ref

According to a report by Forbes on Friday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is preparing to reform its voluntary disclosure program, planning to reduce penalties and expedite the processing of tax violation cases, including those involving cryptocurrency.Jarod Koopman, head of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, stated that the agency aims to launch the revised program before December and to close cases within 120 days after taxpayers complete the required submission process. He noted that the new plan will not establish a separate disclosure channel for digital assets but will apply the same voluntary disclosure procedures to other forms of tax noncompliance. Koopman also mentioned that the penalties under the revised program will be significantly lower than current levels, although he did not provide specific amounts. The IRS is considering allowing taxpayers to settle debts through installment payments or settlement offers.According to Forbes, the current program often takes a year or longer to complete and primarily targets taxpayers who intentionally fail to comply with tax laws and may face criminal prosecution, rather than those who make reporting errors due to negligence. Meanwhile, legislative efforts are advancing another voluntary disclosure program aimed at cryptocurrency taxpayers. Section 502 of the Digital Asset Taxation Certainty Act will establish a correction process with clear penalty standards for past violations, and the bill was passed by the House Ways and Means Committee in September.

Bitcoin News posted on platform X that Strategy spent $22.1 million to purchase Bitcoin last week and spent $193.1 million to repurchase its own STRC preferred shares.From October 12 to 18, Strategy added 267 Bitcoins, with an average purchase price of $82,900; this round of funding came from the sale of 140,872 common shares, increasing its Bitcoin holdings to 848,517 coins. The Strategy board also raised the authorized amount for digital credit repurchases from $2 billion to $3 billion.

Blackstone Group President Jon Gray refuted billionaire Ken Griffin's claim a few days ago that there is a bubble in artificial intelligence (AI). Gray stated on Thursday, "When you think of a bubble, you think of building capacity first and then hoping for demand to appear.But in the AI field, you are building capacity while hoping to keep up with demand." He said this is a "completely different situation" compared to phenomena like the telecom bubble of the 1990s. He mentioned the AI consulting company Ode, which Blackstone co-founded with Anthropic. "We simply cannot keep up with customer demand," he said. "Demand is growing almost parabolically."

According to TheEnergyMag, AI cloud service provider Nebius Group N.V. has secured a $3.5 billion Senior Secured Financing Facility from Citibank, which will be used to support its global AI cloud computing expansion.

The National Development and Reform Commission has released a new version of the "Regulations on Foreign Investment Management," which better ensures the development and security of foreign investment from an institutional perspective. The regulations consist of 76 articles, divided into six chapters: General Principles, Guidance and Services for Foreign Investment, Supervision of Foreign Investment, Protection of Foreign Investment, Legal Responsibilities, and Supplementary Provisions.The regulations will take effect on December 1, 2026, at which point the "Regulations on Overseas Investment Management" issued in 2017 will be simultaneously abolished. The state supports investors in conducting foreign investment activities based on market principles and actively participating in international cooperation and competition. Investors enjoy the autonomy of foreign investment according to the law, making independent decisions, bearing risks independently, and being responsible for their own profits and losses.

According to FXNewsGroup, Robinhood Ventures Fund I (NYSE: RVI) announced that it has invested $30 million to purchase preferred shares of Erebor Bank, National Association in the United States. Erebor is a nationally chartered bank in the United States focused on the innovation economy, serving sectors including defense, robotics, artificial intelligence, and hard technology.The bank obtained its national bank charter and federal deposit insurance from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in February 2026, and its deposit scale has exceeded $7 billion.Erebor was founded in 2025, co-founded by Palmer Luckey and others, and supported by institutions such as Valor Equity Partners, Lux Capital, and 8VC. RVI is the first fund under Robinhood Ventures, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2026, primarily providing investors with private equity exposure through investments in private companies.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) launched the OpenShell reference architecture, aimed at ensuring the secure operation of artificial intelligence agents.

According to CoinPost, Japan's Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Toshiaki Inoue, stated in the House of Representatives' Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Committee that he will study the introduction of stablecoins into the consumption tax exemption system for foreign tourists visiting Japan, and mentioned a "refund method" for tax refunds after departure confirmation, stating that he will promote responses from the user's perspective.According to the Japan Tourism Agency, the country's tax exemption system will change to a refund method starting from purchases made on November 1: Tourists will purchase goods at tax-included prices, and within 90 days from the date of purchase, upon departure confirmation by customs, they can then receive the consumption tax refund, which will be handled by the duty-free shop or an entrusted refund agency.

Anthropic recently submitted a draft AI safety bill to U.S. lawmakers, which has been questioned by U.S. AI safety advocates. The draft sets a high threshold for the government to urgently halt dangerous models, requiring that risks involve scenarios such as biological weapons, cyberattacks, or AI going out of control, and potentially causing more than 50 deaths or serious injuries, or losses exceeding $1 billion; some provisions may also limit state government regulatory authority.Nathan Calvin, the strategic head of the AI safety organization Encode, subsequently compiled Anthropic's decisions over the past year. In February of this year, the company modified its previously strict safety policy: it had previously committed to pausing training or releases if safety measures did not keep pace with model capabilities, but the new policy no longer requires the company to independently halt R&D at higher risk stages, citing that competitors might take advantage of the opportunity. During the same period, the company invested heavily in computing power, formed a chip team, and allowed Claude to take on more AI R&D tasks.On October 21, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei posted a lengthy rebuttal on X. He acknowledged that the company had made some mistakes but insisted that competing for cutting-edge AI capabilities did not violate its safety mission, stating that the company adheres to a race-to-the-top approach, believing that only by staying at the forefront of technology can it drive the industry to raise safety standards. He listed nine safety decisions that had cost the company commercially, including restricting the Mythos-level model's open access for months and strictly limiting biology-related requests. The safety roadmap updated by the company on October 19 states that existing policies mainly target the deployment of dangerous models, and in the future, it may be necessary to directly limit the speed of R&D, with plans to propose relevant policy options by January 15, 2027, or explain why none were proposed.

Bitcoin Treasuries posted on platform X that Fidelity, managing $78 trillion in assets, stated that the perpetual preferred shares of Bitcoin Treasury are the latest demand catalyst for BTC. Over the past year, the preferred shares have funded the purchase of over 135,000 BTC, equivalent to 0.5% of the total Bitcoin supply.Fidelity also stated that the increasing scarcity of BTC makes it a strong complement to the preferred shares.

Strive announced that its newly issued preferred stock SATS has raised $630 million through its initial public offering (IPO) and has been listed on Nasdaq. The raised funds will be used to purchase more Bitcoin and income-generating assets.The preferred stock has a fixed annual dividend rate of 15%, paid daily, with the first dividend scheduled to be distributed on November 9.

Kent Walker, a senior executive at Google, dismissed European concerns about the dominance of American companies in the AI industry, stating that the competition between large tech companies and startups is fierce, driving down prices and creating opportunities for European businesses.Walker pointed out that the companies involved in the competition include Nvidia, Meta, SpaceX, and others.

The synthetic perpetual contract protocol Papertrade, built on Hyperliquid, announced that its platform token PAPER will remain non-transferable due to the risk of perpetual contract attacks. The platform stated that holders of PAPER tokens obtained through trading losses can stake them to receive USDC distribution rewards.Papertrade is a fully on-chain, user-owned synthetic perpetual contract protocol that supports up to 1000x leverage with no market impact. Currently, the platform has not disclosed a specific timeline for when the PAPER token can be transferred or sold, which means holders are temporarily unable to trade or transfer their tokens on the secondary market and can only earn rewards through staking.

Reflex Aerospace, a German satellite company, is expanding satellite production in Europe with the support of NVIDIA's planned investment.

Liu Xing, the head of public relations at ByteDance, publicly questioned the claim that "over half of China's AI computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," stating that the related data is "somewhat unreliable." He revealed that only about 10% of ByteDance's total computing power is used for training and inference of video generation models, and this percentage also includes model development, not all of it is used for producing short dramas.The controversy originated from an investor communication record disclosed by Chinese Online in June this year. The company stated that 55% of domestic AI Token consumption comes from short dramas and video generation, 24% is used for e-commerce marketing, and software development accounts for only 15%. After this set of data was circulated, it evolved into the claim that "half of China's computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," leading to discussions such as "the U.S. creates the future, while China creates light-hearted dramas."

During the IMF meeting in Bangkok, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Walsh stated that he would not predict the outcomes of the remaining two interest rate meetings this year and was unwilling to disclose potential actions in advance. He said, "This is a new chapter for the Federal Reserve; we no longer do this." Regarding the recent signals from colleagues indicating "no urgency to raise interest rates this month," he neither explicitly supported nor refuted them. Walsh reiterated that the Federal Reserve will achieve price stability and noted that the global economy has largely aligned with central bank expectations since the interest rate hike in September, while describing the recent actions of various central banks as a synchronized tightening of monetary policy in most regions of the world.In September, the Federal Reserve unanimously raised interest rates by 25 basis points, increasing the target range for the federal funds rate to 3.75% to 4%. At that time, most officials expected at least one more rate hike this year. Despite the core CPI rising by 0.33% month-on-month in September, marking a strong increase for the second consecutive month, and the latest producer price data also being robust, Walsh hardly mentioned this week's inflation report and did not significantly attempt to change market expectations for the October meeting. Reports indicated that during his speech, the dollar weakened, and market bets on an interest rate hike in October dropped from about 30% to around 17%.Additionally, Walsh believes that the U.S. is experiencing significant investment growth and holds an optimistic view on economic resilience and the productivity boost brought by AI, but he warned that the development path will be "very bumpy," and the short-term impact of AI on employment remains unclear. DBS Bank macro strategist Wei Liang Chang stated that Walsh reiterated that artificial intelligence will improve productivity in the medium term, which may help ease inflation expectations and alleviate concerns about the Federal Reserve's consecutive rate hikes. Saxo Markets Chief Investment Strategist Charu Chanana noted that Walsh's refusal to commit to another rate hike led to some bets on Federal Reserve rate hikes falling flat, and related comments did not help the dollar following the release of strong inflation data.

According to a report by the Korean News Agency, the Financial Services Commission of South Korea and the Financial Supervisory Service are strengthening monitoring of "perpetual contracts" linked to Korean stocks and stock indices traded through global virtual asset platforms.If illegal business activities targeting Korean residents, such as soliciting account openings or trading, are found on overseas platforms, the regulatory authorities will refer the matter to investigative agencies and take strict countermeasures.

DeepSeek API Platform has released a notification regarding service recovery and compensation, stating that between 8:11 and 13:04 Beijing time on October 15, 2026, its service system experienced a failure, resulting in the API service being unavailable during that period. The platform apologizes for this and has stated that a comprehensive investigation and rectification regarding service stability has been initiated, with efforts to streamline and eliminate single point dependencies to prevent similar issues from occurring again.As compensation, the platform will fully refund the consumption amount of user accounts within 7 days (from October 8 to October 14) in the form of bonus credits, which will be automatically credited to the accounts. API billing deductions will first be taken from the bonus account.