institutions

According to a post by Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, on the X platform, the continuous recovery of Bitcoin's hash rate is an "indirect bullish signal" from institutional investors. He pointed out that a higher hash rate means stronger security and better value storage fundamentals, and most publicly listed mining companies are supported by traditional financial institutions (TradFi). Therefore, the rise in hash rate can be seen as institutional recognition of Bitcoin's security and long-term value. Hash rate is an indicator of the computational power of a blockchain network, representing the number of hash calculations that can be completed per second.CryptoQuant data shows that Bitcoin's hash rate has rebounded by about 45% from its summer low, rising from approximately 726 EH/s in July to about 1,050 EH/s on Wednesday. However, the global hash rate is still below the peak of 1,305 EH/s set in October 2025, when Bitcoin's price was above $111,000. On Thursday, when the U.S. stock market opened, Bitcoin's price was approximately $81,843.Publicly listed mining companies are still expanding their production capacity. Nasdaq-listed NIP Group (NIPG) announced a third batch of asset purchase agreements, which will acquire approximately 4.47 EH/s of deployed Bitcoin mining machines. After the transaction is completed, the total hash rate from the three batches is expected to reach 13.85 EH/s. The company currently ranks 16th among publicly listed mining companies with an operational hash rate of 3.11 EH/s, while Bitdeer leads with 79.9 EH/s. On Wednesday, NIPG's stock price fell 6.8% to $6.1, down 86% over the past year; affected by higher-than-expected inflation data, U.S. stocks experienced the most severe sell-off since July, with TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, and IREN all seeing stock prices drop by about 12%.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the whale/institution that sold BTC to buy ETH sold another 246.2 BTC in the past day, worth 20.36 million dollars, and bought 10,636 ETH.Since the 11th, this whale/institution has cumulatively sold 1,847.3 BTC over 11 days, exchanged for 153 million USDC, and bought 63,731 ETH, with an average purchase price of about 2,400 dollars.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Blockchain.com Co-CEO Lane Kasselman stated that the bipartisan support for the digital asset industry in Congress is at an all-time high and continues to grow. He believes that regardless of which party dominates after the midterm elections, the industry should maintain this momentum, even though the progress of the CLARITY Act is still stalled.Kasselman pointed out that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission still have over 30 rule-making tasks that remain unfinished, and the state-level money transmission license requirements pose another significant obstacle. He also mentioned that institutional funds have taken over the crypto market and assessed that the "crypto winter" has ended.On the product front, Blockchain.com announced the launch of options trading services. Kasselman positioned Blockchain.com as the liquidity layer for tokenized assets and discussed the differences in the use of AI agents with self-custody wallets and custodial wallets globally, as well as whether AI agents will ultimately settle in stablecoins or Bitcoin.

According to foreign media reports, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index KOSPI fell sharply again after rebounding for two consecutive days, with a drop of up to 4.76% during trading on October 20, and it fell below 5500 points. The decline was attributed to rising U.S. Treasury yields and the weak performance of a data center company's first day of trading. Foreign investors reduced their holdings of Korean stocks, and institutional investors, including pension funds, also joined in selling.As of the time of writing, foreign investors had net sold 636.7 billion Korean won in the Korean securities market, while institutional investors net sold 467 billion Korean won, including financial investment institutions net selling 241.8 billion Korean won and pension funds net selling 159 billion Korean won. Individual investors net bought 838.8 billion Korean won, and other legal entities net bought 261.6 billion Korean won. Eugene Investment & Securities analyst Huh Jae-Hwan stated that this round of selling exhibited indiscriminate characteristics, with almost all stocks declining, and the market appeared very weak, with battery manufacturers that had led the rebound on Monday also experiencing a pullback.

The Governor of the People's Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, stated at the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Meeting that it will pilot further facilitation for foreign financial institutions to conduct RMB purchase and sale operations in the domestic foreign exchange market.The People's Bank plans to allow 8 domestic and foreign RMB offshore clearing banks to conduct proprietary trading in the domestic interbank foreign exchange market, promoting the integrated development of onshore and offshore markets.

According to CryptoSlate, Microsoft and the cybersecurity organization Health-ISAC have obtained a court order in the United States to seize and redirect the domains supporting three services: YAM Store, CoGUI, and Iron Man. These three services sell stolen accounts and phishing tools to fraudsters. Since January of this year, they have assisted in sending over 1 billion phishing messages, targeting more than 75,000 institutions across over 150 countries, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the operators.Microsoft has disabled over 20,000 accounts associated with YAM Store and continues to block more than 100,000 counterfeit and fraudulent domains. According to Microsoft's investigation, these services accept payments in USDT (Tron network) and ETH, and Cloudflare stated that buyers can also use USDC for payments. Blockchain analytics company TRM Labs assisted investigators in locating and freezing related assets, but the amount frozen has not been disclosed.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea stated that after investigating 16 companies (including cryptocurrency exchanges) involved in a previous security incident, it plans to implement stricter cybersecurity requirements for financial institutions. The agency noted that in an industry review covering 555 financial companies, 130 companies were found to have cybersecurity deficiencies, with approximately 100,000 pieces of customer information leaked, including names, contact details, and identification numbers.Affected companies include Streami, the operator of Gopax, and the cryptocurrency trading platform Prabang, which previously disclosed that a hacking incident on October 2 led to the leakage of some customers' personal information. The FSC indicated that it is still investigating whether these incidents involved the use of artificial intelligence or if they are related to the same group of attackers.According to the proposed reforms, larger financial institutions will undergo vulnerability assessments at least twice a year. The regulatory agency also plans to improve the information-sharing system and is considering using artificial intelligence for security monitoring of small businesses. Additionally, the FSC is considering allowing supplementary cybersecurity inspections outside of the regular assessment schedule in the event of an urgent threat to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

According to NADA NEWS, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan has requested financial institutions, including cryptocurrency exchanges, to promptly stop using images of documents such as driver's licenses for identity verification (KYC) and to switch to a new verification method that reads integrated circuit (IC) chip information through smart devices.

According to Cointelegraph, Matthew Horne, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Fidelity Investments, stated during a panel discussion at the Longitude conference in Singapore that there is "truly no turning back" as institutional forces have driven assets towards an on-chain future over the past 18 months. He pointed out that tokenization brings structural advantages to financial institutions and helps asset management companies reach new markets, with U.S. asset management companies particularly motivated to move assets on-chain.Ka Yan Chan, Head of Digital Asset Development at UBS, mentioned that government bonds and stocks, as core assets for portfolio construction, could bring billions of dollars on-chain. She believes that what will truly drive the scale from hundreds of billions to trillions will be market infrastructure participants like the Federal Reserve or DTCC taking the lead in transforming the custody layer into a tokenized platform, upon which industry participants can build a distribution layer.Data shows that demand for tokenized assets has increased by 41% in the past 30 days, with the number of holders surpassing 493,000. In December 2025, the SEC issued a "no-action" letter to a DTCC subsidiary, allowing it to provide new tokenization services for the securities market; in September, the SEC approved a temporary exemption allowing tokenized U.S. stocks to be traded on specific on-chain venues. Over the past 30 days, more than $1.2 billion has moved on-chain, with the total amount of stablecoins and tokenized assets exceeding $323 billion. Geoff Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, predicted in August that tokenized real-world assets could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028.

On October 8, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, hosted a regular press conference. A Reuters reporter asked about the allegations made by the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that Chinese individuals and related institutions used AI tools to attack South Korean financial institutions.Mao Ning stated: "I am not familiar with the specific situation mentioned. As a principle, China has always opposed and legally cracked down on hacking activities, and even more so opposes the dissemination of false information for political purposes." She also stated that artificial intelligence profoundly affects cybersecurity, and the international community should strengthen cooperation and dialogue, formulate new international rules, and jointly maintain cybersecurity.

At the TOKEN2049 event in Singapore, OKX founder and CEO Star stated that AI's impact on the financial industry is not only occurring at the user level but is also deeply penetrating backend operations such as compliance and risk control. OKX has utilized AI to assist in identifying risks, supporting investigations of suspicious transactions and behaviors, and providing recommendations to enhance processing efficiency and execution consistency. Currently, AI does not make compliance or risk management decisions directly; the final decisions are still made by humans.On-site, OKX board member and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo also added that clear regulatory rules are an important foundation for fintech companies to expand their services. To provide financial services to a broader user base, companies must comply with regulatory requirements and establish public trust through compliant operations.

Nine Japanese institutions, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Daiwa Securities, SBI Securities, Progmat, and Datachain, announced the completion of the second phase verification of "Project Trinity." The project aims to eliminate settlement synchronization risks through "Delivery versus Payment" (DvP).In the tests, Daiwa Securities and SBI Securities simulated the START market of the Osaka Digital Exchange (ODX), using corporate bonds issued by ST Company through SBI VC Trade and trust-type stablecoins issued by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, successfully completing two cross-chain synchronized settlements, thereby verifying the feasibility of the T+2 settlement cycle in phases.

ChainCatcher live report, at the OKX NOW Global Products and Ecosystem Conference (Singapore), Star stated that large global financial institutions from sectors such as exchanges, banks, stablecoins, payments, and quantitative finance are making equity investments in OKX, including ICE, the New York Stock Exchange, Standard Chartered Bank, Ripple, Circle, and others.He believes that the significance of this matter goes far beyond the funds themselves, "The future will not be a confrontation between crypto finance and traditional finance; every crypto company will expand into traditional finance, and every traditional finance company will invest in the crypto space. These two worlds are becoming one financial system."

According to The Block, Lloyds Bank's tenth annual financial institution sentiment survey shows that 71% of senior executives at large financial institutions in the UK expect tokenization to reshape the financial services industry.The survey indicates that faster payment and settlement speeds are the most frequently mentioned advantages of tokenization by respondents, followed by collateral and liquidity management.

Hyperliquid co-founder iliensinc stated in the official DC channel that Hyperliquid Labs will un-stake 3.75 million tokens today and plans to distribute the related tokens to team members on October 7. This batch of tokens is part of an over-the-counter transaction with an institution and will not be sold on the public market.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) updated the MiCA registration list, with BCash, Xenios Blockchain Group, Capital Wallet Greece, and Piraeus Bank becoming the first registered cryptocurrency service providers in Greece. The list added six institutions from Germany, France, and Slovenia, bringing the total number of registered institutions to 359.The Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) is responsible for regulating the first three institutions, while the Bank of Greece is responsible for regulating Piraeus Bank. HCMC denied that its officials communicated with European Central Bank (ECB) officials regarding Binance's MiCA application in Greece and also denied making any statements about Lagarde intervening in that application; Binance withdrew its application on June 24.