Key News from Last Night and This Morning (October 20–21)

Revolut: Currently experiencing a service outage; all customer funds and data are safe

Revolut posted that it is currently experiencing a service outage affecting multiple services, but all customer funds and data are safe and secure. Since discovering the issue this morning, the team has been working on a fix; it deeply apologizes to affected users.

Bloomberg: Founders Fund discovered Polymarket's CEO misappropriated company funds before considering an investment

In 2025, when Founders Fund was considering investing in prediction market startup Polymarket, it discovered that CEO Shayne Coplan had used company funds to pay for private jet trips, personal apartment rent, and other personal expenses. At the time, Polymarket had not yet generated any revenue. People familiar with the matter said that before finalizing the investment, Founders Fund explicitly required Coplan to implement the company's then-ongoing remediation measures: improving financial controls and returning the misappropriated funds to the company.

Wintermute: Bitcoin's $82,500 price range will soon be broken; the FOMC meeting may be the key catalyst

Wintermute said in its latest weekly market report that, with the Fed meeting and midterm elections approaching, implied volatility is at a low level, and BTC's oscillating range around $82,500 is expected to see a breakout soon, though the specific direction cannot yet be determined. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on October 28 is the most likely catalyst to break the deadlock, and the outcome could lead in sharply different directions: if the Fed holds rates steady but leans hawkish, the market will price in expectations of a December rate hike ahead of time, pushing yields higher, which would pressure the Nasdaq and drag Bitcoin lower; conversely, if the Fed takes a prudent stance and Q3 earnings beat expectations, that pressure would ease, creating room for bulls to push the price above $87,000.

National Data Group Co., Ltd. established in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei

National Data Group Co., Ltd. has been established in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei. The group is a central state-owned enterprise whose primary responsibility and main business is the development and utilization of data resources, headquartered in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei. It is understood that the group was established to advance the development and utilization of data resources, unlock the value of data as a factor of production, serve the development of artificial intelligence, and foster a thriving data industry ecosystem. After its establishment, under the guidance of relevant authorities, National Data Group will strengthen central-local coordination, deepen industrial collaboration, and promote shared capabilities, shared experience, and jointly expanded business, working together to grow data value, strengthen the data industry, and optimize the data ecosystem.

Binance Alpha to list Axis Robotics (AXIS) on October 21

Binance Alpha will list Axis Robotics (AXIS) on October 21. Once trading opens, eligible users can claim the airdrop using Binance Alpha points on the "Alpha Events" page.

Beast Holdings, a company linked to MrBeast, files two trademark applications in the U.S. covering crypto trading and other services

Beast Holdings, a company associated with well-known YouTube creator MrBeast, filed two trademark applications in the United States on October 13, 2025, covering mobile banking apps, cash advances and microloans, credit and debit card services, investment advice and management, as well as cryptocurrency trading, payment processing, and cryptocurrency exchange through decentralized trading platforms. According to U.S. trademark records, for the "MRBEAST FINANCIAL" and "BEAST FINANCIAL" trademark applications, the company received a "notice of allowance" from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on October 6, 2026, but has not yet completed final registration.

In January of this year, it was reported that Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) announced a $200 million investment in Beast Industries, with the transaction expected to close on January 19.

France passes a bill imposing a 31.4% capital gains tax on Bitcoin-to-stablecoin conversions

France narrowly passed a cryptocurrency tax amendment that would impose a 31.4% capital gains tax on transactions converting crypto assets into stablecoins starting January 2027. However, the amendment still needs approval from the French Senate and must go through the budget reconciliation process before it can formally become law.

Analyst: Bitcoin's supply in profit falls back to 53.8%; investors broadly on the sidelines

Crypto analyst Darkfost posted that Bitcoin is currently in a period full of doubt, with investors broadly on the sidelines. Although profitability in the market has rebounded slightly, it is not yet enough for holders to feel solidly in profit and drive further market development. This state corresponds to the "50% of supply in profit" zone. The ratio had previously briefly exceeded 60% and has now fallen back to 53.8%. This behavior is normal in the late stage of a bear market; after the capitulation phase when supply in profit fell below 40%, it takes time to climb back above the 50% threshold, rebuild investor confidence, and attract new demand. For now, patience is still needed for market behavior to stabilize before supply in profit can consolidate sustainably.

Bybit marketing head Claudia announces departure for personal reasons

Bybit marketing head Claudia posted an announcement that she is leaving Bybit for personal reasons. Claudia said that two years ago she joined the company as a management trainee, working in the CEO's office, responsible for preparing meetings and operations management; she later served successively as head of talent acquisition, head of brand, and head of marketing, and was involved in fiat, bank card, and payment product-related businesses.

Liquid Network: User Swap function now restored

Liquid Network released a recovery progress update: the user Swap function has now been restored, and federation members can use the semi-automated swap service. The asset Peg and balance verification functions will also soon fully return to normal.

Coinbase report: Stablecoins transferred over $400 million per hour on average in Q3; 73% of transactions occurred outside U.S. banking hours

A new report, "The Always-On Dollar," jointly released by Coinbase and The Block Pro Research shows that in Q3 of this year, native stablecoin transfer transactions averaged over $400 million per hour. In the 12 months ending July 31, about 73% of monitored stablecoin transfer transactions occurred outside U.S. banking hours. Adjusted quarterly stablecoin transfer volume has grown 4x since early 2023, reaching $891 billion in Q3; at the current growth rate, it is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2027. In addition, sending a $200 remittance using USDC over the Base network saves about 86% in fees compared with traditional channels.

Payment company Mural completes $15 million Series A led by Tether

New York-based startup Mural has completed a $15 million Series A round led by Tether, with participation from North Island Ventures. This round brings Mural's total funding to $28 million. The company previously completed a $5 million seed round in 2022.

Mural was co-founded in 2022 by former Palantir engineers Sinclair Toffa (CEO) and Chris Fernandes. Its platform provides payroll service providers, software companies, and fintech firms with a single account that can simultaneously hold traditional dollars, local currencies, and stablecoins, helping businesses simplify cross-border payments and compliance processes without needing to integrate with multiple banks and payment service providers on their own.

Microsoft, Google and 14 other companies oppose tokenized trading of their stocks on the OKX-ICE joint platform

OKXICE TSV, a tokenized stock trading platform 50% owned by OKX and 50% by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the NYSE, issued a public notice on October 19 stating that 16 U.S. listed companies have submitted objections to their stocks being traded on the platform, up from the 9 disclosed in the October 15 announcement. The newly added companies include Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald's, and Western Digital, joining the previously listed Broadcom, Verizon, UnitedHealth, AppLovin, Applied Digital, Rocket Lab, CoreWeave, Applied Optoelectronics, and Cerebras Systems. The notice shows that the platform uses permissioned AMM pools based on Uniswap v4 on X Layer, with tokenized stocks paired against USDC, USDG, or USDT, trading 24/7, with no leverage or lending offered.

Anthropic IPO draft: H1 revenue $16.3 billion, net loss $80.7 billion

Anthropic's draft S-1 registration statement shows that the company's H1 2026 revenue was $16.3 billion, compared with $1.1 billion in the same period last year, a nearly 15x increase; its H1 net loss was $80.7 billion, compared with a $13 billion loss in the same period last year, with the loss mainly stemming from non-cash accounting charges related to financing.

The draft also shows that Anthropic's H1 compute and infrastructure spending approached $9 billion, up from $2.3 billion in the same period last year, with about 20% of revenue coming from two customers; the company plans to invest over $600 billion in compute, up from the previously disclosed $518 billion, and if additional compute agreements under negotiation are included, future infrastructure spending commitments could reach $750 billion. Anthropic had previously planned to conduct its IPO in November.

SpaceX Q3 revenue $14.575 billion, up 161.39% year-over-year

SpaceX (SPCX) reported Q3 2026 revenue of $14.575 billion, up 161.39% year-over-year, above market expectations of $12.87 billion; GAAP net income was $4.404 billion, compared with a net loss of $1.054 billion in the same period last year; diluted earnings per share were $0.35. By segment, Superintelligence (SI, formerly the AI business) revenue was $7.56 billion, connectivity (Starlink) revenue was $5.248 billion, and space business revenue was $1.767 billion. Quarterly capital expenditure was $19.593 billion, of which $16.444 billion was for the SI business. As of September 30, Starlink consumer users reached 13.6 million, and digital assets listed on the balance sheet were $1.573 billion.

Musk: Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees to discuss a merger

Musk said on SpaceX's Q3 earnings call that SpaceX and Tesla have each formed special committees to discuss a merger between the two companies. Musk said: "I think it's a good idea, but it really depends on the special committees of the two companies." No agreement has been reached between the two sides yet. Earlier prediction market data showed that the probability of Tesla and SpaceX merging in early 2027 exceeded 50%.

OKX-ICE co-chair Cuomo: 16 companies opposing tokenized stock trading is a "natural reaction"

Andrew Cuomo, co-chair of OKX-ICE, the joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the NYSE, and former governor of New York, said that companies opposing tokenized trading of their stocks on the platform is a "very natural reaction," because the model inherently allows companies to opt in or out on their own. Monday's announcement showed that 16 companies have filed objections. The newly added opponents include Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald's, and Western Digital, joining companies such as Broadcom, Verizon, and UnitedHealth that had previously objected. Cuomo said that the SEC's "innovation exemption" framework sets caps on the number of participating companies and trading volume, and is essentially a sandbox experiment.

Nvidia in talks to invest hundreds of millions in Australian AI cloud provider Firmus

According to The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, Nvidia (NVDA.O) is in talks with Australian AI cloud service provider Firmus about an investment that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Firmus abruptly withdrew its IPO plans earlier this month. The talks indicate that Nvidia may continue to support a group of cloud computing companies that have not yet been fully validated by the market, the so-called Neoclouds (new AI cloud service providers). These companies previously borrowed heavily to purchase Nvidia GPUs and deployed them in data centers, and are now facing mounting financial pressure. The outlet's analysis said that Nvidia has committed more than $170 billion in funding to such companies and other large customers, including providing credit guarantees to help them obtain debt financing.

Nikkei 225 opens up 1.16%; Korea's KOSPI opens up 1.83%

The Nikkei 225 opened up 744.29 points, or 1.16%, at 64,819.71 on October 21 (Wednesday). Korea's KOSPI opened up 101.87 points, or 1.83%, at 5,654.61 on October 21 (Wednesday). SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics rose about 3%.

Qubic network back online; affected funds open for claims

The Qubic network announced that it has come back online. The Computor (computing node) quorum has approved the fund recovery plan, the claims platform has opened simultaneously, and the first batch of funds has been returned to verified owners. During the network suspension, affected funds were transferred to a protected escrow account. Qubic cautioned that wallets created with web wallets prior to version 4.26.4 (released October 19) should be considered insecure, even if their funds were not affected. These users need to upgrade to version 4.26.4 or higher and create a new wallet. Affected users can submit claims through the sole official claims website weak-seed-reclaim.qubic.org, with a deadline of May 1, 2027. A full technical report will be released later.

BitMine re-stakes 159,728 ETH; Ethereum staking queue reaches 1.33 million ETH

Ethereum treasury company BitMine deposited 159,728 ETH (about $390 million) into Ethereum staking about 6 hours ago. It is estimated that BitMine's total staked amount may have exceeded 5.227 million ETH (about $12.8 billion). Currently, there are 1.33 million ETH in the Ethereum staking entry queue, with a wait time of over 23 days; only 149,000 ETH are exiting staking, with a wait time of less than 4 days.

Arda, founded by former OpenAI research head Bob McGrew, raises $230 million at a $1.5 billion valuation

Arda, an AI manufacturing software company founded by former OpenAI research head Bob McGrew, has completed a $230 million financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Accel, and Khosla Ventures. Arda develops AI agents for manufacturing engineers to accelerate production line setup and modification, and its products have already been deployed at defense tech company Anduril. McGrew said that after a product design change, adjusting an automated production line typically takes 3 to 6 months. Arda uses a combination of self-developed models, open-source models, and frontier models, and its next step is to enter the robotics field. Other co-founders include Adept co-founder Augustus Odena, as well as former Palantir engineers Alex Mark and Jakob Frick. McGrew left OpenAI in 2024.

Security firm: In 60 crypto attacks this year, stablecoin issuer blacklists and exchange freezes recovered no funds

Security firm Blockaid released a report stating that the 60 crypto attacks it tracked from January 5 to August 5 of this year resulted in total losses of $1.18 billion. Of that, only $9.8 million was returned to victims, accounting for 0.8%; another $81.4 million was frozen, and $1.04 billion remains unrecovered. Stablecoin issuer blacklists and exchange freezes recovered no funds. In 16 incidents, issuer blacklists were available but were never activated. Of the $91.2 million recovered or frozen, 99% came from governance and validator measures at the protocol or chain level, such as the Arbitrum security committee freezing $71 million after the KelpDAO incident. The median time for stolen funds to begin moving after an attack was 17 minutes.

Musk: SpaceX plans to rent out about half of its AI compute; aims to build a 440,000-device training cluster by Q2 next year

Musk said on SpaceX's Q3 earnings call that the company's goal is to allocate AI compute roughly half for its own use and half for external rental, with the ratio adjusted dynamically based on demand. The company prefers to sign short-term rental contracts at market prices rather than locking in long-term agreements. He believes that as model capabilities improve, the value of compute per unit of power will rise, and the compute shortage will persist.

Musk said that SpaceX plans to bring online a training cluster composed of 440,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin computing devices before the end of Q2 2027 to enhance Grok's competitiveness. He said that the main bottleneck in compute expansion has shifted more toward power supply, cooling, and infrastructure rather than chips.

In addition, he expects that within roughly the next three years, the number of Starlink satellites will reach about 100,000, with total bandwidth increasing to about 100x the current level; as the number of AI agents and communication demand grow, global bandwidth demand over the next three to five years could reach 1,000x the current level.

A whale's $32.72 million ETH short was fully liquidated, losing $1.11 million in two days

An address's short position of 13,830 ETH (about $32.72 million) opened at maximum leverage has been fully liquidated, losing $1.11 million over two days. The address opened the short when ETH was priced at $2,366. A few hours later, ETH rebounded to $2,409, and a position of 2,765 ETH (about $6.66 million) was liquidated first. After that, the address did not stop out, but instead added to its short when ETH pulled back to $2,387. As ETH continued to rebound, the remaining short positions were all liquidated, leaving only about $140,000 of the original $1.25 million principal.

OpenSea mobile app opens to the public with social trading features

The OpenSea mobile app is now available to all users, supporting trading of meme coins, art, trading cards, and perpetual contracts across more than 25 chains. Co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said that the app simultaneously launched social trading features, aggregating the profiles and trading records of traders on fomo, pump, and Farcaster. Users can follow these traders, view their wallet activity, and import their own wallets to claim their profiles, with filtering by trading platform currently supported. In addition, users can quickly create a wallet and top it up via Apple Pay, or link or import an existing wallet to view and trade all assets in one place, and can set NFTs as on-chain avatars.

Neolix completes nearly $400 million financing led by the National AI Industry Investment Fund

Autonomous driving technology company Neolix announced the formal completion of a new financing round of nearly $400 million. A year ago, Neolix had just completed a Series D round of over $600 million. To date, Neolix's cumulative financing has exceeded RMB 10 billion, ranking first in the unmanned delivery vehicle industry in terms of financing scale.

People familiar with the matter in the investment circle revealed that Boyu Capital and the National AI Industry Investment Fund are the lead investors in Neolix's current round. Alibaba's AEF NextGen Hong Kong Fund, Monolith Capital, Vertex Growth under Temasek, and GAC Capital participated in the investment, while existing shareholders including UAE's Stone Venture, CITIC Capital, SoftBank Asia, E-Town Capital, and Gaorong Ventures continued to add support.

The National AI Industry Investment Fund was established with funding from the third phase of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (the "Big Fund"). Its previous allocation focus was concentrated in areas such as AI and compute chips, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, large model algorithms, embodied intelligent robots, and AI security. It has already invested in leading companies in key AI fields, including Moonshot AI's Kimi, DeepSeek (general large models), MetaX (AI compute chips), Galaxy General (embodied intelligence), and Chaitin Tech (AI security).

Google open-sources TorchTPU, challenging NVIDIA's AI ecosystem dominance

According to the official Google Cloud blog, Google announced the open-sourcing of TorchTPU at PyTorch Conference 2026. The project was jointly developed by Google and Meta's PyTorch team, and the code has been published on GitHub. TPU thereby becomes a native PyTorch hardware option alongside GPU and CPU, with existing code requiring only minor modifications to migrate. Frameworks such as vLLM, SGLang, TorchTitan, VeRL, and Ray have already been integrated. In Hugging Face Transformers v5, passing device_map="tpu" allows models to be deployed to TPU. Tests show that TorchTitan training Qwen 3 8B achieves a maximum MFU (model FLOPs utilization) of 52%, scaling to 8,192 Ironwood TPUs. Google also released llm-d 1.0 with Red Hat and IBM, and LiteRT has joined the PyTorch ecosystem.

Bithumb to list PYBOBO token on its KRW market

South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb will list the PYBOBO token on its KRW market, with trading expected to open at 14:00 local time.

Korea's KOSPI extends gains to 4.7%, breaking above 5,800 points

Korea's KOSPI index extended its gains to 4.7%, breaking above 5,800 points.