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Bank of America strategists warn that the debt financing boom for AI infrastructure is driving up borrowing costs for developing countries. In the second half of this year, the average yield on emerging market dollar bonds has surged by nearly 1 percentage point. Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. have issued about $70 billion in debt, while the international bond issuance by emerging market sovereign borrowers has halved to $45 billion.

The governance organization of Ethereum Name Service ENS DAO published a new proposal on X, suggesting the activation of ENSv2.The proposal plans to freeze new v1 .eth registrations, allowing domains that have not yet migrated to continue renewing and retaining existing domains, and subsequently transitioning the domain registration and resolution functions to v2.

The on-chain guarantee protocol Firelight stated that some deposit addresses failed the fund screening, and the related funds have been unstaked and returned to the original addresses, involving 87 addresses and a total of 117,500 FXRP. Firelight mentioned that the current mechanism screens blacklisted addresses or addresses sanctioned by OFAC during fund deployment and throughout the entire cycle. If an address is flagged during deployment or within the cycle, the funds will remain in the protocol until the cycle ends and will not generate rewards, but can still participate in the guarantee module for the remaining time of that cycle.After the cycle ends, the funds will be returned, and the related wallets will be prohibited from accessing again. Firelight stated that this practice is unsustainable and will roll back the blacklist process in the coming days and unfreeze the affected wallets; the time and steps for retrieving funds will be announced separately. Security, KYC, and institutional standards remain unchanged, and Firelight will develop a new plan that does not affect users in the coming weeks and will seek community input before any changes. Flare co-founder Hugo Philion stated that due to compliance policies, 84 Flare addresses have been unstaked by Firelight, and he personally will issue equivalent subsidies to those addresses that are not sanctioned and not widely blacklisted.

Bitcoin software company Breez stated that since AI coding agents have become mainstream, the demand for its developer tools has surged significantly, with consulting requests increasing by approximately 14 times. Developers and the AI agents they deploy are seeking to integrate Bitcoin payments into their applications. Breez directly attributes this growth to Anthropic's Claude Code, which was launched as a research preview in February 2025 and officially opened three months later.Breez noted that before 2025, potential partners mainly fell into three categories: staunch Bitcoin enthusiasts, crypto developers, and fintech companies that view Bitcoin as an asset class. Since the launch of Claude Code, many developers with little to no Bitcoin experience have begun to inquire, with demand coming from fitness applications, messaging apps that want users to transfer money to each other, eSIM services for travelers, and a team developing a mushroom identification app. Breez stated that these developers often choose Bitcoin for its speed, as traditional payment processing involves bank accounts and cross-border transfers, which can take weeks or even months, while its SDK can be operational in just a few minutes.Breez mentioned that an increasing number of inquiries are coming from software rather than humans, as coding agents often represent the companies deploying them in making requests. The company believes that agents prefer Bitcoin because it is permissionless; agents can build applications and set up payments for global users without needing to open bank accounts, go through approvals, or sign documents. Breez stated that its latest SDK, built on the Bitcoin scaling protocol Spark, has successfully handled the increased traffic.

According to The Business Times, Hong Qi Yu, the former CEO and founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Tokenize Xchange, and his ex-wife Erin Koo, have had nearly SGD 53 million in assets frozen under a court asset freeze order. This amount corresponds to the total claims made by 249 former customers in the lawsuit.The injunction prohibits the two from selling, disposing of, transferring, mortgaging, pledging, or otherwise diminishing the value of the related assets. The couple, both 36 years old, failed to lift the injunction during a hearing presided over by Judge Mohamed Faizal at the Singapore High Court on September 28, and the injunction remains in effect. Hong Qi Yu denies being the sole decision-maker and driving force behind AmazingTech, the operating entity behind Tokenize.

According to Decrypt, the cross-border payment company Conduit has filed a lawsuit against the stablecoin issuer Tether in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Conduit alleges that Tether unilaterally froze $2.76 million worth of USDT in its treasury wallet on September 24, 2025, and has refused to unfreeze it for over a year.The complaint shows that the freeze originated from a Brazilian police investigation into a third party, Onix, but Conduit claims that the wallet in question was created after Onix's last transaction and has never held Onix's funds. The Brazilian police did not mark the address, and the freeze decision was made independently by Tether's T3 Financial Crimes Department.Conduit states that the wallet freeze has caused a severe liquidity crisis, forcing the company to lay off employees and close offices; meanwhile, Tether continues to earn interest on the reserves corresponding to these funds by investing in U.S. Treasury bonds. The lawsuit seeks claims for conversion of property, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and computer fraud, demanding the return of the funds.Recently, Tether has been involved in lawsuits due to on-chain freeze rights, with two Thai businessmen previously suing Tether for freezing $42.4 million in USDT earlier this year. This case has once again sparked controversy in the market regarding Tether's unilateral power to freeze USDT addresses.

The cross-border payment company Conduit has filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York Federal Court, accusing the stablecoin issuer Tether of freezing its $2.76 million in funds and refusing to unfreeze or provide any explanation. Conduit states that its USDT has been locked for over a year. The complaint claims, "Conduit owes no money to Tether and has no obligations to Tether."Conduit uses stablecoins, including Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, to transfer funds across more than 100 countries. The lawsuit states that the wallet frozen by Tether is equivalent to Conduit's "operating bank account." This freeze reportedly stems from an investigation involving Conduit's former client Onix Intermediações, which was received by the Brazilian Federal Police. However, Conduit claims that law enforcement has confirmed it never requested the freezing of the payment service provider's funds wallet, and it is unclear why Tether took action; a Brazilian court also confirmed that Conduit is not under investigation related to the Onix Intermediações case.According to the complaint, Onix has not used the Conduit platform since April 2025, about a month before the creation of that funds wallet, and that wallet has never held any funds from Onix. Since the wallet is used to support company operations, Conduit states that its business has been affected, while Tether continues to earn interest on the reserves behind the frozen USDT.

Core contributor of the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) Eduardo Antuña posted on the X platform, stating that the Ethereum mainnet has successfully executed the first atomic cross-chain transaction from L1 to L2, marking the official implementation of atomic synchronous composability on the mainnet, no longer remaining in the theoretical stage.Eduardo Antuña pointed out that this is just the starting point for EEZ to promote cross-layer synchronous interaction and liquidity unification in Ethereum.

"On-Chain Detective" ZachXBT stated that he once disguised himself as a client to infiltrate a criminal gang suspected of laundering money for the North Korean-backed hacker organization Lazarus Group, and assisted in freezing funds related to the 2025 Bybit attack incident.ZachXBT indicated that after Bybit was attacked for $1.5 billion in February 2025, he discovered over 15 accounts seeking help with transactions related to the stolen funds in public Telegram and Discord groups. He then contacted a Telegram user using the alias "Jimmy Green" and built trust through multiple transactions.According to his disclosure, on March 6, 2025, he transferred $3.497 million USDC to an Ethereum address for exchanging USDC with TRON chain USDT. The Gas funds for that address trace back to the Bybit attack funds and have been publicly marked as a Bybit attack blacklist address.ZachXBT stated that in subsequent communications, the other party revealed that their team had participated in handling the stolen funds from Bybit and disclosed in advance that the funds would be transferred on chains such as Solana. By matching transaction times, amounts, and on-chain data, he discovered a wallet cluster involving over $12 million of Bybit attack funds, with funding paths including BTC→ETH→SOL→TRON and others, among which approximately 442,000 USDT had been frozen by Tether. The gang also attempted to launder money through Uniswap liquidity pools and low liquidity tokens.In addition, the other party revealed that they had helped other clients handle approximately $3 million in scam proceeds, and ZachXBT tracked the related funds flowing to sanctioned Huione Guarantee-related wallets.ZachXBT disclosed that during this investigation, he initially invested $3.497 million and bore about 5% loss risk for each transaction. The intelligence obtained was promptly provided to relevant investigative agencies and law enforcement. Since 2022, he has assisted in freezing over $75 million related to North Korea-related incidents.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin software provider Breez announced that applications built on its Breez SDK now support users receiving stablecoin payments from over 30 networks using their Bitcoin balance.Breez stated that after the recipient selects the network and amount of the payer, the SDK generates a deposit address and displays the amount received, while the payer pays from their wallet as usual; Flashnet completes the exchange in the background, and the funds ultimately enter the recipient's non-custodial wallet in the form of Bitcoin, or in the form of USD if the stable balance feature is used.In June of this year, Breez launched the ability to send USDT/USDC, allowing a single Breez-powered balance to transfer stablecoins bi-directionally across almost all networks. This update is the latest in a series of usability upgrades, following the rollout of features such as Passkey login, Cash App instant account opening, and stable balance. Breez also launched a reference application called Glow in August to showcase the capabilities of the SDK.The Breez SDK is a developer toolkit that allows applications to add Bitcoin payments without having to build their own payment infrastructure, covering wallet creation, sending and receiving, and Lightning Network payments. Developers can provide Bitcoin functionality with minimal code, without needing to run nodes or manage liquidity.In July of this year, Breez announced a partnership with Turnkey, allowing developers to add non-custodial Bitcoin support to wallet applications running on their own servers.

The issuer of the stablecoin USDT, Tether, stated on September 28 that actions involving USDT in 2026 have frozen approximately $550 million, with the related wallets identified by U.S. authorities as being associated with the Central Bank of Iran and the Iranian sanctions network. Tether claimed that its cooperation with U.S. and international authorities has supported over 2,900 investigations globally, with more than 1,600 involving U.S. law enforcement agencies.According to Tether, in April 2026, it assisted in freezing over $344 million USDT across two addresses based on information provided by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and U.S. law enforcement agencies. The next day, OFAC listed these addresses as digital currency identifiers of the Central Bank of Iran, with the sanctions entry associated with the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. In July 2026, the Treasury expanded the designated scope to four additional TRON addresses, with over $130 million USDT frozen across the four wallets.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that USDT is not a safe haven for sanctioned actors, terrorist organizations, or criminal networks, and that public blockchains allow authorities to see the flow of funds, enabling Tether to take action when law enforcement provides credible information. Tether also mentioned that it collaborates with over 340 law enforcement agencies in 67 countries, and its wallet freezing policy has been aligned with the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list.

The cross-chain liquidity protocol ThorChain's official announcement states that the network interruption is an emergency security mechanism aimed at protecting the protocol's security. The suspension is not a selective freeze of specific funds, nor is it a targeted exchange against individuals.The announcement mentioned that in the security incident in May 2026, 10.7 million dollars were stolen from the liquidity pool. At that time, the attacker's address was not blacklisted, so it could still trade on ThorChain. ThorChain stated that it is a permissionless blockchain platform designed with the intention of not conducting any censorship.

Recently, the Beijing Shijingshan police successfully intercepted a new type of cross-border telecom fraud case, freezing 780,000 yuan in involved funds and returning it to the victims. In this case, 53-year-old Mr. Liu received a fraudulent call from abroad while accompanying his child studying overseas. The scammer impersonated domestic police, fabricated false allegations of money laundering, and induced him to urgently request money transfers from his family in China.The funds were subsequently transferred into the accounts of two other Chinese students studying abroad. Upon investigation, it was found that these three individuals were all victims of the same fraud gang, exhibiting characteristics of "multiple scams in one case, with victims serving as money laundering tools for each other." The scammers first transferred funds into the accounts of some victims, then coerced them into exchanging for U currency to assist in the transfer, which was highly concealed and involved complex cross-border links. The police successfully "awakened" the victims through patient persuasion, preventing greater losses.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated on the X platform that the Bitget bounty recovery program has been launched: a 5% reward for facilitating the freezing of the attackers' funds, and an additional 5% reward for successfully recovering the funds. She called on exchanges, security researchers, and on-chain investigators to participate in tracking and recovery, and thanked Circle and Tether for their swift freezing actions.According to previous reports, Circle and Tether have frozen 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC in addresses related to the Bitget attack, totaling approximately $318,000. Bitget stated that the attack resulted in losses of about $351.6 million, with the attackers breaching the wallet service backend system, forging transfer information, and triggering the authorization signature process, ruling out private key leakage.

According to on-chain data, Tether has successfully frozen 218,000 USDT in the stolen address from Bitget, which is a "three-hop" associated address of the initial stolen address from Bitget. This address remained inactive for over 2.5 hours after being discovered.Crypto KOL tanuki42 initiated a tracking of "Circle vs Tether" at that time and asked which of the two companies would freeze the related assets first.Currently, Circle has frozen the related stolen assets 7 hours and 18 minutes earlier than Tether.

During an interview with The Block at the New York Avalanche Summit, Bart Smith, CEO of Avalanche Treasury Co., stated that the view that block space is not infinite will be tested as AI agents enter the financial market. He pointed out that as long as AI agent activities reach the lower end of market expectations, relevant activities will occur on the blockchain, "there is not enough block space, and block space is no longer infinite."Smith believes that the expected demand for block space will make the technical differences between Layer 1 networks like Avalanche, Solana, and Ethereum even more important. He stated that theoretically, there are many subtle differences between these L1s, which users currently do not need to pay much attention to due to sufficient capacity, but "these differences will become important." The former executive, who worked at Susquehanna for nearly 14 years, also believes that Avalanche is best suited for business applications involving privacy and security.Smith expects that by mid-2027, traditional financial markets will shift to trading five days a week, 24 hours a day, and existing financial infrastructure will be unable to cope with round-the-clock trading. He stated that new infrastructure must be created, and it will not be built in the old way, "but rather built on the blockchain."

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that the recent lawsuit against Tether for freezing $42.4 million in USDT highlights the regulatory gaps in the current crackdown on illegal financial activities in the cryptocurrency industry. She pointed out that stablecoin issuers and trading platforms may face civil litigation risks if they freeze related assets due to suspicions of illegal activities.Lummis indicated that Section 305 of the "Digital Asset Market Structure Clear Act" would grant stablecoin issuers and trading platforms the necessary authority to promptly freeze stablecoins suspected of being involved in illegal activities while avoiding civil liability as a result.She believes that this provision can help the cryptocurrency industry more effectively prevent the flow of illegal funds and address the legal risks faced by issuers and trading platforms when taking compliance measures.

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. stated that short-term holders of Bitcoin, holding for no more than 6 months, have transferred a total of 549,300 BTC to exchanges.During the same period, the price of Bitcoin rose from $64,000 to $78,000, an increase of about 21%; after reaching a local high of $81,800, it fell by about 4.1%, but still retained most of the gains.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has released a proposed announcement to suspend the acceptance of new applications for registration of payment system operators (OPS) for 12 months and to implement stricter controls on payment arrangements involving virtual asset service providers (VASP). The BSP stated that this move aims to conduct a comprehensive review of its classification and licensing framework.According to the draft, during the suspension period, the BSP will stop accepting and processing OPS applications. Applications submitted prior to the suspension can continue to be evaluated, but will not be approved or rejected until the suspension ends. Relevant entities are prohibited from conducting business activities that require OPS registration unless they obtain special authorization from the regulatory agency. In addition, BSP-regulated entities providing merchant acquiring services must connect licensed VASPs through direct merchant arrangements, and such relationships will be subject to enhanced due diligence, transaction and settlement limits, and other risk control measures.This requirement applies to virtual asset enterprises licensed, registered, or authorized by the BSP, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines, or other regulatory agencies, with VASPs being categorized alongside betting, gaming, adult industry, and money service businesses. If the draft is ultimately approved, it will take effect 15 days after publication, and the BSP is currently seeking public comments.

According to BeInCrypto, two Thai merchants have sued Tether, claiming that their $42.4 million USDT wallet was blacklisted at the informal request of U.S. government agents without a search warrant or court order.The plaintiffs are seeking to lift the freeze and are claiming damages from Tether for the profits generated from investing the corresponding reserves during the freeze period.