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Financial services company Charles Schwab has launched direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum for eligible retail clients. The company manages approximately $13.33 trillion in client assets and has 40.3 million active brokerage accounts. Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster stated that the company is gradually opening up cryptocurrency transfer in and out functions, with plans to add trading for Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink by the end of 2026.Currently, transfers support the Bitcoin network and the Ethereum network, and withdrawal addresses must be registered in advance. Schwab Crypto trading fees are 0.75%, with a minimum transaction amount of $1 and a maximum of $2 million. Rick Wurster mentioned that cryptocurrency trading will become one of the new revenue sources based on transactions; the platform is currently not open to clients in New York, Louisiana, U.S. territories, and international markets.

According to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency market is experiencing a tug-of-war between bulls and bears, with analysts still leaning bullish, but the speculative market is shifting towards defense, putting pressure on risk appetite. Bitcoin briefly fell below $80,000 for the first time in nearly a month; affected by the sell-off in the U.S. stock market's AI sector, risk assets retreated, and the bullish sentiment that the cryptocurrency market was trying to rebuild was once again thwarted.Jeff Anderson, head of STS Digital in the U.S., stated that inflation data will "severely impact risk appetite," and the market is entering a quiet period before the Federal Reserve's interest rate meeting, with interest rate expectations still uncertain. Nick Forster, founder of Derive.xyz, mentioned that in the past 24 hours, the market's pricing of Bitcoin's probability of rising to $100,000 before Christmas has decreased by 2.8 percentage points to 9.7%; long-term bullish bets have quickly retreated, short-term hedging demand has surged, and institutions are reassessing macro risk exposure as the interest rate outlook becomes unclear again.

According to market news, Binance.US is seeking to raise $100 million to expand its cryptocurrency business.

According to Fortune, the tokenized fund liquidity platform Fission announced the completion of a $10 million Series A financing round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Ari Rubenstein. This round of financing was completed in September, and the company did not disclose its valuation.Fission aims to solve the problem of tokenized fund shares being difficult to quickly liquidate. The platform acts as a buyer, allowing investors to sell their shares without having to wait for the fund to process redemptions. Users connect their digital wallets and submit sale requests, while Fission handles the backend legal and transaction processes. CEO Jonathan Shaffer stated that for products that typically take about 200 days to sell, investors can pay a fee to sell immediately and complete settlement in 90 seconds or less.Fission was founded in 2024, and the founding team includes former employees of Point72 and Securitize. Currently, the clients are mainly institutional investors and organizations holding on-chain assets, including hedge funds holding tokenized private credit or equity assets, crypto institutions managing treasury, and stablecoin issuers allocating reserves to interest-bearing tokenized investment products.

AI financial software Fragment announced on Wednesday the completion of a $12 million Series A funding round. This round is set to close in mid-2025, led by FirstMark and BoxGroup. The company's CEO Thomas Neckel did not disclose the post-round valuation.Fragment was founded by Thomas Neckel, with co-founder and CTO being former Robinhood engineer Varun Mohan. Developers can integrate Fragment into their own software, which uses double-entry bookkeeping to verify the sources and uses of funds, confirming account balances before funds move. Neckel stated that the product is a financial building block for automating business activities for agents.The company previously completed a $11 million seed round led by Stripe, with participants including BoxGroup, as well as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Plaid CEO Zach Perret. Fragment claims to currently have about 50 to 60 paying customers, including Ramp, BILL, and Whop, for sharing transaction records and reducing manual reconciliation. FirstMark managing partner Adam Nelson stated that the goal is to become the standard toolkit for providing financial capabilities to agents.

The founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), has submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting to overturn his fraud conviction and revoke the $11 billion forfeiture order. According to CNN, the petition was filed on September 10 local time, led by Alexandra A.E. Shapiro from the law firm Shapiro, Arato, Bach. SBF is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.The petition raises two core legal issues: first, when can the trial court admit evidence showing whether victims suffered losses, in cases where the prosecution uses a "fraudulent inducement" theory, meaning that it is irrelevant whether the victims suffered economic losses; second, does the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allow for forfeiture or other criminal fines that destroy the defendant's future livelihood prospects? The defense argues that the trial court allowed the prosecution to imply that clients suffered massive losses while prohibiting the defense from presenting evidence that clients have been compensated, which constitutes an error.The defense claims that although FTX and Alameda faced liquidity issues at one point, they always held sufficient assets to ultimately pay back investors and clients, and clients have now been repaid with both principal and interest. In 2023, SBF was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and money laundering, and in 2024, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion. In June of this year, a panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original ruling. The Supreme Court is expected to decide later this year whether to hear the case.

According to Bloomberg, Michael Saylor, the founder of Strategy, stated in an interview that the cryptocurrency market crash of the past year has ended, and the market is entering a bull market, with Bitcoin expected to break $100,000 again. He pointed out that Bitcoin previously bottomed out just below $60,000 and is currently moving towards above $80,000, expecting an annual growth rate of 20% to 30% for Bitcoin in the coming years.Saylor also mentioned that Strategy may continue to increase its Bitcoin holdings and issue credit products during the bull market. Additionally, it has been reported that MSCI is considering adjusting index rules and may remove Strategy from its global equity benchmark index, with a decision expected to be announced on Friday. Saylor expressed disappointment regarding this, believing that the stance shows bias against digital assets, and hopes MSCI will reconsider.

AI insurance startup Harbor AI ended its stealth mode on October 14, announcing the completion of a $10 million seed round financing, led by Base10 Partners, AbstractVC, and 8vc, with participation from RestiveVC, NFX, iEndeavors, Kibo Ventures, DidacLee, MVP Ventures, and others.Harbor AI was co-founded by Elechi, Cristian, Luis, and another co-founder, positioning itself to provide insurance for the agent economy. The company believes that as AI agents take on responsibilities traditionally held by humans, the sources of risk are shifting from human decision-making to machine behavior. Its goal is to make such risks measurable, manageable, and insurable, thereby creating a new category of insurance.

On October 13, 2026, dating app Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ: BMBL) announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings, a holding company with a long-term investment in technology businesses, in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.3 billion. Common stockholders will receive $6.05 in cash for each share of Class A common stock, representing a premium of approximately 138% over the unaffected closing price on October 9, 2026, and a premium of approximately 119% over the volume-weighted average price as of that date.The special committee, with the assistance of independent legal and financial advisors, determined that the transaction is in the best interests of common stockholders and recommended that the board approve it. The board unanimously approved the transaction, with founder Whitney Wolfe Herd recusing herself from the deliberation and vote. A Blackstone affiliate and Wolfe Herd subsequently provided written consent to approve the transaction, constituting the required shareholder approval; shareholders will receive an information statement in accordance with Delaware law and federal securities laws.Upon completion, Ithaca co-CEOs Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman will serve as co-CEOs of Bumble and will work alongside Wolfe Herd. Bumble will be privatized, with offices in London, Austin, and New York City, and is expected to remain based in Austin. The company plans to file its third quarter Form 10-Q with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by November 9, 2026, and will not issue an earnings press release or hold a conference call due to the transaction.

The institutional crypto trading platform FalconX and the synthetic dollar protocol Ethena are operating a collateralized lending arrangement with a scale of 1 billion dollars, funded by the reserve assets of the stablecoin USDe. The related loans are over-collateralized, with Ethena holding the first priority collateral rights.FalconX's cumulative trading volume has exceeded 25 trillion dollars. This arrangement was disclosed by the market intelligence account msbintel and mentioned the official account of Ethena.

According to Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are leading a $5 billion loan underwriting deal for AI cloud service company Volta Infrastructure Holdings (Volta AI), but are only underwriting $1.3 billion of the term loan to reduce their own risk exposure.It is reported that this $1.3 billion term loan deal will be used to pay for Volta's leasing fees for the data center of Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer. So far, representatives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Volta have declined to comment on the matter.

Investment bank StoneX has raised the target price for the tokenization platform Securitize from $12 to $18, an increase of 50%, while maintaining the buy rating given by analyst Mark Palmer. This adjustment comes on the first trading day after the launch of Securitize Stocks, which saw the stock drop by as much as 10% in early trading on Monday, with the new target price still about 45% higher than the stock price at that time. Palmer noted that although SECZ's stock price rose last week due to the news of the platform's launch, the market still views it as a tokenization service provider, while the company has actually evolved into a market operator.StoneX pointed out that in the second quarter, Securitize's trading volume of $5.3 billion generated most of its tokenization revenue from integration fees, with the trading volume itself being almost unmonetized. The launch of Securitize Stocks is expected to change this situation, allowing the company to start charging fees from trading and services, and potentially earning collateral-related income in the future. Last week, the platform introduced stocks such as Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla to Solana, with transactions settled in USDC, and the tokens backed one-to-one by the underlying stocks, allowing holders to enjoy dividends and shareholder rights.StoneX expects Securitize's revenue to approach $120 million in 2027, growing to about $198.5 million in 2028, with an annual growth rate of approximately 65%. Based on Palmer's target price of $18, the corresponding enterprise value to revenue multiple for the 2028 forecast is about 14.5 times. The firm believes that as the scale of tokenized stock trading fees expands, the company's revenue structure will shift from one-time integration fees to ongoing trading and service charges.

The media and conference organization NEXTPredict announced that it has executed the first trade in the flight cancellation market through Kalshi to hedge investments for its October summit, locking in $3 million in guarantees. The company paid a premium of $12,000, and if the cancellation rate of flights arriving at New York's Kennedy International Airport on October 21 exceeds 50%, the contract will automatically pay out, covering the summit costs, as October 21 is the main travel day for attendees. Susquehanna acted as the market maker for this transaction.Kalshi launched the flight cancellation market after self-certifying the contract with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on July 14, allowing participants to trade on whether the cancellation volume at specific airports exceeds preset thresholds. This market does not target individual flights and has clear anti-manipulation clauses. NEXTPredict is a media and event platform focused on the global prediction market industry, launched by the NEXT.io team. Its flagship event, the "Global Prediction Market Summit," will be held from October 22 to 23, 2026, at Convene Hudson Yards in New York, bringing together founders, executives, investors, and policymakers.NEXTPredict and Kalshi position this trade as institutional hedging, similar to how airlines hedge against fuel costs or farmers hedge against crop yields, rather than betting on the fate of the summit.

According to Crowdfund Insider, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) analyst Craig Siegenthaler adjusted the target prices for three major retail trading and cryptocurrency platforms in early October 2026, as follows:Robinhood (HOOD): Target price raised from $140 to $156, maintaining a "Buy" rating.Coinbase (COIN): Target price raised from $174 to $203, maintaining a "Buy" rating.eToro (ETOR): Target price lowered from $46 to $39, maintaining a "Neutral" rating.

The Smarter Web Company announced that it has raised $13.25 million through the UK's first Bitcoin-backed preferred stock IPO, MORE. MORE will begin trading on the main market of the London Stock Exchange this Wednesday, with the first weekly dividend scheduled to be paid on November 9.

Robinhood ecosystem AI project Orbio announced the completion of a $1.2 million seed round financing, with participating institutions not yet disclosed. The official statement indicated that this portion of funds will be used to build a track for self-configured computing, hardware, and top-notch private infrastructure.As of the time of publication, according to GMGN market data, the market capitalization of ORBIO tokens is reported at $53.42 million, with a 24-hour increase of 26%. ORBIO was issued on the Pons platform, based on Nvidia stock tokens. Public information shows that the project aims to create a low-cost AI points trading market, offering discounts on points for over 400 AI models, including Claude Fable and GPT Astra. The trading volume of related tokens is small, and price fluctuations are significant, so users should invest cautiously.

Anyflo, a stablecoin payment orchestration service for enterprises, announced its public launch on October 8, 2026, in Singapore during TOKEN2049 at the Sui Basecamp. The company was incubated internally by Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui, and its founder and CEO, Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, previously served as the product manager at Mysten and has also worked at Shopify and Capital One.Anyflo acquired Native through a talent acquisition. Before the acquisition, Native had raised just under $2 million and had launched a marketable Bitcoin lending platform on Sui, ranking in the top five among 630 projects at Sui Overflow 2025. Co-founder Robert Zaremba and his team will join Anyflo.Anyflo positions itself as an orchestration layer, providing multi-chain stablecoin access and handling the complexities related to blockchain networks, liquidity, and routing. The company plans to enter private alpha in October 2026, including a production preview and liquidity access, with a beta launch scheduled for the first quarter of 2027. In addition to incubation, Mysten Labs has also invested $1 million in the company.

According to the Financial Times, DWF Labs' DWF Maas and Falcon Digital have sued the cryptocurrency custody company BitGo in the High Court of London, accusing it of violating over-the-counter (OTC) agreements by selling Falcon Finance (FF) and ESPORTS tokens before the agreed lock-up period ended, resulting in a drop in token prices.According to the lawsuit, both parties agreed that the tokens would be offered at a discounted price but must adhere to a three-month lock-up period and subsequent phased unlocking arrangements. DWF claims that BitGo transferred the tokens to exchanges about two months before the first unlocking, causing market sell-off pressure and damaging the value of its remaining holdings, thus seeking $141 million in damages. BitGo declined to comment on the lawsuit, and the related allegations have not yet been adjudicated by the court.