Putin said that he and Musk are in "close contact" about Rassvet, Russia's Starlink-like satellite connectivity project.

The Pentagon inspector general's office declined a request from US senators to investigate restrictions recently imposed on the Ukraine military's use of SpaceX's satellite network.

Ukraine, which uses SpaceX's Starlink service and the military version known as Starshield, said earlier this month that military drones lost satellite connectivity when traveling above 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour). The limit was removed after about 10 days.

Five Democratic and four Republican senators sent an October 15 letter to Department of Defense Inspector General Platte Moring, asking for a probe into the reported disruptions of Starlink and Starshield. The letter asked, among other things, "whether any restrictions on Starlink or Starshield services were directed, authorized, or implemented by SpaceX, the Department of Defense, or other US government entities; whether such restrictions were consistent with applicable US government contracts, and what actions, if any, the Department of Defense took in response."

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CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has pledged to help reshape regulations for onchain finance during Chainlink’s Link:NYC event, as the agency develops a federal registration pathway for crypto trading platforms. Chainlink’s official event updates attributed the remarks to Selig at the…

TLDR

• Chainlink launches Chainlink 24/7, a pricing service covering weekends and holidays for stocks, commodities and other traditional assets.
• Off-hours prices are based on quotes from perpetual futures venues, not closed exchanges.
• Aave is the first partner, using the feeds on its institutional Horizon platform.
• Chainlink says its weekday infrastructure already covers more than $1.6 billion in tokenized stocks.

Blockchain markets run around the clock, but the assets many of them track do not. Stock exchanges close at night, on weekends, and on holidays, leaving on-chain applications without a reliable price.

Until now, protocols had a few poor options: freeze markets, rely on the last known price, or build their own valuation tools. Chainlink 24/7 aims to remove that problem by supplying one continuous price series per asset.

How Chainlink 24/7 Works

The service blends two sources. When traditional markets are open, it uses prices from regular and extended sessions. When they shut, it switches to an off-hours reference built from perpetual futures quotes.

Chainlink says the system pulls quotes from multiple futures venues, removes stale inputs and limits the influence of outliers. Importantly, the weekend price reflects derivatives trading rather than actual transactions on closed exchanges.

Lending protocols can read prices published directly onchain through Data Feeds. Trading platforms and prediction markets can use Data Streams for faster updates, which also flag the current market session so apps can adjust risk settings.

Aave Horizon Adopts the Feeds

Aave is the launch partner, integrating the feeds into Horizon, its lending platform for institutions. Horizon lets qualified investors borrow against tokenized assets, and the rollout begins with tokenized versions of heavily traded US stocks.

Reliable weekend prices matter for lenders because collateral values need to stay current to manage liquidation risk, even when stock exchanges are offline.

Building on Earlier Pricing Products

The launch follows Chainlink’s January debut of 24/5 pricing for US stocks and ETFs, which covered pre-market, regular, post-market and overnight sessions. The company says that weekday infrastructure now supports over $1.6 billion in tokenized stocks.

With the new weekend layer, Chainlink is moving toward full-time coverage as tokenized equities and other real-world assets continue to expand onchain.

Chainlink has launched Chainlink 24/7 for continuous pricing of tokenized real-world assets, naming Aave as an adopter, as it brings equities and commodities data through weekends and market holidays. Chainlink announced the service at Link:NYC on Oct. 29, saying it…

Montana Senator Steve Daines has voiced support for Chainlink and the digital asset industry ahead of the blockchain network’s Link event scheduled for October 29 in New York City. Chainlink’s promotional coverage of the upcoming event has highlighted Daines’ recognition…

Although not technically the first virtual pet, the Tamagotchi handhelds certainly popularized the idea and made it a worldwide phenomenon. In the late 90s it was hard to go out in public and not see them dangling from backpacks and belt loops. They turned out to be more than a passing fad, too. There have been Tamagotchis in various forms since then, and one of the latest, the Tamagotchi Paradise, is uniquely hackable thanks to this custom UART interface.

The build starts with a simple and inexpensive CH340G UART adapter with a built-in USB interface. A custom 3D printed enclosure is used to house the adapter and also help to expose the interface to the Tamagotchi. This is done by wiring three pins to nickel strips, which are threaded through slits in the case and looped back around to create a pogo-style adapter for the Tamagotchi’s custom dock. Normally this would be used to link to other Tamagotchis, but in this case the USB-to-UART adapter mimics it, allowing for all kinds of in-game shenanigans. The project’s creator [Squalius] shows it off by connecting it directly to a browser tool in Google Chrome.

Not only that, but this can also be used to modify the software running on the handheld entirely, with the video showing demos playing not only Super Mario but also DOOM (of course). This isn’t too surprising given that these games are built with modern 32-bit ARM microcontrollers. For the 90s purists, though, it probably won’t surprise anyone to know that these devices have been the subject of various hacks almost since they came out.

ASELSAN, Türkiye’s largest defense electronics company, ended the third quarter of 2026 with a record order backlog of $30.7 billion, after adding $7.5 billion in a single quarter and passing the $30 billion mark for the first time in its history. The Ankara-based company reported its results for the first nine months of the year […]

Two satellites from Russia’s Rassvet broadband constellation, the country’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink, are expected to fall back into the atmosphere and burn up within the next day or two after failing to raise their orbits, Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell said, while most of the other Rassvet-3 satellites have now settled into […]

Chainlink has introduced CustodySync with Anchorage Digital Bank as its launch partner, giving institutions a way to borrow from decentralized lending markets against assets held in qualified custody. Chainlink said in its Oct. 26 announcement that CustodySync connects custodians’ collateral…

Bitcoin Magazine

Blink Wallet Adds Inactivity Fee to Custodial Accounts, Accelerating Migration to Self Custody

Blink Wallet announced a new $1 a month inactivity fee, aimed at custodial accounts that have not logged in to the app in over 12 months. 

The decision was put into motion in early September via a Terms of Service change, with push notifications sent out to inactive users, and the first charge made by mid-October. Fees charged will be refunded if users log back in within 12 months, according to a blog post published by the company. 

The fee, which only affects custodial accounts, serves to relieve the burden of inactive accounts on the startup. According to the announcement, these inactive accounts have ongoing costs such as “ledger and infrastructure, retention of verification records, compliance monitoring and reporting, and support claims.” These costs are in turn borne by active user accounts via normal in-app transaction fees. 

A source familiar with the matter told Bitcoin Magazine that around a hundred thousand such accounts fit the inactive category at the time of the first fee charge, with an aggregate balance of over $800,000. The first fee pulled in about $45,000, mostly from accounts that had dust amounts of bitcoin inactive for over a year. None of these figures could be independently verified. 

A Bit of History

Blink Wallet may be one of the most popular Bitcoin wallets in the world, favored by advocates of Bitcoin Circular Economies across Latin America and Africa. Designed for an audience not already familiar with Bitcoin, the wallet first came to prominence as the ‘Bitcoin Beach Wallet’. It grew out of El Salvador’s initial wave of Bitcoin adoption, choosing design principles similar to Wallet of Satoshi, which had seen viral success in earlier years. The wallet was initially custodial and oriented around fast Lightning payments, with the innovative option of hedging value in USD via the Stable Sats feature.

Historically, custodial wallets have seen accelerated early growth compared to their non-custodial counterparts. It is arguably due to the friction introduced by non-custodial setup steps like the 12-word backup, but also by the lack of key material under the company’s control, which enabled features like the first generation of Stable Sats in the first place.

Because of the smooth interface and user experience Blink offered, it quickly became a favorite for evangelists to recommend. One particular evangelist allegedly got everyone he met to download the app and gave them about $1 worth of bitcoin. Some of those new users might have stuck around. But events like today’s Blink announcement put into question the effectiveness of such evangelism strategies, given that they may just be turned into dormant dust accounts. 

Blink was eventually spun off from Galoy Inc its founding firm, to be run by Lukas Duczko and a new board of directors. The announcement published in October 2024 stated that Duczko now had a controlling stake in the company, while Galoy continued to be a service provider and minority stakeholder. The Bitcoin Beach Fund was also established at the time, seeded with Blink shares as part of the transaction. The wallet once headquartered in El Salvador is now based in the free economic zone of Roatán, Honduras, though it maintains corporate entities in El Salvador and the United States.

Headwinds

Despite its success gaining international adoption among Bitcoin circular economies, evangelists and supporters of the Lightning Network, the company has also faced significant headwinds. And not just Blink but custodial wallets in general, like Wallet of Satoshi, Alby, and Blue Wallet, all phased out their custodial wallet offerings in recent years, pivoting to self custody infrastructure like Spark. The tide began to rise with the EU’s MiCA regulations, which sought licensing and KYC compliance standards from custodians that these wallets simply could not provide. 

On the U.S. side of the pond, the Samourai Wallet case and the broader war on crypto by the Biden administration pushed wallet operators outside of the country, with notable examples like Phoenix Wallet, Wallet of Satoshi, Wasabi Wallet, and Blink, limiting or altogether exiting American app stores. The legal uncertainty took place under the shadow of the Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash cases, which the industry read as threats to user privacy and certainly to self custody wallets, let alone custodial ones. 

Fast forward a couple of years and Google Play decided to enforce EU and American laws by limiting Play Store distribution of wallets or exchange apps that do not hold licenses in corresponding jurisdictions. The viral nature and stunningly easy-to-use apps that were possible thanks to custodial Lightning had, in a matter of 2 years, become a liability. It was time to pivot to self custody. 

Nobody Said it was Easy

By 2025, Blink’s counterparts already offered self custody options; WOS was beginning to push their Spark-powered wallet, with 2027 as the deadline for custody wallet users to migrate. Alby had shipped a feature to connect self-hosted Lightning nodes to its hub and shut down its custodial Lightning option. Blue wallet had long ago shut down its custodial offer and had since doubled down on becoming an onchain wallet for new and power users alike.

Unlike its competitors, however, Blink’s biggest differentiator is the Stable Sats feature, which likely required a significant redesign to fit the limitations of self custody. It wasn’t until June 2026 that Blink launched its Spark supported self custodial wallet, a big move and one that its user base is still adapting to. 

To make things worse, on September 19th, hackers managed to withdraw 6.61 bitcoins from custodial wallet users via compromised admin tools. The company’s backers quickly announced they would make the affected users whole, and the bleeding was stopped, but the blow nevertheless must have shaken the company. 

Remarkably, despite some of the most difficult years for the Bitcoin wallet industry, Blink wallet has so far not just survived but stayed in the game. It has retained the slick design that made it so popular, while delivering advanced features that users in developing nations need, such as dollar-denominated value at the speed of lightning, meanwhile pivoting to self custody. The inactivity fee is but an inevitable step further down that transition. Perhaps having teams like Blink’s working on self custody will yield a new crop of sovereign technologies, its fruits badly needed by a sector of the industry battered by regulators and now AI cyber threats. 

This post Blink Wallet Adds Inactivity Fee to Custodial Accounts, Accelerating Migration to Self Custody first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Elon Musk accused Ukraine of violating Starlink terms of service by using it for lethal drone strikes.

Musk said Ukraine used the Starlink commercial service for offensive drone strikes. Musk's comment on Saturday came after SpaceX imposed a restriction preventing Ukraine from using the satellite technology on drones flying above certain speeds.

One current and one former Ukraine official denied Musk's accusation and said previous limits imposed by SpaceX already prevented Ukraine's military from using Starlink in the way Musk described. Ukraine officials have accused Musk of throttling their use of Starshield, the military variant of Starlink that Ukraine has access to through a deal with the US government.

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Ukraine says Starlink service has been restored after days of disruption. The incident highlights why enterprises need tested, independent backup systems.

The post Starlink Restrictions Explained: What Enterprises Can Learn appeared first on TechRepublic.

Ukraine says Starlink service has been restored after days of disruption. The incident highlights why enterprises need tested, independent backup systems.

The post Starlink Restrictions Explained: What Enterprises Can Learn appeared first on TechRepublic.

Ukraine has rejected Elon Musk’s claim that its military broke Starlink’s terms of service by using the civilian satellite network for offensive drone strikes, with a presidential adviser saying that restrictions SpaceX placed on the service in February make such use physically impossible. Musk made the accusation on X on Oct. 24, the same day […]

Elon Musk reportedly ordered SpaceX to throttle Ukraine's Starlink access.

TL;DR: Chainlink and LG CNS are partnering on oracle and cross-chain infrastructure aimed at South Korea’s financial institutions; the announcement is a partnership, not a completed nationwide deployment.

South Korea's next wave of digital-asset infrastructure may be built less around speculative trading apps and more around the plumbing banks need to move real money and securities. That is the market Chainlink and LG CNS are pursuing with a partnership announced on Thursday.

LG CNS, the technology-services arm of the LG group, will work with Chainlink on connecting digital-asset platforms to verified external data and other blockchain networks. The arrangement is directed at institutional systems rather than a new consumer token sale or a stablecoin being launched immediately.

Why the plumbing matters

An institution moving a claim on a bank deposit or a security onto a blockchain needs more than a place to record ownership. It needs reliable pricing, identity and compliance processes, instructions from existing banking systems and mechanisms for transferring assets across networks without losing the underlying obligations.

That is where oracles and cross-chain messaging come in. Chainlink supplies tools designed to connect smart contracts to data and communicate between networks. LG CNS brings software integration experience and financial-sector relationships within South Korea. The companies say they plan to combine those strengths in institutional digital-asset products.

The partnership also points to LG CNS's role in the Bank of Korea's Project Hangang experimentation. In the context of that work, the relevant question is how commercial banks and infrastructure providers could build services around tokenized money. It is not evidence that South Korea has adopted a single national digital currency standard.

A competitive race, not a settled market

The announcement cites large figures for Korean participation in crypto markets, but those market-size estimates are company-supplied context. They do not establish revenue from this particular agreement, nor do they guarantee that banks will adopt the products.

Success will be measured in completed integrations, actual financial-institution customers and transaction flows. Each comes with operational hurdles: regulatory permissions, data quality, network availability and the willingness of banks to rely on external technology providers for critical infrastructure.

For Chainlink, the agreement offers another route into traditional financial technology beyond decentralized finance. For LG CNS, it is an opportunity to offer Korean institutions blockchain connectivity without asking them to build every component from scratch.

There is an important distinction between announcing a partnership and processing institutional transactions at scale. Thursday's news establishes the former. The latter remains the test.

Source: www.prnewswire.com original announcement or data.

Related Reading: smart contracts; tokenized assets; stablecoins.

Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service has played a pivotal role in supporting Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion for years. But with Starlink having become increasingly unreliable due to Musk’s political inclinations and the latest surprise disruptions to service in Ukraine, the Ukrainians and Europe as a whole are now facing urgent questions about how to move forward without it.

As the world’s largest communications satellite network, Starlink can typically support high-speed Internet and data streams for any user or vehicle equipped with a relatively compact Starlink terminal. This has enabled Ukraine to maintain vital communications for both civilian purposes and military operations—and has also expanded the Ukrainian military’s capability to remotely control or provide guidance to drones used in both air defense against Russian attacks and for striking back at Russian targets.

“Starlink currently offers some of the best satellite coverage available, with virtually no competitors when you consider the combination of cost, availability, and ease of use,” according to the head of hardware R&D at the Ukrainian defense company BlueBird Tech, who provided comments to Ars anonymously for security reasons. “In practical terms, the main limitation is the need to position the antenna so it can receive signals from the satellites.”

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Amazon introduces five Blink security cameras with 4K video, long-range wireless connectivity, and new viewing features. Compare prices and key limitations.

The post Amazon’s New Blink Cameras Offer 4K Video and Up to 7,000 Feet of Wireless Range appeared first on TechRepublic.

Amazon introduces five Blink security cameras with 4K video, long-range wireless connectivity, and new viewing features. Compare prices and key limitations.

The post Amazon’s New Blink Cameras Offer 4K Video and Up to 7,000 Feet of Wireless Range appeared first on TechRepublic.