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Variational founder and CEO Lucas Schuermann posted on X: "In mid-September, we decided to allocate a significant amount of development resources to protocol security audits and further optimization work. This includes additional audits of the codebase and operational processes, conducting penetration tests and red team tests with the help of AI, among other tasks.The public mainnet is now just around the corner. The trading API is also being opened to a small number of whitelisted Alpha test users, with plans for a formal public launch later this month. We are still on track to proceed with this year's TGE (Token Generation Event), as well as the major partner announcements mentioned earlier in the token economic model updates. Starting later this month, everyone will hear more progress."

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng stated that the recovery work for token assets seems to have begun.He added that users pay transaction fees in the currency they are trading when using Binance, so Binance will naturally accumulate various tokens that it lists.Zhao Changpeng also emphasized: "User funds are safe!"

According to Lookonchain monitoring, Arthur Hayes (0xaE...214D, @CryptoHayes) is selling tokens worth $22.28 million.This includes 6,400 ETH, valued at $15.2 million; 14 million ENA, valued at $2.76 million; 323,000 UNI, valued at $224,000; 1.89 million ETHFI, valued at $123,000; 546,609 AERO, valued at $398,000; 120,000 PENDLE, valued at $244,000; and 3 million ZAMA, valued at $214,000.

According to Bybit's announcement on October 22, its Dubai entity Bybit Fintech FZE has obtained a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), covering the scope of cryptocurrency spot trading.Bybit established its international headquarters in Dubai in 2022 and received preliminary approval from VARA in 2024. Bybit's Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Peter Loo stated that the company plans to apply for an expansion of the license scope to include derivatives trading in the future, but further approval from the regulatory authority is still required.

According to an official announcement from Railway, the cloud deployment platform Railway detected abnormal activity in the system that stores customer environment variables. Preliminary investigations indicate that an unauthorized third party may have accessed encrypted environment variables and obtained decrypted content from some of those variables, which may include API keys, database credentials, and image repository credentials.Railway believes this incident is part of a recent series of attacks targeting platform companies, aimed at infiltrating AI inference service providers, and has notified upstream service providers to proactively revoke keys. Currently, Railway has suspended all deployments and recommends that all users immediately rotate the environment variables, API keys, and private repository credentials stored on the platform, and check relevant service logs.

Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) posted that the ideal path for supporting various cryptographic algorithms is through EIP-8288: users generate arbitrary signatures locally, then prove them through STARK, and aggregate them on-chain via STARK, without occupying calldata on-chain, thus Ethereum does not need to add new precompiles. He also mentioned that if lattice cryptography is proven to have security against AI attacks, it can still be used in scenarios such as accounts and wallets through precompiles in the future.Previously, Starknet co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson expressed disagreement with a16z's related views, stating that lattice cryptography has a rich mathematical structure that is vulnerable to AI attacks, and that a simplified version based on modular SIS only appeared in 2012 and lacks maturity. He suggested waiting another 3-5 years until AI has been thoroughly tested before using it for custody of large assets.

Harvard University's annual financial report shows that the university's endowment fund grew by 27.1% in fiscal year 2026, marking the strongest investment return performance in five years. The total size of the fund is now close to $68 billion.Harvard University's Chief Financial Officer Ritu Kalra and Financial Officer Timothy Barakett wrote in the annual report: "This return will enhance the endowment fund's ability to support the university's long-term development. Strong investment returns will gradually support Harvard University's various initiatives through future fund allocations."In the second quarter 13F holdings report submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvard University disclosed that it holds $2.2 billion worth of shares in SpaceX, making it the largest single holding by market value in the endowment fund, followed by TSMC, with a holding value of just under $350 million. Previously, it was reported that Harvard University's fund had disclosed investments in cryptocurrency as early as 2018.

User KawzInvests posted about the hedge fund VARA AI Fund. The user stated that this fund had 9 employees at the end of June, approximately 16 months after its launch, managing about 26.4 billion dollars, and mentioned that rumors were circulating in the market that the fund had already faced a liquidation.KawzInvests also listed the results of the fund's 13F filing as of March 31, calculated at the day's prices, stating that the relevant positions covered 60 securities, totaling about 13.1 billion dollars. Among the larger positions were NBIS approximately 1.28 billion dollars, BE approximately 1.27 billion dollars, LITE approximately 1.03 billion dollars, CRWV approximately 889 million dollars, STX approximately 728 million dollars, VRT approximately 720 million dollars, WDC approximately 624 million dollars, CLS approximately 537 million dollars, COHR approximately 492 million dollars, FIX approximately 426 million dollars.

According to The Block, Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of the cryptocurrency asset management company Bitwise, stated that regardless of whether artificial intelligence drives economic prosperity, investment bubbles burst, or growth remains moderate, Bitcoin will ultimately benefit.Hougan mentioned that if the artificial intelligence-related market crashes, Bitcoin may initially decline. He anticipates that subsequent government bailouts and monetary expansion will drive Bitcoin prices up.

Recently, Gate founder and CEO Dr. Han was interviewed by Fortune, sharing Gate's strategic plan to transition from a cryptocurrency trading platform to an integrated financial application.Dr. Han pointed out that traditional finance and the crypto world have long been disconnected, requiring users to switch between banks, brokerages, cryptocurrency exchanges, and payment tools. During TOKEN2049 Singapore, Gate launched Gate Money and proposed the vision of "One Gate, Everything Money," integrating fiat currency, digital assets, stocks, ETFs, gold, bank accounts, and payment settlements into a single account app. With the Gate Card, cryptocurrency, fiat currency, tokenized gold, or stocks can be directly used for daily payments, eliminating the need to hold large amounts of low-yield cash for expenses; users in eligible regions can also open a global bank account in their name online, which will support receiving payments in over 60 local currencies in the future.Dr. Han stated, "No one needs to sell stocks to buy a cup of coffee, nor do they need to hold large amounts of cash for emergencies."

According to official disclosure, Standard Chartered announced that it has received approval from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in the UAE to officially launch cryptocurrency trading solutions for professional investors in the UAE.Eligible affluent clients can buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) directly through their existing bank accounts, without the need to set up a separate wallet or use third-party platforms.

CoinShares pointed out in its latest biweekly market report that last week, the net outflow of the U.S. spot BTC ETF was $679 million, with a single-day net outflow of $485 million on Wednesday, setting a record for the largest single-day outflow since June; the ETH ETF saw a net outflow of $542 million last week, accumulating nearly $700 million in outflows over nine consecutive trading days.BTC approached $87,000 on October 5, then fell back to about $80,300, and subsequently rebounded to around $83,500. The report shows that the correlation between BTC and the Nasdaq index has risen back to about 40% of the long-term average, while the correlation with inflation-linked bonds continues to strengthen.CoinShares believes that the U.S. CPI data to be released this week will be an important variable: if the core CPI rises by 0.3% month-on-month, it may strengthen market expectations for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve in October, putting BTC at risk of testing $80,000 again.

According to Solid Intel, Kraken's parent company Payward has obtained full regulatory approval from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). Kraken plans to launch in the UAE and support deposits and withdrawals in UAE Dirhams.Previously, Payward received preliminary approval for a VARA brokerage and investment management license in May 2026.

The Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) has issued a circular on the audit of reserve assets, clarifying the minimum requirements for independent audits of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP). VASP must maintain reserves of no less than 100% of customer liabilities throughout the review period and hold the same virtual assets in a 1:1 ratio, conducting daily reconciliations.The audit scope must cover hot wallets, warm wallets, cold wallets, third-party wallet infrastructure, and third-party custodial assets, and verify customer asset segregation, wallet control, and whether there is any re-staking, lending, or other usage scenarios.

Variant Fund investment partner Alana Levin stated in her market thoughts for Q4 2026 that the bottom of the crypto market likely occurred at some point in July. She wrote in early July that the bottom seemed close, with Bitcoin at $59,000, Ethereum at $1,600, and ZEC at $420. She mentioned that the question has shifted to whether the bull market is genuinely starting or if it's a false rally, and which projects will benefit the most in the early bull market, assuming the market is in the early stages of a new crypto bull market.Levin indicated that the increasingly formed consensus is that marginal funds are most likely to flow into value storage protocols as currency and protocols that can generate income. She believes Bitcoin is the dominant asset for digital value storage currently, while other competing assets may be valued based on their market capitalization relative to Bitcoin's market cap and its changes. For income-generating protocols, she expects investors to examine whether the income comes from crypto-native activities (like Pump) or traditional financial activities (like Hyperliquid), whether it persists during market downturns, and profit margins; projects with exposure to real-world assets and stablecoin growth, which are expected to attract institutional users and are still led by founders after surviving a bear market, are more likely to achieve higher multiples.She also categorized on-chain projects that can benchmark against non-crypto businesses as a third category, believing that most belong to narrative trading rather than long-term investment. Themes include routing, reasoning, computing power, data collection, and interface-related directions in artificial intelligence, and she is skeptical about whether most scenarios require blockchain; if such projects significantly outperform, she would view it as a signal of nearing the top.

According to official news, WasabiCard has launched various AI subscription cards, catering to the global AI tool subscription and payment needs of enterprises and teams, supporting subscription payment scenarios for mainstream AI applications such as OpenAI and Claude. Through card-based payment solutions, companies can handle the procurement and expense management of AI services for different teams, projects, or business lines more flexibly.In addition to AI subscription payments, WasabiCard also supports bulk card issuance for enterprises, fund budget management, and multi-currency account setup, as well as various scenarios such as advertising, business travel, payroll, and e-commerce subscriptions. It helps companies configure payment permissions and budget limits by department, employee, or specific purpose, enhancing the management efficiency of AI-related expenditures and the transparency of fund usage.As AI tools gradually enter daily workflows in research and development, content production, customer service, and operations, cross-border subscription payments and expense management are becoming important infrastructure for global operations of enterprises. It is important to note that currently, WasabiCard-related products are not open for application to enterprises and individual users in mainland China.