilize sixth-generation DRAM technology. Samsung Electronics has decided to accept NVIDIA's technical requirements but will not comment on matters involving customers.

On October 19, Wu Qing, Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, stated at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Conference that they will adhere to a steady approach, fully maintain the safety and stability of the capital market, closely monitor domestic and international market dynamics, and strengthen risk assessment and policy tool reserves.Wu Qing also stated that they will consolidate and improve the mechanisms for stabilizing the market, focus on strengthening the prevention of risks in new types of businesses, remain highly vigilant against new risk points such as leveraged products linked to A-shares from abroad, and continuously build a solid risk defense wall for the capital market.

According to token unlocking data from the crypto asset data platform RootData, AltLayer (ALT) will unlock approximately 24.659 million tokens at 8:00 AM Beijing time on October 26, with a value of about 2.13 million USD.

Fortune Protocol officially announces a collaboration with the AI Agent platform X-Agent. The two parties will jointly explore the combination of prediction markets and proactive Personal Agents, promoting the extension of prediction markets from information inquiry tools to personalized, proactive information service scenarios.In this collaboration, Fortune Protocol will provide prediction market scenarios and related market data capabilities, while X-Agent will leverage its advantages in Personal Agent technology and application design to jointly explore how AI Agents can continuously track events of interest to users, identify changes in market probabilities, provide contextual interpretations, and take further actions with user authorization.The two parties will first advance the design of application scenarios and the development of conceptual prototypes, exploring the application potential of prediction markets in the next generation of personal AI Agents and the Agent Economy.

The Governor of the People's Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, stated at the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Meeting that it will pilot further facilitation for foreign financial institutions to conduct RMB purchase and sale operations in the domestic foreign exchange market.The People's Bank plans to allow 8 domestic and foreign RMB offshore clearing banks to conduct proprietary trading in the domestic interbank foreign exchange market, promoting the integrated development of onshore and offshore markets.

Stan Kladko, co-founder of SKALE Labs, announced on X to the SKALE community that he has stepped down from his position as Chief Technology Officer and board member of SKALE Labs, which he co-founded in 2017, but he will continue to serve as a member of the SKALE Foundation board. He expressed the desire to clarify the actions he is requesting from the foundation and believes the community should be involved in the discussion.Stan Kladko stated: SKALE is a protocol that relies on a small team of engineers who are responsible for developing, debugging, and maintaining the network online over the long term. These individuals have the best understanding of the boundaries of what is technically feasible and infeasible, but currently, there are no builders on the foundation's board. He believes that a protocol foundation without builders involved will make decisions on matters such as the roadmap, funding, and network economics, but will lack the necessary people to implement those decisions. He mentioned that successful protocols, from Ethereum to Cosmos, always involve engineers in discussions about long-term direction.The proposal put forward by Stan Kladko is to expand the foundation's board by three seats, to be filled by individuals with a strong background in software and protocol engineering. He stated that this proposal has been formally submitted to the foundation, and updates will be shared as they can be disclosed. He called for those who agree that building SKALE should participate in governance, and validators, delegators, application teams, and token holders can publicly express their stance, stating that he will continue to build SKALE.

Google Research's open-source AI toolchain self-improvement framework Harness² allows AI Agents to automatically modify system prompts, memories, skills, tool rules, as well as scripts and plugins without retraining the model. The project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license and supports OpenCode and Codex. Its core mechanism enables the Agent to learn through trial and error, proposing several improvement plans when encountering new tasks, which are then executed and compared by different versions of the Agent, ultimately combining to form a more suitable solution.Even without a standard answer, the system can seek improvement directions based on the actual execution process. After the task is completed, the system remembers which modifications were effective and the reasons for them, for reference in similar future problems. Google tested using GLM-5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash. On WorkBuddy-Bench, GLM-5 paired with OpenCode improved its average score from 64.2 to 75.7 after just one round of optimization, surpassing the unoptimized Gemini 3.5 Flash's score of 72.4.In legal task testing, the pass rate for GLM-5's partial scoring criteria increased from 59.6% to 71.4%. In the experiment, Claude Opus 4.8 was defaulted to propose and implement improvements, while GLM-5 and Gemini were primarily responsible for executing tasks, not relying entirely on their own evolution. Domestic developer Joseph Zhou demonstrated an experiment where Harness² integrated with Jev 1.14, claiming that the performance on visual tasks continuously improved.

Phoenix Technology reported that on October 19, ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform Volcano Engine launched the Seedance Premium AI Drama Incentive Program, providing financial incentives for premium AI short dramas produced using Seedance and launched on the Hongguo Short Drama App. This program excludes live-action dramas and is only open to AI comics, AI simulated dramas, and other AI-generated forms. The video content of the submitted works must be entirely produced using Seedance, with the usage of Seedance 2.5 accounting for more than 50%, and the generation format through API or tool platforms is not limited.Works must rank within the top 50 AI dramas of the month based on Hongguo's popularity index and pass the review. The applicant can be a company or an individual and must ensure that the information is true and complete. The incentives are divided into three tiers based on monthly rankings: for TOP 1 to TOP 10, 200,000 yuan per work; for TOP 11 to TOP 20, 100,000 yuan per work; for TOP 21 to TOP 50, 50,000 yuan per work. The distribution method is 50% cash plus 50% equivalent vouchers. The vouchers can be chosen by the applicant at the time of registration from three options, including an equivalent Volcano Ark API Token, equivalent "Drama Creation" usage rights, or equivalent "Comic Creation Tool" usage rights. Selected works must cooperate to complete the verification of the work and generation records, and if necessary, submit original generation materials. Those who do not pass the verification or have false declarations will be disqualified from receiving incentives. The deadline for the first phase of the activity is January 31, 2027.

According to official news from IoTeX, the Zanzibar hard fork has been activated on the IoTeX mainnet (block height 53,533,081). According to IIP-59, voter rewards will be calculated and distributed on-chain during each reward cycle, eliminating off-chain services and intermediaries, allowing anyone to directly verify each payment on-chain. The first on-chain distribution will take place the following day.This upgrade also strengthens consensus by checking the proof of holding representative keys, preparing for subsequent BLS signature aggregation. Node operators need to upgrade to iotex-core v2.5.1 without the need to modify configurations or resynchronize.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), three addresses that may belong to the same entity/whale redeemed 18.085 million ENA from Ethena within the last hour and deposited all of it into Binance, worth approximately 3.64 million dollars, with an average deposit price of 0.2013 dollars.