Blockstream has rejected a 10% bounty request from the group behind the Liquid Network breach, with 598 BTC from the incident still unreturned.

Blockstream said withholding assets obtained without authorization in exchange for payment does not constitute legitimate security research, distinguishing responsible disclosure from taking funds without permission.

The company had been in contact with the actors as it sought to recover user funds. Blockstream is now asking them to return what remains without attaching any financial conditions.

Hackers Seek 10% Bounty

The group outlined its terms in an on-chain message that Samson Mow, JAN3 CEO and former Blockstream chief strategy officer, shared on Wednesday. The proposal called for Blockstream to fund a 10% bounty and claimed Liquid holders could face a 15% loss without an agreement.

The demand came after the Sept. 6 breach of Liquid, when about 4,000 BTC was taken from the network’s federation wallet. The Bitcoin involved was valued at roughly $320 million at the time.

Of that amount, 3,400 BTC was subsequently sent back after fixes were applied to the affected bridge nodes, leaving 598 BTC unrecovered.

If those coins are withheld, Blockstream plans to involve law enforcement and seek assistance from exchanges, service providers and blockchain investigators. Such cooperation could help track where the Bitcoin moves and determine who controls it.

Liquid Moves Toward Restoring Operations

Meanwhile, Liquid took an initial step toward restoring the network on Thursday after implementing software fixes introduced in response to the breach.

Blocks began being created again, but without regular user transactions. Transfers between Bitcoin and Liquid also remained unavailable as the network continued to recover.

India has put 10.25 billion rupees ($107 million) of corporate debt onto its new tokenisation infrastructure, with three companies completing issuances as securities regulators and the central bank test a model that pairs distributed-ledger bonds with wholesale central bank digital currency.

The pilot, called Demat 2.0, is being run by the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the Reserve Bank of India. SEBI disclosed details of the initiative on Thursday.

REC, a state-owned lender, was the first to use the framework, raising 5 billion rupees from 18 investors in a Monday transaction. Two additional deals followed on Wednesday: Larsen & Toubro, the engineering group, raised 5 billion rupees from four investors, while IIFL, a non-bank financial company, sold 250 million rupees of bonds to one investor.

Three-Issuer Launch Goes Beyond Earlier REC Proposal

The scale of the first phase exceeds what had been reported in August. Reuters had said at the time that the planned test would involve selected investors and an REC offering valued at under 5 billion rupees. With L&T and IIFL also participating, the combined issuance is more than double the amount initially anticipated for REC.

More primary issuances are still being conducted under this opening stage, according to SEBI. Plans for subsequent phases include bringing the securities onto existing request-for-quote venues for secondary transactions and eventually allowing retail participation. SEBI said lessons from the trial would help determine how broadly to deploy the framework.

Notably, participation does not require investors to establish another securities account or repeat the Know-Your-Customer process. Tokenised bonds can be accommodated within an investor’s current Demat account. For transactions under the pilot, however, Demat 2.0 requires activation with the relevant depository, while the cash side requires a wholesale CBDC wallet maintained with a participating bank.

Distributed Ledger Links Bond Ownership With RBI Digital Currency

Demat 2.0 changes how the securities are represented and settled. Corporate bonds are generated as digital tokens on a distributed ledger operated by India’s statutory depositories. The payment side is connected to the RBI’s wholesale CBDC through the central bank’s Unified Market Interface.

That setup supports atomic settlement, which removes the time lag between money and securities transfers, SEBI said. It also shortens the funding timetable for issuers: proceeds can arrive on the bidding day instead of two to three days afterward. Smart contracts can automate interest distributions and bond redemptions.

The move to tokenisation does not modify the bonds’ legal standing, repayment responsibilities or protections available to investors, according to the regulator.

SEBI said the arrangement makes India the first country where corporate bonds originate natively on a distributed ledger, statutory depositories retain the ownership records, and CBDCs handle settlement, all within the existing regulated market infrastructure.

Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to reverse a fraud conviction and eliminate an $11 billion forfeiture, arguing jurors received an incomplete picture of whether FTX customers ultimately lost money.

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A new Senate Republican draft of the CLARITY Act would require some centrally controlled crypto trading protocols to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, introducing a new regulatory requirement ahead of the bill’s first procedural vote on Sept. 15.

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Bitwise will wind down its spot Dogecoin ETF roughly 10 months after its debut, marking an early end to the fund after limited uptake. The fund, BWOW, is expected to have its final NYSE trading session on Oct.

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Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Kraken parent Payward as the two companies broaden their collaboration around tokenized equities and digital-market infrastructure. The investment values Payward at $21 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg.

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Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong expects Bitcoin to rise as the cryptocurrency approaches its next halving, saying he believes the market has already reached its low for the current cycle. Armstrong outlined that view during a Bloomberg Television interview on Thursday, placing the potential improvement in Bitcoin’s trajectory within the next one to two years.

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Consensys Software Inc. plans a two-company reorganization by year-end 2026.

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Trezor and BitBox issued fresh phishing warnings after customers received fraudulent emails that appeared to originate from the hardware wallet companies’ communication channels. Both companies told users to avoid unexpected security messages, especially those that direct recipients to external links.

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Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP memecoin lost more than 99% during a turbulent Wednesday debut, with the project saying automated sniper activity and insufficient liquidity in the launch pool drove the sharp price reversal. The token rose above $300 following its airdrop and, during its first hour of trading, briefly carried a market capitalization of roughly $110 billion.

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Former Silvergate Bank CEO Alan Lane has challenged the regulatory narrative surrounding the crypto lender’s 2023 closure, saying the bank had the financial resources to continue operating but ultimately chose to shut down under pressure from the Biden administration. Lane made the allegations Tuesday in his debut Substack article, accusing the Biden administration of orchestrating a campaign against Silvergate that ultimately contributed to its liquidation.

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Jack Dorsey’s Block is pursuing a federal banking charter in the United States as it looks to bring Bitcoin and stablecoin custody operations into a nationally regulated trust institution. Block announced the move Tuesday, saying the proposed institution will operate as Builders Bank & Trust, N.A.

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Iran has reportedly changed its foreign-exchange framework to give companies more options for bringing export income back into the country, with the new arrangements permitting digital assets in international payments amid tighter US sanctions. According to a Wednesday report from the Financial Times, Iranian businesses can now use Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether’s USDt (USDT) to pay overseas counterparties, with transactions processed through domestic crypto exchanges.

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Hunter Biden has detailed how his LAPTOP memecoin will distribute its 1 billion-token supply, including community airdrops and a mechanism that will either burn tokens or allocate them to charity based on the outcomes of 30 publicly identified real-world events. The memecoin is scheduled to launch Wednesday on Base Layer 2.

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Canary Capital will launch the first U.S. exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering both TRX exposure and staking on Wednesday.

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Visa’s stablecoin-linked payments business is scaling rapidly, with the company now processing settlement activity at a pace equivalent to more than $20 billion annually. The annualized settlement rate has increased more than 15-fold year over year, reflecting the broader expansion of stablecoin-powered card products across Visa’s network.

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Cronos reversed nearly two hours of blockchain history following the Aug. 30 Tectonic exploit, restoring balances tied to about $111.2 million of the incident’s $120.4 million exposure.

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Hunter Biden is preparing to enter the memecoin market with LAPTOP, a token scheduled to launch Wednesday that will distribute part of its supply to investors who lost money on President Donald Trump’s Official Trump (TRUMP) cryptocurrency, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hunter Biden, whose father is former U.S.

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Liquid has regained control of 3,400 BTC after a weekend security incident drained nearly 4,000 BTC from the Bitcoin sidechain’s reserves. The recovered coins were worth approximately $270 million at the time and make up about 85% of the Bitcoin removed during the incident.

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Australia’s anti-money laundering watchdog has taken regulatory action against 45 registrations held by remittance and cryptocurrency businesses over the past 12 months, using measures ranging from cancellations and suspensions to refusals to renew registrations. AUSTRAC attributed the actions to several compliance and operational issues.

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