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Analysts indicate that regulatory-led measures can encourage institutional participation in the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the short term, but only legislation can make the framework more robust in the long term. Currently, the cryptocurrency industry has to rely on a series of fragmented regulatory actions, which may be overturned in the next two years due to political changes. At the same time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a five-year "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks, requiring that tokens must possess the financial and voting rights of the original stocks.Additionally, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is exploring allowing leveraged cryptocurrency trading on regulated U.S. platforms, while the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted national trust charters to an increasing number of stablecoin issuers and digital asset companies, placing activities such as custody and reserve management under federal regulation. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is also considering allowing companies to classify certain stablecoins as cash equivalents to support their broader use in payments and liquidity management.

The meme coin issuance platform Pump.fun announced the addition of take-profit and stop-loss order features for trading on EVM chains, a feature that was previously launched on Solana in September.This expansion covers networks such as Robinhood, BSC, Base, HyperEVM, Arc, and Ink.

According to a report by Politico, Joel Greenberg, a shareholder of Circle Internet Group and a former software engineer at the company, filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court on Thursday, accusing U.S. President Donald Trump and his family of benefiting from two transactions involving the United Arab Emirates through the cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial (WLFI), allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause. This clause restricts the president from accepting money or other benefits from foreign governments without congressional approval.The lawsuit states that the first transaction occurred before Trump's second term began, in which he sold 49% of WLFI for $500 million, with the related funds reportedly coming from the UAE. After Trump took office, he reportedly earned millions from this transaction. The second transaction involved an investment fund established by the UAE government purchasing $2 billion worth of digital currency from the Trump family. The plaintiff alleges that this transaction inflated the value of the cryptocurrency assets held by Trump and generated millions in interest income for him, while significantly expanding the circulation of his stablecoin.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated in the frequently asked questions document regarding retail payment regulation conclusions that the removal of surcharges for the designated card networks eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa starting from October 1, 2026, is in the public interest. The RBA will lift the ban on the "no surcharge" rule for the aforementioned networks from that date, with the changes based on Standard No. 3 of 2016 and the revisions to the merchant card payment costs and surcharge standards in 2026. eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa have all decided to implement the no surcharge rule from that date, generally applicable to their credit, debit, and prepaid cards, including cards issued overseas.American Express, UnionPay, and PayPal have also decided to eliminate surcharges, but are currently not formally regulated by the RBA. American Express and UnionPay will withdraw from their existing commitments with the RBA on October 1, 2026, while PayPal's no surcharge rule will take effect on October 5, 2026. This scope is limited to fees charged due to customer card payments and does not include surcharges for weekends, public holidays, booking fees, or service fees. Merchants must comply with the new card organization rules unless exceptions apply; businesses, non-profit organizations, and inter-business card payments do not receive a general exemption.The reforms will be implemented in phases. Starting from October 1, 2026, a lower interchange fee cap will apply to domestic card transactions; from October 30, designated card networks and large acquirers must publish the specified card payment fee information on their websites. From January 30, 2027, large acquirers must disclose how the decrease in interchange fees is passed on to merchant service fees; starting April 1, the interchange fee cap will apply to transactions involving overseas-issued cards acquired in Australia, and acquirers must also provide merchants with more detailed statements. The RBA stated that businesses can still factor the costs of accepting card payments into their overall pricing and may offer discounts for specific payment methods.

The blockchain infrastructure layer Espresso announced the completion of its mainnet upgrade. Benchmark tests show that its data throughput reaches 181 MB/s, which translates to approximately 1 million stablecoin transfers per second, based on an average of 180 bytes per transaction.The average final confirmation time for transactions is 337 milliseconds, and under peak load of 1 million transactions per second, it is 778 milliseconds.

Arbitrum posted on platform X that the Fhenix mainnet has been launched, bringing FHE-driven privacy features to Arbitrum. Users can now switch transactions from public mode to private mode through Fhenix Dual Mode.

According to a report by The Block, Coinbase released a report titled "The Always-On Dollar" indicating that in the third quarter of 2026, the average hourly transfer amount of organic stablecoin transactions exceeded $400 million. Over the past 12 months, as of July 31, approximately 73% of filtered stablecoin transfer volume occurred outside of U.S. banking hours, highlighting the demand for 24/7 stablecoin payments.The report shows that the adjusted quarterly transfer volume of stablecoins has grown to four times its original amount since the beginning of 2023, reaching $891 billion in the third quarter of 2026. At the current growth rate, this figure is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2027. The report also noted that using USDC to remit $200 through the Base network can save about 86% in fees compared to traditional payment channels. Furthermore, if 80% of global international transactions shift to stablecoin payment networks, the global annual GDP could increase by an additional $155 billion.Looking ahead, the report believes that stablecoins are likely to become an important payment infrastructure for the AI agent economy. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, between $3 trillion to $5 trillion in B2C commercial transactions will be facilitated by AI agents, with stablecoins supporting small transactions such as payment task fees between agents, purchasing API calls, and on-demand access to data and computing power.

X-Agent's latest Dune data shows that as of October 20, the platform's related on-chain activities have reached 1,268,897 transactions, with the number of Agentic Wallets reaching 39,649. At the same time, a total of 680,285 x402 payments and 233,188 AI Activity Syncs have been generated.From the Dune trend data, X-Agent's on-chain activity saw significant growth in October, with Transactions rapidly increasing in volume for the month, and x402 Payments also experiencing notable growth recently. Compared to traditional AI products that mainly measure user numbers, conversation volume, and model invocation counts, what is more noteworthy in this data set is that AI Agents within the X-Agent ecosystem are gradually generating real, verifiable on-chain economic activities.Through the infrastructure of Agentic Wallet, x402 payments, and AI Activity Sync, Agents are evolving from mere information exchange tools to economic participants capable of executing tasks, using wallets, initiating payments, and generating on-chain records. This further validates the path of the Agent Economy that X-Agent is promoting: Build → Act → Pay → Verify. From "creating AI Agents" to "enabling Agents to truly execute and transact," X-Agent is attempting to connect Agent capabilities, on-chain execution, and payment settlement into a complete closed loop.As the scale of x402 payments and Agentic Wallet continues to grow, the Agent Economy is gradually transforming from a concept into real network activities that can be directly observed and measured by on-chain data.

Solana's official announcement states that in Q3 2026, the number of non-voting transactions on the Solana chain reached 8.92 billion, an increase of 104% compared to Q4 2025.

Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian stated that Tehran has proposed a seven-day plan aimed at restoring normal navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, with the decision resting in the hands of the United States.Amir-Abdollahian mentioned at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting that Iran has conveyed the proposal through Qatar, and if the conditions are met, the strait will be reopened within seven days.

Cryptocurrency media Watcher Guru reported that Australia has proposed legislation requiring the reporting of cryptocurrency transactions and the initiation of international tax information sharing.According to the bill, cryptocurrency platforms will be required to report transactions involving Australian residents to tax authorities starting from July 2027.

According to Cointelegraph, the Central Bank of Russia stated in updated regulatory guidelines that arrangements for individuals to conduct peer-to-peer transactions in crypto assets will continue until July 1, 2027. After that, related transactions must be completed through authorized intermediaries. The Central Bank of Russia also clarified that individuals are not allowed to transfer crypto assets from digital accounts to self-custody wallets.Russia is expanding its regulated crypto market, with the country's largest bank, Sberbank, having been authorized to provide crypto asset trading services, having previously been approved to become a digital asset custodian. The new crypto asset regulatory rules in Russia took effect on September 1, bringing trading operators and custodians under the supervision of the Central Bank of Russia; the country still prohibits the use of cryptocurrencies for payment of goods and services. Jan3 CEO Samson Mow stated that P2P transactions are more resilient to regulatory crackdowns than centralized platforms.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, a certain whale withdrew 1100 ETH from OKX 20 hours ago at a price of $2516.77, worth approximately $2.77 million; one hour ago, they replenished 2188 ETH at a price of $2416.89, worth approximately $5.29 million, with an average price of 3288 ETH being $2450.

According to CoinDesk, Solana plans to implement the Alpenglow upgrade on October 21. This upgrade aims to reduce the transaction finality time to about 150 milliseconds and replace the existing voting system of the network with a faster certificate-based consensus mechanism.

Ripple announced the integration of the wallet technology from Privy, a subsidiary of Stripe, into the XRP Ledger, allowing financial applications and AI agents to create accounts, hold cryptocurrency assets, and complete payments without users needing to manage wallet software themselves. Developers can create wallets within their own products and authorize transfers involving XRP, the US dollar stablecoin RLUSD issued by Ripple, and other network assets. Privy is responsible for the wallet infrastructure, reducing the workload for application developers while supporting the export of private keys or mnemonic phrases for wallet migration to other platforms.This integration also allows AI agents or automated bots to hold funds and automatically pay for online data and service fees. Privy documentation states that wallets running on enterprise servers can allow software to hold and spend funds, including purchasing data access services through the x402 payment standard. J. Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, stated that the network has processed over 13 million agent payments via x402, accounting for about 25% of ledger activity. Data from the XRPL AI Hub operated by payment infrastructure developer t54 shows that as of Wednesday, cumulative transactions exceeded 14.3 million, covering 169 registered merchants.However, the cumulative transfer amount is much smaller than the scale suggested by the number of transactions, with the dashboard recording cumulative payments of approximately 6,991 XRP and 12,752 RLUSD, most transaction amounts being very small. Ripple began providing related tools to developers in June and expanded support for payment standards developed by Stripe and payment blockchain Tempo in September.

According to South Korean media Sedaily, South Korea plans to start taxing cryptocurrency in January next year, but there are still several loopholes in the tax infrastructure. The head of the National Tax Service, Lim Kwang-hyun, stated during a parliamentary audit that preparations are being made for the smooth implementation of the tax, but activities such as transfers between private wallets and trading on overseas platforms are still difficult to track comprehensively.Even with the introduction of the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), it is challenging to cover all transactions. It is reported that the Bank of Korea also exposed related regulatory blind spots during a previous parliamentary audit.

The total value of tokenized stocks has approached $3.3 billion, growing 15% over the past 30 days. Tokenized stock trading on major blockchains such as Solana and BNB Chain mostly occurs outside of regular trading hours in the U.S. Over 70% of tokenized stock trading volume on BNB Chain takes place outside of 9:30 AM to 4 PM Eastern Time, while this ratio for Solana and Base is 63% and nearly 60%, respectively.The trading volume of tokenized assets on the Solana trading platform Jupiter has increased by 50% month-over-month. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an "innovation exemption" last month, allowing eligible trading venues to trade tokenized U.S. stocks on public chains. SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda stated that relevant platforms must disclose trading prices, volumes, timestamps, and daily trading volumes in U.S. dollars, as well as publicly disclose liquidity pool addresses and balances.

According to a report by Mobile Payment Network, regarding some payment platforms that are registered only as financial technology companies without obtaining any financial category licenses, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of Hong Kong, Christopher Hui, stated that appropriate enforcement actions will be taken as necessary under the relevant statutory regulatory framework to maintain financial stability and protect the rights and interests of customers and the public.According to the Hong Kong Payment Systems and Stored Value Payment Instruments Ordinance, unless a statutory exemption is obtained, anyone who issues or operates stored value payment instruments in Hong Kong without a license is committing an offense. If cases of suspected unlicensed operation or violations of the Payment Ordinance are discovered, the Monetary Authority will intervene directly and will collaborate with other relevant regulatory agencies depending on the nature of the case, and will refer the case to law enforcement agencies if necessary.

According to reports from American media, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Basset stated that the Trump administration is escalating its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran to an "absolute isolation" action. In addition to financial sanctions, it will further restrict Iran's access to international markets, transportation networks, and financial resources through maritime blockades, restrictions on air transport, and cutting off land routes.Basset revealed during an interview at the Newsmax NPolicy summit held in Washington on Thursday that the U.S. government may seize approximately $1 billion in cryptocurrency assets this week, stating that authorities have located the relevant assets and are taking measures to isolate them. Basset also mentioned that the U.S. is cooperating with the United Arab Emirates and Oman, and coordinating with Pakistan and Turkey to attempt to cut off Iran's land transportation routes. He stated that the government's goal is to completely block Iran's oil exports and restrict international travel for Iranian officials and individuals associated with the regime. Currently, reports have not disclosed the specific cryptocurrencies, wallet addresses, executing agencies, and legal basis involved in this cryptocurrency asset seizure action, and it is also unclear whether the related actions have been officially implemented.