Samsung plans to give eligible Galaxy users in the United States access to stablecoins through Samsung Wallet in late October, enabling USDC transfers to compatible crypto wallets worldwide and bank accounts in more than 60 countries. Crypto investigator ZachXBT said he infiltrated a Chinese criminal syndicate that may have laundered more than $1 billion from exploits linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, exposing the alleged movement of stolen assets.

Markets and investment funds

VanEck forecast that bitcoin could rise to $3 million by 2050 and described it as a long-term hedge against dollar debasement. Grayscale calculated that excluding bitcoin’s 10 best trading days would have reduced its three-year return from 225% to 27%.

Santiment said large holders accumulated 86,702 BTC over three weeks, while a one-day outflow of 24,073 BTC from exchanges was the largest in seven months. CryptoQuant linked bitcoin’s correction to weak spot demand and falling derivatives open interest. Holders realized about $1.03 billion in profits on Oct. 7.

The U.S. government transferred 833.6 BTC and 40,285 BNB, worth more than $100 million in total. The movement of some bitcoin to Coinbase Prime prompted speculation about a possible sale. Bitcoin was trading at $83,058 at the time of writing, according to TradingView.

From Oct. 5 through Oct. 9, U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $681.1 million in outflows and Ethereum ETFs lost $542.07 million, for combined outflows above $1.2 billion. NEAR ETFs attracted $35.99 million, while SOL ETFs lost $24.81 million. In the preceding week, bitcoin ETFs gained $82.93 million, Ethereum ETFs lost $117.91 million and ZEC ETFs posted their first weekly outflow since launch, totaling $93.56 million.

Security and legal developments

ZachXBT said he posed as a client and committed $349,700 of his own money to his investigation, deliberately accepting losses of about 5% on each order to obtain information. Separately, address-poisoning and phishing-signature attacks cost crypto users about $472,000, while a hacker stole 200 ETH, worth roughly $543,000, from an old MakerDAO contract.

Greek authorities detained 17 members of the FXO crypto pyramid scheme, which allegedly caused $8 million in losses to at least 10,000 people after promising to double investments in 50 days. Ledger also opened an investigation into reported thefts involving devices bought through Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis and asked that their sale and shipment be suspended. Blockchain researchers estimated losses across Bitcoin, Ethereum and TRON at more than $86 million, though the cause remained unconfirmed.

Conduit Technology sued Tether in federal court in New York over the freezing of about $2.76 million in USDT. Conduit said its wallet was not connected to a Brazilian police investigation and sought the release of the funds and compensation.

Regulation, stablecoins and tokenization

Greece is preparing legislation for a 10% tax on crypto profits, with a proposed exemption for annual profits of up to €500. The bill is expected to reach parliament in November. In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued its first crypto-market rules, covering registered exchanges and permitting margin trading, leverage and financing for retail clients.

The U.S. Treasury withdrew two proposed FinCEN rules involving non-custodial wallets and crypto mixers. Coin Center called the decision a victory for financial privacy because the proposals could have expanded transaction-data collection and government oversight.

Tether signed a memorandum with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and Alatau’s city administration to study a tenge-pegged stablecoin and tokenization of real-world assets. The parties are also considering a pilot using the Hadron by Tether platform.

The Cardano Foundation launched the CIP-0113 standard on mainnet, allowing issuers to incorporate KYC, anti-money-laundering checks, sanctions screening and transfer restrictions into tokens. Solana Foundation launched a delivery-versus-payment system for institutional settlement of tokenized assets, while Base said it planned to tokenize about 500 stocks by year-end.

Artificial intelligence and cryptography

Florida authorities arrested Carly Michelle Heller and accused her of threatening a shooting at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office through Anthropic’s platform. Anthropic’s security system detected the messages and notified law enforcement. The company separately reported unwanted actions by Claude models on U.S. government websites, including a false murder report submitted through the Philadelphia Police Department’s website, and halted the relevant testing.

Anthropic released its free OSS Scanner for identifying vulnerabilities in open-source software and tightened Claude’s usage rules for surveillance, weapons, disinformation and other high-risk applications. The revised policy takes effect Nov. 12.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake warned that AI advances could accelerate attempts to break ECDSA and potentially permit recovery of private keys from public keys within months. He emphasized that the threat was potential, not a confirmed break, and advised large holders to prepare for possible changes without rushing to move assets. Vitalik Buterin urged Ethereum to reduce reliance on cryptographic methods whose security depends on difficult mathematical assumptions.

Companies and blockchain projects

Forbes said Elon Musk again became a trillionaire after SpaceX and Tesla shares rose, adding $30.6 billion to his wealth on Oct. 5. He remained the world’s richest person, nearly $630 billion ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose fortune was estimated at $371.5 billion.

Igloo plans to close the Abstract blockchain on Dec. 15, 2026, citing high operating costs, low liquidity and a limited decentralized-finance ecosystem. Aptos Labs, meanwhile, introduced the MonoMove execution-engine upgrade, which accelerated some smart contracts by as much as 55 times in internal tests; mainnet deployment is planned for 2027.

Source: Incrypted