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According to CoinDesk, Franklin Templeton has expanded its "Over-the-Counter Collateral Program" to Bybit, allowing users of the exchange to use their tokenized money market fund shares for cryptocurrency trading. Users can use the shares as collateral to borrow stablecoins USDT or USDC, while the underlying assets continue to generate returns. The relevant shares represent approximately $686 million in net assets.The underlying assets will not be transferred to Bybit but will be held off-chain by the regulated custody platform ByCustody, with their value mirrored in the Bybit trading environment, thereby generating returns while releasing trading liquidity. The shares are issued through the Benji technology platform, which is Franklin Templeton's proprietary blockchain-integrated record-keeping and transfer agency infrastructure, currently paying an annualized return of 3.7% based on the latest 7-day interest rate.This is not Franklin Templeton's first foray into over-the-counter collateral partnerships, as it has previously offered tokenized money market funds to Binance and OKX clients. Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, stated that investors can now use collateral more efficiently across major exchanges and earn returns from it, which is crucial for ecosystem growth. This expansion also reflects industry trends, with platforms like Crypto.com and Deribit allowing qualified users to use BlackRock's BUIDL fund as trading collateral.

According to Bloomberg, China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI private sector talent to include their family members. Sources say that for executives of AI companies deemed critical to national security, their immediate relatives such as spouses and children must obtain official approval in advance even for short-term trips abroad. Relevant departments have begun notifying affected individuals and will gradually enhance the list of restrictions on AI talent leaving the country. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China did not respond to requests for comment.Previously, China's new "Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration" took effect on September 15, which imposes exit restrictions on individuals suspected of endangering national industrial and technological security. Reports indicate that concerns over the outflow of key technologies and talent intensified after Meta attempted to acquire Manus for $2 billion, ultimately leading to an order to cancel the deal and requiring certain tech companies to refrain from accepting U.S. capital investment without approval.

The Hong Kong Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) announced the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, expanding regulatory cooperation beyond the oversight of financial reporting and related auditing work of listed entities.This includes the financial and compliance reporting of licensed corporations, SFC-licensed virtual asset service providers, SFC-recognized funds, and registered open-ended fund companies, as well as the related auditing and assurance work conducted by their auditors.

The President of Finland had requested Elon Musk to expand the coverage of Starlink in Russia and the occupied areas to help Ukraine combat Russia's ballistic missile launchers.

According to The Block, Bitcoin mining service company Luxor is expanding its business into the AI infrastructure sector and extending its operations in energy, hardware, software, and computing power trading to this sector.Luxor's hardware brokerage has previously traded over 1 billion dollars in Bitcoin mining ASICs.

Oracle announced the expansion of its Digital Assets Data Nexus platform, adding payment execution integration, configurable wallets and smart contract controls, as well as AI-driven transaction monitoring and risk analysis features.This upgrade supports connecting existing bank payment systems with digital asset transaction execution through the ISO 20022 messaging standard, helping banks establish a unified operational model for the flow of funds between traditional currencies and digital currencies, while enhancing ledger visibility, compliance controls, and operational efficiency. The platform will also support integration with Oracle Banking Payments and Swift Ledger, covering application scenarios such as tokenized deposits, stablecoins, CBDCs, digital bonds, and real-world assets. Oracle stated that the relevant features are planned for release in fiscal year 2027.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it will repurchase up to $6 billion of longer-term government bonds on Thursday, which is three times the $2 billion limit announced in early August. The yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries briefly rose to 5.38% during the session. In response to criticism of market intervention, Treasury Secretary Yellen defended that market prices deviate from equilibrium levels.The International Financial Association warned that this move does not address the structural issues of debt growth.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, BitGo's CEO Mike Belshe stated in an interview on Bitcoin Magazine's BMTV that the core of tokenization is not trading, but rather expanding access.He pointed out that the current financial system can be traced back to the paper stock certificate crisis of the 1960s, when the New York Stock Exchange had to halt trading every week to complete physical stock deliveries, and the framework built to solve this problem still primarily serves large institutions.Belshe believes that the inability of retail investors to borrow against assets and the necessity to sell assets is a key reason driving the K-shaped economic divergence. He discussed how "phantom stocks" and tokenized stocks could change this situation and mentioned that long-term confidence of holders can be demonstrated through proof of reserves and setting time locks for shares.The interview also covered the new centralized risks that may arise from custodial concentration, how multi-signature and MPC can eliminate single points of failure, the aspects that still need to be supplemented in the U.S. regulatory framework beyond clarity, and the role of AI agents in asset management. Belshe also explained the true meaning behind his previous comments about the dollar going to zero.

Cryptocurrency lending institution Arch Lending plans to expand its loan business using tokenized stocks as collateral. Arch co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Himanshu Sahay stated in Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction podcast that the institution plans to enter this market "soon" and noted the demand for credit against tokenized stocks. Sahay mentioned that tokenized stocks have grown rapidly over the past year, but loans against such assets remain limited. He anticipates that more lending institutions will enter this market in the future, naming organizations like Superstate, Robinhood, and Securitize that issue tokenized stocks.Arch has expanded from cryptocurrency to tokenized real-world assets, recently launching loan products backed by Paxos Gold and Tether Gold. However, cryptocurrency still accounts for the vast majority of Arch's existing loan portfolio, with Bitcoin making up over 80%. Sahay also indicated that the institution has recently seen increased interest in using XRP as collateral, particularly from U.S. borrowers.Before Arch, tokenized stocks had already begun to enter the lending market. In February of this year, Ondo Finance launched a DeFi lending market for its two tokenized ETFs through integration with the lending protocol Morpho; in July, Kraken included 10 types of xStocks in its futures and margin collateral scope; in August, Coinbase's B20 stock went live on Base.

According to CoinDesk, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the central banks of EU member states wish to prohibit crypto platforms from providing indirect yields on stablecoins through lending, staking, and other products. The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) stated in response to the European Commission's consultation on the review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) that electronic money should be used for payments rather than savings, continuing to support the prohibition of crypto asset service providers (CASP) from paying rewards for stablecoins, and that the ban should not be limited to services already regulated by MiCA but should also cover unregulated activities such as crypto lending, borrowing, and staking.Central banks believe that allowing indirect yields could blur the lines between electronic money and bank deposits, distorting the fair competitive environment of the EU financial system. The ESCB stated that maintaining and, when necessary, strengthening this ban, while covering both direct and indirect forms of rewards, should be a clear legislative priority. This position also echoes the controversy in the U.S. surrounding the Clarity Act, where eight U.S. banking groups urged senators to tighten the bill's restrictions on stablecoin rewards, which ultimately failed in a procedural vote of 49 to 50.In addition, central banks also proposed to eliminate the MiCA requirement for stablecoin issuers to hold part of their reserves in the form of bank deposits, replacing it with liquidity rules based on the liquidity of reserve assets. Currently, stablecoin issuers must keep at least 30% of their reserves in credit institutions, and this percentage rises to 60% for those classified as significant stablecoins. The ESCB suggested that significant stablecoins must allocate at least 40% of their reserves to assets maturing within one day and 60% to assets maturing within five working days, while the corresponding thresholds for non-significant stablecoins are 20% and 30%.

According to official news, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will launch BCH (Bitcoin Cash) and Uniswap futures to expand its cryptocurrency derivatives portfolio.Market participants can choose the contract size for trading based on demand: BCH futures (250 BCH) and micro Bitcoin Cash futures (25 BCH); UNI futures (10,000 UNI) and micro Uniswap futures (1,000 UNI).

According to Money Today on September 21, Samsung Electronics is advancing the expansion of advanced process capacity in wafer foundry due to the growth of the HBM market. To meet the rising demand for HBM4 base chips, it is evaluating the expansion of its 4-nanometer process. Samsung's HBM4 consists of 10-nanometer 6th generation (1c) DRAM core chips and 4-nanometer logic base chips, with the base chips responsible for high-speed data exchange with AI accelerators such as GPUs.Unlike SK Hynix, which uses TSMC's 12-nanometer process for HBM4 base chips, Samsung employs its own 4-nanometer process. This production line is operating at full capacity and has taken on orders from companies like Nvidia and Groq for 3 LPU, and the company has recently raised its prices for new 4-nanometer orders and HBM4 base chips. Samsung expects HBM4 revenue in the third quarter to increase more than threefold quarter-on-quarter, with HBM4 accounting for significantly more than 60% of HBM revenue in the second half of the year. The additional expansion at P4 in Pyeongtaek will mostly be used for 1c DRAM for HBM, with more than half of the wafer foundry's 4-nanometer capacity allocated to HBM4 base chips.HBM4E also uses 4-nanometer base chips, and Samsung provided samples to customers in May. The company is also evaluating the construction of a new 2-nanometer production line for HBM5, aiming for a GAA structure 2-nanometer process and increasing TSV density to improve operating speed by more than 50% compared to HBM4E. Samsung started the first generation of 2-nanometer mass production in the second half of last year and is advancing the second generation of products in the second half of this year. Citigroup expects global HBM bit demand to reach 75.2 billion Gb next year, a year-on-year increase of 62%, with supply around 59.4 billion Gb and a gap of about 21%.

According to Gate market data, Intel (INTC.O) saw its increase rapidly expand to 10%.

On September 21, the cryptocurrency market continued to warm up, with the global largest Bitcoin treasury company Strategy's Bitcoin holdings floating profit now expanded to 5.02 billion dollars, having previously experienced a floating loss of 10 billion dollars.Strategy currently holds 845,000 BTC and 6.4 billion dollars in reserve assets.

According to Gate market data, the decline of major European stock indices has widened during the trading session, with the Euro Stoxx 50 index, Germany's DAX index, France's CAC 40 index, and Italy's FTSE MIB index all dropping over 1%, while the UK's FTSE 100 index fell by 0.9%.

Stablecoin payment company dtcpay announced that it has received strategic investment from Japanese financial giant SBI Group, with the total amount of Series A financing expanding to 25 million USD. This round was led by Vertex Ventures, a subsidiary of Temasek, in April, with follow-on investment from Genedant Capital, which manages over 2 billion USD in assets, and continued support from Guo Liangde, the founder of Capella Hotel Group. SBI Group stated that this investment marks the beginning of a strategic partnership between the two parties, aiming to jointly expand the digital asset corridor between Japan and Southeast Asia.dtcpay is an official member of Visa and has issued a compliant stablecoin Visa card; its licensed operations cover regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Australia, the United States, and Canada, and it continues to expand, providing compliant infrastructure for global stablecoin payments.

The Bank of England has maintained the policy interest rate at 3.75% for the sixth consecutive meeting and announced the cancellation of the long-term government bond sale plan.Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. plans to invest 1.4 billion yuan to build a new lithium carbonate project in Ya'an with an annual production capacity of 40,000 tons, while Huawei simultaneously released a new computing architecture.

According to Gate market data, Intel (INTC.O) has expanded its intraday gain to 10%.

Bitget announced an upgrade to its Proof of Reserves (PoR) system, expanding the covered assets from the original 4 cryptocurrencies to 19 major assets, including new tokens such as XAUT, SOL, BNB, and USDGO. This upgrade also expands the scope of platform-level reserve disclosures and personal asset proof verifications. Users can view the reserve ratios, scales, and on-chain distributions of various assets through the PoR page, and independently verify whether their personal holdings are included in the reserve snapshot using a Merkle Tree.Since December 2022, Bitget has been releasing monthly reserve reports, and by August 2026, it has released 45 issues consecutively, with the latest overall reserve ratio at 122%. Bitget CEO Gracy stated that as the variety of assets supported by the platform continues to increase, the transparency and verification capabilities of the reserves also need to be expanded simultaneously, allowing more users to independently verify their asset situations and further enhance the platform's transparency.

The Federal Reserve FOMC statement indicated that economic activity is expanding at a robust pace.