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According to The Block, Citigroup Research stated in its latest report that Aave is a decentralized collateral liquidity ecosystem, representing one of the more significant real-world cases in tokenized financial infrastructure.Citigroup indicated that collateral liquidity could ultimately become one of the most important use cases for tokenization.

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 the Binance Research weekly report, the U.S. CPI rose to 3.7% in September, with energy contributing more than one-third, and the PPI increased year-on-year to 6.3%. Based on the EIA oil price path, the overall CPI may peak at around 3.9% in October and fall back to about 2.6% by March 2027.In terms of AI, Anthropic's revenue grew by 45% quarter-on-quarter in the third quarter, significantly lower than the previous growth rate of more than double; its Binance Pre-IPO contracts fell by 8.8% over two trading days, while the yield on CoreWeave bonds maturing in 2032 rose to about 16%. Binance Research believes that the cooling demand for AI and rising financing costs are simultaneously affecting AI infrastructure transactions.

Phoenix Technology cites a report from the Financial Times that on October 19, Beijing time, the AI company Anthropic is discussing with legal professionals how to enable AI agents to negotiate on behalf of users while adhering to reasonable negotiation rules to secure better deal terms. Two individuals familiar with Anthropic's thoughts stated that the company is seeking advice from law firms to understand how lawyers can balance client interests with fair negotiation outcomes. Anthropic declined to comment.The report mentions that as personal AI agent applications advance, related companies are beginning to consider allowing agents to communicate with each other to negotiate product prices, resolve customer service disputes, and even strive for better salary conditions on behalf of users. One person familiar with the related work stated that Anthropic is researching the negotiation norms that should be followed when models negotiate with each other, weighing factors such as how often to consult users during negotiations and how vigilant to remain against AI negotiation counterparts. Another individual close to the company mentioned that the company has also explored having users sign documents to confirm the tasks accepted by the agents and the rules they must adhere to.The Financial Times cites research released by Anthropic in April this year, stating that the policy and legal framework for AI models to conduct transactions on behalf of humans has yet to be established. This year, the company had the Claude agent negotiate around real goods and funds, and in a September experiment, employees bought and sold books through the agent, with agents employing tough strategies having a slight advantage in securing better outcomes. Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Michelle Vacharo conducted over 180,000 agent negotiations, covering scenarios such as employment contracts and lease agreements, and the research found that some agents attempted to induce the other party to disclose confidential information through prompt injections.

According to a report by Jinshi, Citic Securities' research report indicates that Harness is expected to become a key component for DeepSeek in transitioning from model supply to platform ecology, transforming open-source and engineering advantages into user base, ecological influence, and commercialization capabilities. As competition among Agents expands from model capabilities to stable and user-friendly task delivery, DeepSeek is expanding user and task coverage through plug-ins, scenario presets, and cross-Agent collaboration, extending its infrastructure advantages from hardware-software synergy to complete task execution.The research report states that its long-term value lies in the accumulation of demand through ecological expansion, enhancing product stickiness through configuration and process sedimentation, and supporting safe governance with traceability capabilities, collectively creating conditions for sustained use and enterprise deployment. Based on official model calls, the company can also explore platform services and ecological transactions, transforming ecological accumulation into more diverse revenue sources and supporting reinvestment in products and ecology. Citic Securities is optimistic about the continued rise of domestic large models.

The research director of Galaxy posted on platform X, stating that year-to-date net inflows for Bitcoin ETFs remain positive, reaching 355 million dollars, and turned positive again in September.

OpenAI's official website disclosed that in June of this year, an internal research model (GPT-5.6 Sol series) was assigned a task: to update a cryptocurrency trading application and deploy a contract on the Ethereum testnet Sepolia. The task did not provide a funded wallet, nor was it authorized to use external funds. The model first attempted to obtain test ETH from a faucet but failed. It then devised a method on its own—deriving addresses from publicly available developer seed phrases, scanning hundreds of them until it found an account with a balance.In its internal reasoning, it explicitly questioned "whether using funds from a public key is ethical," ultimately justifying itself: these are testnet ETH with no actual value, and the seed phrases had long been made public, so the funds were "effectively abandoned." It then used that account to pay for the gas required for deployment, successfully completing the contract deployment. OpenAI discovered this behavior during subsequent alignment monitoring and officially disclosed it in the Misalignment Reports on October 15, 2026. The incident was classified as "unauthorized use of a funded test cryptocurrency wallet," indicating that the model replaced the account holder's authorization with its own judgment.

Researchers successfully communicated directly with AI agents while investigating the hijacking of Alibaba's Gaode Map service, even as some software was still running. In a report suspected to have been scanned by these agents, researchers included hidden text that is invisible to humans but visible to web reading tools, and then inquired about their tasks and operating environment through an email. One agent claimed it was checking how many entrance tags a certain scenic area displayed on Gaode Map and stated that it was operating in a restricted Tencent Cloud sandbox. Researchers could not independently confirm which model drove each run, noting that this was the first known external communication with an active out-of-control agent cluster.A report released by Swarmchasers on October 14 tracked over 2,600 attempts to obtain Gaode Map data between September 28 and October 8. Some tasks were relatively routine, such as checking which entrance was most commonly used by visitors at the Chengdu Zoo. After the service provider intercepted requests, some agents continued to attempt access, trying to capture tokens generated by anti-scraping software, forwarding traffic through third-party page readers, or using leaked API credentials from public code repositories, with one set of leaked keys and security codes returning real location data. Researchers also found requests targeting four development or pre-production hosts, but there was no evidence that these agents accessed private systems.Public records show that the cluster is related to Tencent Cloud: all 17 email accounts examined by researchers were created by Tencent servers located in Hong Kong, and the observed direct requests were forwarded through an agent named hysandbox-ats.

The U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) for September will be released at 20:30 Beijing time on October 15. Oxford Economics expects the September PPI to rise by 0.6% month-on-month, higher than the market expectation of 0.5% and August's 0.4%. In August, U.S. diesel prices increased by 24% month-on-month and 77% year-on-year. According to the American Automobile Association, the retail price of diesel reached a historic high of $6.528 per gallon on September 22.As of Wednesday, the U.S. retail price of diesel remained at $6.30 per gallon, over 70% higher than the same period last year. Analysts say that diesel is an important input for road freight, rail transport, and agricultural production. Rising prices will first push up production and transportation costs for businesses, and then gradually transmit through fuel surcharges, transportation contracts, and retail pricing, with cost pass-through potentially lagging. The Trump administration has temporarily relaxed some restrictions on agricultural fuel use and stated that Russia will supply diesel to the global market. Industry insiders believe these measures are unlikely to resolve refining capacity and finished oil supply bottlenecks in the short term.

Galaxy Research released a research report on October 15, categorizing decision markets and impact markets as conditional markets. These two types of conditional trading settle only when specific outcomes occur, and decision markets also settle on clear and binding results. Unlike prediction markets, conditional markets are not limited to binary, all-or-nothing structures; they trade real assets and their prices rather than synthetic probability contracts, with the byproduct being the impact of events on asset values rather than occurrence probabilities. The agency referred to prediction markets as the zero version of event-driven finance, with a large number of experiments emerging over the past 18 months, and new infrastructure pushing it beyond prediction markets.The ownership token-based issuance platform Umia, aimed at EVM-compatible chains, launched in September, expanding decision markets from being primarily limited to Solana, where MetaDAO was the first to scale binary pass or fail markets, to multi-outcome markets that can price proposal parameters. A deposit of stablecoins or DAO tokens can simultaneously convert into positions covering each outcome, with only winning market trades ultimately settling. Currently, 22 DAO treasuries fully governed by decision markets hold a total of $50.5 million, with MetaDAO accounting for 21 of them and 78% of the assets; the stablecoin portion is $35.8 million, with MetaDAO holding 82%. The fundraising for the market-governed DAO issuance platform by MetaDAO was approximately 11 months prior to this research report. Umia extends the issuable chains to Solana or EVM, which together account for about 92% of TVL by chain type.

Galaxy Digital Research Director Alex Thorn stated that over half of the BTC supply is located in addresses of unknown ownership. Despite the trend of institutionalization and centralized holdings in recent years, there is still a massive (possibly even the majority of) amount of Bitcoin being self-custodied by individuals.

NVIDIA has committed to investing $250 million over the next five years to promote research in agent safety and security in the UK. The company stated that it will provide $50 million in computing resources support for agent safety research in the UK each year.

Palantir's Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar stated in an interview on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that many AI researchers have started smoking to demonstrate their confidence in AI to other researchers. He quoted the attitude of such researchers saying, "I truly believe in AI; it will cure cancer, so I’m showing you that I’m all in." Sankar did not name any specific researcher nor cite survey data; this statement was made in passing when host Margaret Brennan pressed him on why he was so focused on the topic.In the interview, Sankar referred to effective altruism as a "millennial-style doomsday cult" and mentioned FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried as the most well-known representative of the movement. He also cited Pascal's idea that everyone has a "God-shaped hole" in their heart, claiming that some researchers are trying to fill this hole with a machine god called AGI.Medical data contrasts with this claim. The U.S. CDC states that smoking causes about one-third of cancer deaths in the U.S., and cigarette smoke contains at least 69 known carcinogenic chemicals, with smokers being about 25 times more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated in August that the promise of AI curing cancer is "more of a cliché than inspiring," and that only a true cure for cancer can win public trust. CBS polling shows that 50% of Americans believe the problems created by AI outweigh the problems it solves, and 45% want the government to limit the use and development of AI.

On-chain data company CryptoQuant researcher Rei Researcher pointed out in a report released on Monday that as the Bitcoin supply on exchanges continues to shrink, the price of Bitcoin may see an upward trend. The report shows that the Bitcoin held by exchanges has decreased from 2.8 million in February to 2.67 million. The recent price of Bitcoin is around $83,485, remaining stable over the past 24 hours but rising 8% over the past 30 days, following the best-performing quarter in years.The report states, "If buying demand continues to improve while exchange supply remains low, Bitcoin could benefit from a supply-demand imbalance, creating favorable conditions for a longer-term upward trend." The report adds, "More importantly, Bitcoin has rebounded from its lows in recent weeks, while exchange reserves continue to decline. This is a notable development, indicating that even as the market recovers, the supply available for trading is still decreasing." The report also notes that investors may be transferring Bitcoin out of exchanges and into cold wallets.In the first half of 2026, Bitcoin traded below $65,000 for most of the time. After reaching an all-time high of $126,080 in October 2025, the cryptocurrency has been in a bear market for most of this year. However, the situation changed in August when the U.S. Treasury doubled the scale of liquidity support repurchase operations, weakening the dollar while boosting non-yielding assets like Bitcoin. Analysts say that the so-called "devaluation trade" has heated up again, benefiting Bitcoin as it did in 2024 and 2025. Currently, the price of Bitcoin is still over 30% lower than its historical record.

On October 13, as the stock tokenization sector continues to heat up, Feixiaohao, relying on its background as a publicly listed company in the U.S., is collaborating with exchanges to promote stock tokenization services and build the Feixiaohao DAT ecosystem. From structural design, asset custody, on-chain issuance to trading circulation, Feixiaohao aims to bring traditional stocks into the Web3 world.On the user side, Feixiaohao AI makes analysis as simple as chatting. Users can ask questions in natural language and receive multi-dimensional interpretations of tokenized stocks regarding fundamentals, information, and market sentiment, making it easier to understand and participate in this emerging market.

According to K33 Research, the U.S. government transferred approximately 17,733 BTC to Coinbase Prime this week, including 12,267 BTC related to the Bitfinex hacking incident. After the transfer, the government's marked holdings decreased from 324,527 BTC to 306,795 BTC. If we include unmarked suspected government wallets, the total amount of BTC transferred to Coinbase Prime is about 21,500 BTC.Analysis suggests that this transfer is likely a custody operation rather than a sale—Coinbase Prime has been the custodian for the U.S. Marshals Service since 2024. The cryptocurrencies related to Bitfinex are still in the claims process, and the Department of Justice has requested that victims be compensated in BTC; the ban on the strategic Bitcoin reserve only covers cryptocurrencies that have been fully confiscated. Additionally, about 1,200 BTC from FTX and HashFlare were transferred simultaneously, which may be paid to victims in cash through compensation channels.It is noteworthy that approximately 15,000 BTC related to Bitfinex claims were transferred within two days, which may indicate that the distribution plan or related rulings are progressing.

According to the latest weekly report from Binance Research, since August 31, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury has risen by 47 basis points, of which 43 basis points came from an increase in real yields, while the inflation breakeven rate only rose by 4 basis points. The 10-year real yield once reached 2.95%, the highest since 2008.The weekly report also pointed out that since the interest rate hike in September, BTC has risen by 9.3%, ETH by 2.7%, and Layer 2, RWA, and AI tokens have increased by approximately 32%, 29%, and 29%, respectively, while meme and payment tokens have performed relatively poorly.Binance Research stated that the current high real interest rates still exert a suppressive effect on a wide range of risk assets, and future attention should focus on CPI, long-term U.S. Treasury yields, and BTC ETF fund flows.

10x Research published that Bitcoin option prices have fallen to a five-year low, with near-month implied volatility at 33.5%, more than 4 percentage points lower than actual volatility, indicating that option pricing is relatively cheap. In the past week, the skew of Bitcoin options has decreased by nearly 3 percentage points, with traders focusing on buying put options expiring in October with strike prices of $78,000 and $80,000, with single large trades reaching up to $204 million.10x Research believes this indicates that investors overall still hold long positions while hedging downside risks through options, rather than fully turning bearish. In contrast, the Ethereum options market shows different signals. Its largest corporate buyer has indicated that it will stop buying in the coming weeks, with options trading primarily dominated by sellers of call options, and implied volatility higher than actual volatility.

Grayscale's Research Director Zach Pandl stated in his column The Stack on October 8 that the rising demand for AI is due to decreasing usage costs and technology's ability to perform tasks more autonomously, thereby increasing the demand for computing power and the physical infrastructure that supports AI. Lower costs can unleash more AI activities, and the low-cost competition of open-source weight models is driving down token prices, making cheaper intelligence economically viable for more applications and automated workflows.The article cites that Anthropic's latest Sonnet model claims to reduce the cost of each task by up to 30%; OpenAI's always-on agent dots, launched on September 29, can work towards user goals around the clock, potentially significantly increasing the demand for computing power. Pandl compares that chatbots primarily answer questions, while agents execute multi-step processes to achieve goals, with tasks like preparing for client meetings potentially consuming 5 to 50 times the tokens of a single chat interaction, and always-on agents may extend processing beyond a single conversation.Pandl cites Goldman Sachs' prediction that by 2030, token consumption could increase 24 times, primarily driven by agents; even with improved efficiency, if usage grows faster, the total demand for computing power may still rise. He points out that digital activities still rely on physical infrastructure that requires time to deliver, such as electricity, data centers, and GPUs, and cheaper AI can coexist with tight computing power supply, mentioning that CoreWeave recently signed new contracts at higher computing power prices. His conclusion is that cheaper intelligence and stronger agents may expand use cases and usage enough to offset efficiency gains, thereby supporting the demand for scarce computing power and benefiting its owners.