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Evan Conrad published an article on October 22 titled "The end of startups," with the subtitle "The coming credit crunch." Evan Conrad stated that within the next six months, most AI startups will be unable to purchase computing power, as global computing power is sold out. To obtain capacity, new clusters need to be contracted, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for non-investment-grade entities to secure online capacity.Evan Conrad mentioned that startups are not investment-grade, thus they are required to pay larger upfront payments. He has seen cases where 100% of the contract amount is required to be prepaid, as lenders and cloud providers are unwilling to take on additional credit risk. He believes that investment-grade tenants are scarce, and due to leveraging and selling to non-investment-grade token buyers, their ratings are downgraded, which he refers to as a credit bottleneck. He anticipates that investment-grade GPU buyers will increasingly demand that token buyers themselves be investment-grade or pay large upfront deposits.In the article, he provides an example where, at the time of writing, B300 could be purchased for $6 per hour and then sold for approximately $30 per hour for inference. He expects GPU prices to rise, and the gross margin for inference layers to decline, making it harder for clients with poor credit to obtain tokens. He proposed that lenders treat GPU clusters as collateral and stated that the physical delivery forward market SF Compute could allow lenders to use GPU hours on a liquidity book as collateral, rather than relying on a single service provider's cluster.

U.S. officials stated that the U.S. State Department is preparing to order the evacuation of some personnel and their families from U.S. embassies in the Gulf region.

Kevin Boon, President of Mysten Labs, has succeeded Evan Cheng as the CEO of this Sui Layer 1 blockchain developer. Cheng will continue to serve as Chief Technology Officer and personally lead the newly established internal AI business unit. In an open letter released on October 16, Cheng stated that Boon has accepted the position and announced the news simultaneously on X. Boon previously served as Chief Legal Officer at Mysten Labs before being promoted to President. Cheng mentioned, "I planned for this day when I appointed him as President."The new AI department will have independent functions such as engineering and product development to reduce external dependencies, and will focus on trust proxy products and AI-native infrastructure, referencing the model of the on-chain financial business unit established by Mysten this summer. Cheng stated that this transition is intended to free up more time for him to focus on technical leadership while continuing to support the Sui and Walrus ecosystems, "This makes my scope of responsibilities more manageable."The goal of the AI business is to allow proxies to autonomously execute tasks within user-defined limits, with related products and services anchored to Sui and Walrus. Walrus is Mysten's decentralized storage protocol, which is set to launch its mainnet in March 2025. Cheng specifically mentioned the Verifiable Agent Arbiter developed in collaboration with Google Cloud, which was announced on October 6, aimed at allowing enterprises to prove that their AI agents operate within authorized boundaries. As designed, detailed proxy records are stored in the customer-controlled Google Cloud Storage, with cryptographic proofs stored on Walrus and coordinated on Sui, with initial enterprise deployment plans set to launch ahead of broader availability.

Upbit stated that after MANTRA was designated as a trading warning item, and following a declaration request submitted by MANTRA and the completion of the review, Upbit deemed it necessary to further review the current processing progress and decided to extend the designation period of MANTRA as a trading warning item.

As chip stocks' market value evaporates by $1 trillion, ETF investors are pouring billions into the dip.The VanEck Semiconductor ETF attracted over $430 million in inflows over the past three days, while the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF saw approximately $3.8 billion in inflows this week, setting a record. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has cumulatively dropped 12% over six days.

According to The Information, NVIDIA and ChipAgents have launched an artificial intelligence chip design evaluation project.

The Trump administration plans to transfer three senior officials from the U.S. artificial intelligence model testing agency CAISSI to the White House, reporting directly to White House technology policy director Michael Kratsios and national cyber director Sean Cairncross. The government had previously considered moving the entire agency to the White House but ultimately only adjusted part of the senior leadership; the related transfers have not yet been completed, and the identities of the three officials have not been disclosed. Since its establishment by the Biden administration, the agency has used three different names in less than two years, and Chris Fall, the head, resigned just three months after taking office in July of this year, with a successor yet to be determined.CAISSI is affiliated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the U.S. Department of Commerce, has about 40 employees, and an annual budget of approximately $15 million, responsible for model safety assessments. According to informed sources, the agency is collaborating with the National Security Agency to test OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Mythos before public release; it has previously assessed DeepSeek V4 Pro and Zhiyuan GLM-5.3. Google confirmed that Gemini 4 Argon has participated in the voluntary testing process before the U.S. government release. The White House hopes that this adjustment will allow model testing experts to be more directly involved in policy decision-making.

According to a report by the WSJ, a previously undisclosed internal investigation report from Binance shows that Iranian financier Babak Zanjani used affiliated companies, shell companies, and multiple trading accounts to transfer funds through Binance, establishing a funding channel for the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to evade Western sanctions. The related network involves 21 individual and corporate trading accounts, with a total trading volume of approximately $850 million, of which at least $67 million flowed from two accounts to wallets associated with the IRGC.The report indicates that Tajik businessman Sukhrob Oimakhmadov, classified as a "high-value customer" by Binance, received over $10 million through his account, with sources including digital wallets later identified by the Israeli Ministry of Defense as belonging to the IRGC. The cryptocurrency platform Zedcex, associated with Zanjani, had a total trading volume close to $830 million, with approximately $56 million withdrawn to related wallets. The network also involves the Turkish payment company ZedPay, as well as the cryptocurrency token USDZ used for trading.Binance stated that it has identified the related activities and taken measures, with all accounts associated with sanction violations being restricted from trading and gradually closed. The company also emphasized that the total trading volume of accounts does not equal the actual funds flowing into the IRGC and acknowledged past procedural issues in internal approvals and execution timeliness. The U.S. Department of the Treasury had previously imposed sanctions on Zanjani and related companies and individuals.

According to CoinDesk, the Layer 2 blockchain Robinhood Chain, designed for tokenizing real-world financial assets, is evaluating a transaction sorting system that allows users to pay fees for prioritizing specific transactions. This technology is developed by Arbitrum, the infrastructure provider for Robinhood Chain. Insiders say that Arbitrum's previously launched paid transaction sorting technology, Time Boost, could provide users with a 200-millisecond prioritization advantage, but it was replaced on September 24 by the new Priority Gas Auctions model, which allows traders to pay higher fees to prioritize individual transactions. This new version is what Robinhood Chain is currently evaluating.Currently, Robinhood Chain employs a first-come, first-served transaction sorting strategy and has not yet utilized Arbitrum's original Time Boost application. Since launching its Ethereum-compatible network in July, Robinhood Chain has rapidly gained popularity and has entered the top ten blockchains ranked by total locked value. Robinhood's traditional brokerage business has long profited through "payment for order flow," where market makers pay brokers for the routing rights of customer orders.The mechanism of on-chain paid transaction prioritization operates differently; it provides advantages to traders by accelerating transaction processing speeds, helping professional institutions compete for fleeting trading opportunities.

According to Bloomberg, the AI model evaluation platform Arena completed a new round of financing of $200 million with a valuation of $3.1 billion, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital.Arena originated from the Chatbot Arena research project at the University of California, Berkeley, and is known for its public large model rankings, achieving an annual revenue of $100 million in June of this year.

According to the official website of the People's Bank of China, the central bank released the "Policy Position on the Renminbi Exchange Rate," clarifying that China implements a managed floating exchange rate system based on market supply and demand, referencing a basket of currencies, and has exited from normalized foreign exchange interventions since 2017.The central bank stated that China has no intention of gaining trade competitive advantages through devaluation, never engages in competitive currency devaluation, and only uses macro-prudential tools to prevent short-term overshooting under significant external shocks such as the pandemic and the tariff war in April 2025. Since the exchange rate reform in 2005, the Renminbi has appreciated by a cumulative 23% against the US dollar, and the nominal effective exchange rate has appreciated by over 50%; since 2025, it has appreciated by about 9% against the US dollar.The central bank also pointed out that using the International Monetary Fund's external balance assessment conclusions as the official basis for the undervaluation of the Renminbi is a misinterpretation and misuse, and that alleviating global imbalances requires joint action from deficit and surplus countries.

According to Bits media, the government of Kyrgyzstan has decided to terminate the operation of the national stablecoin Gold Dollar (USDKG) and has requested the Ministry of Finance to liquidate its issuer EVA and the country's first state-owned cryptocurrency exchange Coin Nomad Exchange.This stablecoin was launched by the authorities in November 2025, initially positioned as the world's first state-issued stablecoin backed by physical gold and pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. The issuer was the state-owned company "Virtual Asset Issuer," fully owned by the Ministry of Finance of Kyrgyzstan (later renamed "EVA"), with a registered issuance volume slightly exceeding 50 million tokens. The token operates on the Tron blockchain. The authorities had positioned it as a cross-border settlement tool and planned to operate it at least until 2034. This closure aims to optimize the management of state assets, and USDKG holders can exchange their tokens for fiat currency or USDT.

IMF President Kristalina Georgieva stated that global public debt is about to exceed 100% of global GDP, with developed economies performing the worst in terms of high debt burden.

According to The Block, Ripple announced a deepening of its cooperation with the global hedge fund Brevan Howard, which will adopt the multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing, and financing services provided by Ripple Prime, further expanding the use of Ripple's institutional-grade financial infrastructure and digital asset products.Brevan Howard currently manages approximately $35 billion in assets, and its Group Chief Operating Officer Alan McGroarty stated that as digital assets increasingly integrate with traditional financial markets, the demand for digital asset infrastructure from institutions continues to grow. Ripple's platform is expected to enhance the operational efficiency and capital utilization of investment teams.This cooperation is built on the existing investment relationship between the two parties. Brevan Howard had previously invested in Ripple and participated in its strategic financing round last year, which amounted to $500 million. Ripple Prime is the institutional-grade prime brokerage platform launched by Ripple after acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25 billion in 2025.

According to a report by the Japan Economic News cited by Reference News, the Japanese government has decided to impose additional sanctions on Russia during a cabinet meeting. In principle, the Japanese government prohibits providing operational, maintenance, insurance, and financing services to 35 vessels in Russia's "shadow fleet," which secretly transports crude oil to evade Western sanctions.In addition to the sanctions against the "shadow fleet," the Japanese government will also add 33 Russian military-related groups and 9 individuals to the asset freeze list, including groups involved in using cryptocurrency to evade financial sanctions.

According to a report by the Japan Economic News cited by Reference News, the Japanese government has decided to impose additional sanctions on Russia during a cabinet meeting. In principle, the Japanese government prohibits providing operational, maintenance, insurance, and financing services to 35 vessels in Russia's "shadow fleet," which secretly transports crude oil to evade Western sanctions.In addition to the sanctions against the "shadow fleet," the Japanese government has also added 33 Russian military-related groups and 9 individuals to the asset freeze list, including groups involved in using cryptocurrency to evade financial sanctions.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Market Disruptors podcast host Mark Moss stated that despite the recent interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, Bitcoin continues to rise. He believes that most people misinterpret the reasons for the long-term increase in interest rates, suggesting that a booming economy could be one of the answers, and noted that Bitcoin benefits from both currency devaluation trades and an optimistic technological future.Moss pointed out that the United States is facing $40 trillion in debt, and that a monetary reset is a process rather than a single event. He outlined four ways to address the debt issue, focusing on the trends from 2029 to 2030. He also discussed stablecoins and the Genius Act, believing that approximately 6 billion people worldwide want to hold U.S. dollars.He mentioned that institutions are buying Bitcoin while retail investors are selling, and referenced Bitcoin's S-curve and compound annual growth rate, providing a price target of $1 million.

Former Dragonfly partner Omar Kanji announced his official joining of the alternative investment management platform Brevan Howard, serving as the Head of Growth Investments for its digital asset business and Portfolio Manager, and will continue to be based in New York. Previously, Omar Kanji announced his departure from Dragonfly on September 1, concluding a four-year term.