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According to official news, Futu Securities has opened BNB deposit and withdrawal services for qualified professional investors in Hong Kong, further expanding the virtual asset service chain.Qualified professional investors can now deposit funds via the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network between self-custody wallets and Futu crypto accounts, or withdraw to verified whitelist addresses, achieving compliant interconnection between on-chain assets and the securities trading ecosystem.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission approved the establishment of Citigroup Securities (China) Co., Ltd. The company is registered in Shanghai, with a registered capital of 1.2 billion RMB. Its business scope includes securities brokerage, securities investment consulting, securities underwriting and sponsorship, and securities proprietary trading. The shareholder Citigroup Global Markets Holdings Inc. holds a 100% investment ratio.

a16z Frontier founding partner Chris Dixon stated that early Web2 platforms were built on fragile tacit agreements: independent creators, bloggers, news media, and community volunteers contributed high-quality content for free, while platforms provided traffic distribution, audience accumulation, and commercial revenue opportunities.He pointed out that after forming a monopoly through network effects, platforms continuously tightened algorithms, forcing creators to pay for traffic. With the advent of the generative AI era, large model companies collect long-accumulated content from the entire internet through crawlers and directly provide answers in search and Q&A interfaces, no longer diverting traffic to the original websites, thus severing the economic cycle of independent creators.Dixon believes that if this trend continues, high-quality original content may be depleted, and the internet could be flooded with low-quality machine-generated content. He proposed that verifiable data ownership could be established through blockchain protocols, allowing data calls, reasoning, and training to be traceable and automatically receive economic returns. Reshaping this contract is one of the important missions of the Frontier fund.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has listed BTCC as a suspicious virtual asset trading platform. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission stated that the relevant entity is a virtual asset trading platform operated by a Polish company, BTCC Poland Limited (which only has an English name), and it is not licensed by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and is suspected of engaging in unlicensed activities in Hong Kong.

On October 23, a16z General Partner Chris Dixon announced that a16z crypto would be renamed a16z Frontier. The investment scope has expanded from crypto startups to a broader category of frontier technology startups, which are companies that create new technologies, open new markets, and may take years to mature. Dixon emphasized that this adjustment is an expansion of scope rather than a shift in direction, and the team will continue to invest in crypto and related businesses while advocating for reasonable crypto regulation.Dixon stated that as blockchain becomes more widely adopted, Wall Street and fintech companies have normalized the launch of on-chain products, and the importance of the "crypto company" label has diminished; companies should be defined by their business rather than the technology they use. His explanation also pointed to the AI wave, which not only focuses on using AI to perform existing tasks faster and better but also emphasizes the emergence of new native use cases, full-stack entrepreneurship that integrates software and hardware with services, and new networks that connect people with intelligent agents.Dixon believes that blockchain will continue to play an important role, providing the internet with a fast, cheap, global, and programmable funding track. Stablecoins are becoming standard tools for fintech and institutions, and they can also support machine-to-machine transactions and the cold start of new networks. The fund will be co-led by Dixon along with a16z founders Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and General Partners Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet, while the operating team will continue to serve existing and future portfolio companies in areas such as regulation, market entry, talent, marketing, and technology development.

Domain infrastructure company D3 announced the launch of the Frontier Hyperliquid Vault, a membership program that provides participants with priority access to a new round of top-level internet domains. Nasdaq-listed Hyperion DeFi (NASDAQ: HYPD) is listed as the launch partner for the vault. D3 is a core contributor to the Doma Protocol and one of the few ICANN-accredited Web3 registrars, with investors including Paradigm.At the launch of the program, ICANN opened the second round of new top-level domain applications in internet history in August 2026, receiving over 1,600 applications covering suffixes such as .agent, .crypto, .wallet, .sol, .robot, and .hype is also included in this round of applications. The last expansion occurred in 2012, resulting in approximately 1,200 new top-level domains, which are now used by tens of millions of websites.The participation process is as follows: users deposit qualified assets with supported custodians on Solana and Hyperliquid to earn Frontier Points, and then gain priority in registering domain names by committing points before formal registration. As part of the initial commitment, Hyperion DeFi will receive a distribution of DOMA tokens in future potential token generation events based on incentive arrangements with the Doma Foundation. The Doma Protocol is a DNS-compatible blockchain aimed at tokenizing the domain market, which is valued at approximately $36 billion.

According to PR Newswire, the blockchain asset management firm CMCC Global announced the tokenization of its Crest Fund (Crest) and Liberty Bitcoin Accumulation Fund (LBAF), calling them the first tokenized master fund products issued under El Salvador's digital asset legal framework.The two funds will be issued using Tether's Hadron tokenization platform and will raise funds from qualified investors through the regulated Bitfinex Securities platform, with the subscription period ending on October 30, 2026. Both funds are multi-manager quantitative hedge funds that invest in market-neutral strategies in the digital asset market, including funding rates, cross-exchange and volatility arbitrage, market making, and DeFi strategies. Among them, Crest is denominated in USD, targeting returns above U.S. Treasury yields; LBAF is denominated in Bitcoin, targeting a net annualized return of 8% to 12%.BTCS S.A., a digital asset treasury company listed in Poland and Frankfurt, has agreed to act as a cornerstone investor and plans to allocate a three-digit number of Bitcoins to LBAF, with the specific amount not yet disclosed. The token issuance price is set at $10 per CREST and 0.0001 BTC per LBAF, with a minimum subscription of one token; eligible holders can also trade on the secondary market through Bitfinex Securities around the clock.

According to French media reports, three masked individuals broke into the home of a couple in their sixties in Mont-de-Marsan, Landes, France, threatening the two to hand over their cryptocurrency. The 63-year-old husband sustained a head injury, and the assailants subsequently took a laptop and a mobile phone.After the two victims managed to escape, they called the police and were sent to the hospital for examination. Preliminary police investigations suggest that the case may be related to the couple's son, who works in the cryptocurrency industry. Following the incident, their son has been placed under police protection. Currently, the three suspects are still at large, and the case is being investigated by the Bayonne judicial police.

According to BBX data, yesterday global publicly listed companies in the U.S. stock market and mainstream financial institutions disclosed the latest developments in the disposal of crypto asset treasury, corporate governance accountability, and Layer 2 security tokenization cooperation. The core information is as follows:Shareholder Bastion Trading, holding approximately 9.99% of SkyAI shares, issued a statement pressuring for accountability regarding the liquidation of SOL and demanding a board restructuring: Major shareholder Bastion Trading, which holds approximately 9.99% of the NASDAQ-listed company SkyAI (NASDAQ: $SKYA), officially released a statement requesting that SkyAI's Executive Chairman Paul K. Danner III and three directors Soren Bo Christiansen, Timothy J. Ruemler, and Jason L. Monroe publicly explain their specific roles in evaluating, approving the takeover offer, and overseeing the complete liquidation of SOL, including who authorized and supervised the liquidation, reviewed the timing of the transaction, execution methods, counterparties, and transaction costs.Meritz Securities of South Korea signs MOU with Optimism Foundation to explore tokenized financial asset clearing based on OP Stack: South Korea's mainstream financial institution Meritz Securities announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Optimism Foundation. The two parties will jointly study the issuance, clearing, and distribution framework of tokenized financial assets based on OP Mainnet and other OP Stack networks, deeply exploring the commercial viability of using Ethereum public Layer 2 as a financial-grade distribution and clearing infrastructure. Meritz Securities stated that it will focus on exploring tokenized financial products based on high-quality local assets within the legal and licensing compliance framework, and will promote implementation in conjunction with the progress of South Korea's security token offering (STO) regulations. Previously, KB Securities and DB Securities in South Korea have also successively accessed the OP Stack ecosystem to explore related tokenization businesses.

According to monitoring by Olaoluwa Osuntokun, the Chief Technology Officer of Lightning Labs stated that due to the CVE-2026-111943 vulnerability, it is strongly recommended that all lnd, btcd, tapd, and litd users update their binaries or rebuild using Go 1.27.3.The vulnerability involves the compromise of a certificate authority, which may affect the security of the related software.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stated that three companies have notified it of their plans to operate tokenized securities trading venues (TSV) under the new innovation exemption policy.TSV LLC is held by Obsidian Systems co-founders Ali Abrar and Ryan Trinkle, with Ryan Trinkle also serving as a board member of the Canton Foundation. The platform plans to operate on the Canton Network; OKXICE is a joint venture between OKX and ICE Markets, planning to operate on OKX's Ethereum Layer 2 network X Layer; Kephas Corp. is the U.S. subsidiary of Perpetuals.com, led by founder @PGruhnPDC, who previously served as the head of FTX Europe. This platform plans to operate on the public, permissionless Layer 2 network Kronos X Public, which adopts a licensed trading pool.The SEC stated that being listed does not mean that the relevant companies have met the conditions for the innovation exemption.

ARK Invest's Q3 2026 DeFi report shows that stock tokenization has become the main driving force behind the rebound in on-chain trading activity for the quarter. The trading volume of tokenized stock spot DEX reached approximately $50 billion, about 9 times that of the previous quarter, with its share of total spot DEX trading volume rising from about 1% to around 9%. Overall, DEX spot trading volume increased by approximately 13% quarter-over-quarter to $571 billion, marking the first growth in nearly four quarters.Robinhood Chain achieved approximately $65 billion in DEX trading volume and $51 million in network revenue in its first quarter, with network revenue nearing the level of BNB Chain during the same period. However, ARK expects that recent adjustments to the Gas mechanism will cause the chain's revenue to decline from current levels. The total supply of stablecoins decreased by about 3% quarter-over-quarter to $309 billion, but adjusted trading volume increased by approximately 16% quarter-over-quarter to $781 billion, with the number of monthly active addresses growing by about 39% to 73 million.In the perpetual contract DEX, there is a divergence between open positions and trading volume: the value of open contracts increased by about 76% quarter-over-quarter to $24 billion, while quarterly trading volume decreased by about 16% to $1.4 trillion. Among them, Hyperliquid's open contract value is about $13 billion, accounting for approximately 53%. ARK believes this indicates fewer but larger positions held for longer durations.

The cryptocurrency security warehouse leverage, unified account model, and unified account professional version will add 5 types of bStocks tokens on October 21, 2026, at 20:00 --- RoboStrategy Inc (BOTB), Berkshire Hathaway (BRKBB), KraneShares STAR Market 50 ETF (KSTRB), Direxion Daily 20 Year Treasury Bull 3X ETF (TMFB), and Vistra Corp (VSTB) --- as eligible collateral assets. Eligible users can use these bStocks tokens as margin collateral.

Slow Fog Security Warning states that PHP released a security announcement on October 20, disclosing two serious security vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution (RCE), numbered CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, both with a CVSS v4 score of 9.2. Currently, the PHP official has not released a fix patch, and the specific affected versions and exploitation conditions are yet to be confirmed.According to existing information, the PHP official plans to release a security update on October 21 at 14:00 UTC (22:00 Beijing time). Slow Fog recommends that relevant institutions promptly check the PHP versions in their servers and business systems, focusing on PHP services exposed to the public network, and upgrade in a timely manner after the patch is released; systems that cannot be upgraded temporarily should restrict access sources and take isolation measures if necessary.

OpenAI announced the acquisition of San Francisco startup Orchestra Bio, which has developed AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies track the progress of drug development projects. Orchestra's team and platform will be integrated into OpenAI's life sciences product line Rosalind, aimed at biologists and chemists, with the transaction amount undisclosed. Orchestra was founded in the fall of 2022, with seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Definition Capital, Insight Partners, and 8VC, raising a total of approximately $20 million.According to OpenAI, a new drug can take up to 15 years from initial conception to approval in the United States, and the cost of bringing a single approved drug to market can exceed $2.6 billion, with less than 10% of candidate drugs entering human trials ultimately reaching the market. Orchestra's AI agents can automatically monitor tasks and flag issues, analyze how setbacks like production batch failures affect the overall development project, compile relevant information, and compare response strategies, ultimately allowing scientists and project leaders to make decisions.This acquisition follows competitor Anthropic's acquisition of Coefficient Bio for approximately $400 million in April, reflecting the competition among AI labs for new drug development workflows. In April, OpenAI launched the model GPT-Rosalind specifically designed for biology and drug discovery, available only to vetted U.S. corporate clients such as Amgen and Moderna, with the accompanying product Rosalind Workbench connecting the model to research tools and data.

On-chain detective ZachXBT stated that in August 2026, a centralized money laundering service named FreedomXMR (FXMR) appeared on Hyperliquid Core (HL Core). Over 87% of its incoming funds are directly related to illegal activities.Through manual verification, it was found that among all historical inflows over $10,000 to FXMR, more than $20 million directly originated from ransomware attacks, exploits, malware, and social engineering attacks, including: the DCENT wallet exploit incident (September 2026), the Fetch.ai exploit incident (September 2026), the Axelar exploit incident (September 2026), a certain ransomware payment (September 2026, specific source undisclosed), and the Gamdom exploit incident (October 2026). The operators of this service obtained XMR liquidity from KuCoin (over 3,000 deposits), suspected of using a similar exchange model to Wagyu.The token name (ticker) FXMR was acquired by the operators at an HL auction on July 27, 2026, for 518.28 HYPE (approximately $28,000). Several such centralized money laundering services had previously appeared on HL Core, exploiting the chain's "permissionless" design features and its wide application for illegal money laundering activities. Relevant data tables have been shared with the Hyperliquid team.

According to Bloomberg citing sources, Japan's Daiwa Securities Group and Mizuho Financial Group have been notified that they can conduct wholly-owned securities business in mainland China. The relevant approvals were advanced after Vice Premier He Lifeng of the State Council received a senior Japanese trade delegation in March this year and discussed expanding bilateral trade and cross-border investment.A spokesperson for Mizuho Securities confirmed the news, stating that preparations for opening are ongoing, while a spokesperson for Daiwa Securities declined to comment. Daiwa Securities was approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in 2021 to establish a joint venture securities company with a 51% stake. In April this year, it spent about $100 million to acquire the remaining equity from its Chinese partner and received approval last week to complete the equity change, achieving full ownership.Mizuho Securities was approved to establish a wholly-owned securities company in October 2025, and after completing on-site inspections and operational reviews by regulatory authorities, it was issued a securities business license last week.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center issued a statement urging the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to exclude airdrops from the definition of securities. The center advocates that the position proposed by the SEC in March 2026 should be written into the rules, stating that free airdrops do not constitute "monetary investment" and therefore do not fall under investment contracts.The center also argues for the extension of the above rules to include announced airdrops, including periodic or regular distributions. Applicable prerequisites include that the network is operational, eligibility is based on usage or contribution, such as trading, validating, providing liquidity, and governance, and that airdrops are not a means of financing.The center believes that investment requires tangible and identifiable consideration, and airdrops are rewards rather than investments. Processes for claiming, such as connecting wallets, signing, paying gas fees, completing KYC/AML, or accepting terms of service, should not be considered as consideration. Furthermore, the rule should be retroactively applicable to past airdrops or cover Hyperliquid's native airdrops.