An unusual piece of cryptography history has gained an answer. Anthropic says Claude reconstructed how the original seed values behind several widely used NIST elliptic curves were generated, resolving a question that had attracted suspicion for more than two decades.

TL;DR: Claude identified a process involving the C library’s lrand48 generator and Unix timestamps. Anthropic stresses that the research does not reveal an attack on P-256 or other affected curves.

The seeds have mattered because the standards published their values without a convincing public account of how the numbers were chosen. The U.S. National Security Agency had supplied them, leaving generations of researchers to ask whether a secret selection method could hide some mathematical advantage.

Anthropic reports that a model worked backward from the published values and found an ordinary pseudorandom generation procedure. In the case of P-256, it took 1,842 iterations through candidate outputs to reproduce the standardized seed. The work also examined P-192, P-224, P-384 and P-521.

This is interesting to crypto users because elliptic-curve signatures underpin many kinds of account security, including passkeys and hardware-backed authentication. Explaining the provenance of parameters can improve confidence in the standards without changing the mathematics used by existing products.

There is a crucial limit to the story: recovering the seed-generation history is not the same as breaking a private key, proving the curve has a vulnerability or establishing that every implementation is safe. Anthropic itself says there is no urgent corrective action to take.

The headline is less about AI defeating encryption than AI helping researchers reconstruct a forgotten design decision. In cryptography, knowing why numbers look the way they do can be almost as valuable as knowing that the calculations work.

Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR: NextBlock has invested $3 million in Soda Labs, funding the company’s entire seed round. Soda is building privacy infrastructure based on garbled circuits and multiparty computation so financial applications can process confidential data while remaining connected to public blockchains.

Public blockchains are very good at proving what happened.

That is also one of the reasons banks struggle to use them.

Soda Labs has raised $3 million to tackle the problem from the opposite direction: keep the public blockchain, but make sensitive computation private.

Luxembourg-based venture firm NextBlock funded the company’s entire seed round.

Soda has spent roughly two and a half years developing a cryptographic system based on garbled circuits and multiparty computation, often shortened to GC-MPC.

The idea is to let applications perform calculations on private data without exposing the underlying information to everyone watching the chain.

For financial institutions, that could apply to transaction details, balances, business logic or other data that cannot simply be made public.

Privacy is one of the central contradictions in institutional blockchain adoption.

Banks like the idea of shared settlement infrastructure and programmable assets.

They generally do not like the idea of broadcasting client activity, positions and commercial information to the world.

One solution is to build private or permissioned blockchains.

Soda is betting that institutions would rather keep access to public networks and add confidentiality at the computation layer.

Its technology uses established cryptographic components including AES and SHA-256 and is designed to run on ordinary cloud CPUs rather than requiring specialized hardware.

That could matter for adoption.

Privacy systems are much harder to deploy if every user needs unusual infrastructure or if computation becomes prohibitively expensive.

Soda says its architecture is designed for financial applications that need to remain interoperable with existing public blockchain ecosystems.

The $3 million round is small by the standards of the biggest crypto infrastructure raises, but the problem Soda is working on has become more valuable as tokenization expands.

A tokenized bond or fund can exist on a public chain while still carrying confidential information around counterparties, trading and ownership.

Institutions need ways to prove rules were followed without publishing every piece of data involved.

That is why privacy technology is reappearing in a different form from the anonymous-transaction narrative that dominated earlier crypto cycles.

The demand is increasingly about selective confidentiality.

Regulators, auditors or authorized parties may need access to information while the wider public does not.

Soda’s challenge is proving that its cryptographic approach can deliver that privacy without making applications too slow or complex to use.

NextBlock is betting $3 million that it can.

If public blockchains are going to host more conventional finance, the networks may need to learn an unusual skill.

They need to remain verifiable without making everything visible.

TL;DR

• Fiserv’s digital-asset platform is live, with Bank of North Dakota’s Roughrider Coin as its first production use case.
• Roughrider Coin transactions are processed on Solana, while VersaBank serves as issuer and Fireblocks supplies tokenization and security infrastructure.
• The deployment gives Solana a live role inside a regulated interbank payment product rather than another retail crypto application.

Solana has picked up a very different kind of workload: moving a bank-backed stablecoin inside a US financial institution network.

Fiserv said on October 1 that its digital-asset platform is now live with financial-institution clients. The first production use case is Roughrider Coin, a dollar-backed stablecoin created for Bank of North Dakota and designed to make interbank money movement more efficient across the state.

Transactions run on Solana.

The stack combines banking, tokenization and a public blockchain

Roughrider Coin is not simply a token deployed by an anonymous smart-contract team.

VersaBank serves as issuer, Fireblocks provides digital-asset infrastructure and tokenization services, and Fiserv connects the product into financial-institution systems. Solana handles blockchain transaction processing underneath that structure.

That division of roles is what makes the deployment interesting.

Traditional banks are unlikely to replace their entire technology stack with a crypto wallet. They are much more likely to adopt blockchain settlement when it is embedded inside vendors, compliance systems and operational processes they already understand.

Bitcoinist has followed the same pattern in other markets. SoFi launched a bank-issued stablecoin across Ethereum and Solana, while Western Union rolled out USDPT on Solana.

Solana is increasingly being used as payment infrastructure

The network’s reputation was built heavily around fast trading, memecoins and decentralized exchanges.

Stablecoins are changing the composition of activity. Bitcoinist reported this summer that Solana’s stablecoin market cap crossed $15 billion, giving payment and treasury applications a much deeper liquidity base.

A state-linked banking use case pushes the network another step in that direction.

It does not mean Bank of North Dakota is speculating on SOL. The blockchain is being used as settlement infrastructure beneath a dollar-denominated financial product.

The bigger question is whether Fiserv can repeat the model

One bank stablecoin is useful evidence, but Fiserv’s distribution is what could make the story much larger.

The company supplies technology to financial institutions at scale. If its digital-asset platform becomes something banks can adopt through an existing vendor relationship, blockchain settlement stops being a bespoke innovation project and starts looking more like another banking feature.

Roughrider Coin is the first live use case. The number of institutions that follow will tell us whether it becomes a template.

—

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Aptos Labs has released `aptos-node-v1.49.2-hotfix-rc` for testnet.
• The release notes say validators should upgrade and fullnode operators are recommended to do so.
• Aptos describes it as a private hotfix and does not publish the source code or a detailed public explanation of the underlying issue.

Aptos has pushed another validator hotfix into testnet, but this time the public release notes are deliberately sparse.

`aptos-node-v1.49.2-hotfix-rc` was published October 1. Aptos labels it a private hotfix, says the source code is not available and directs operators to use the attached binaries or Docker image.

Validators are told to upgrade. Fullnode operators are told the update is recommended.

That is the full extent of the official technical explanation.

The missing detail is itself important

It would be easy to fill the gap with a convenient story about state sync, consensus or a specific vulnerability.

The release notes do not support that.

Aptos publishes the hotfix commit identifier, but because this is a private release, the public GitHub page does not explain what the patch changes internally. That means coverage should stop where the source stops.

Bitcoinist reported on the previous v1.49.1 validator hotfix, where the public material did provide more context around consensus and state-sync behavior. The new release should not inherit those details automatically just because the version numbers are close.

Testnet is doing what testnet is for

The release is explicitly tagged for testnet.

That environment gives validator teams a place to deploy code, observe network behavior and catch operational problems before a corresponding production release reaches mainnet.

For users, there is no token migration, wallet update or transaction change attached to the October 1 notice.

The distinction is similar to the operator-focused maintenance happening across other chains. Bitcoinist has covered Optimism’s required batcher update and Superchain testnet interoperability, where the work happens underneath the user-facing layer.

Private hotfixes require disciplined reporting

Closed-source emergency or pre-release patches are not unusual in infrastructure software when developers want validators to deploy a fix before publishing every implementation detail.

They do, however, reduce what outside observers can verify.

The correct conclusion here is therefore narrow: Aptos has shipped a v1.49.2 hotfix release candidate to testnet, validators are instructed to upgrade, fullnodes are encouraged to do so, and the detailed reason for the patch is not stated publicly.

Anything more specific would be guesswork.

—

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Tether and Shiga are launching self-custodial financial products across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
• The products will use Tether’s Wallet Development Kit and support USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold.
• Shiga is building one product for end users and another infrastructure layer for banks and fintech companies.

Tether is moving its Wallet Development Kit from developer tooling into financial products aimed at users and institutions across Africa and the Gulf.

The company announced a collaboration with Shiga on September 28 to build self-custodial services supporting USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold.

The initiative follows Tether’s strategic investment in Shiga in 2025.

One Product Is For Users, Another Is For Banks

The collaboration centers on two products.

ENTA is designed for individuals, high-net-worth users and businesses.

Users will be able to fund self-custodial wallets using local currency, U.S. dollars or Bitcoin, then hold and transfer assets including USDT, BTC and XAUT.

Pulse is aimed at institutions.

Banks and fintech companies will be able to use it to build digital-asset services around specific payment corridors, treasury operations and settlement flows.

Both products use Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, underneath.

The self-custody element is important.

Users or institutions retain control of their keys and assets rather than relying on a centralized wallet provider to hold funds on their behalf.

Institutional customers can either use infrastructure managed by Shiga or deploy the technology inside their own environment.

Remittances Are A Major Target

Africa is an obvious market for this kind of infrastructure.

Tether cited World Bank data showing the average cost of sending remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa reached 8.46% in 2025.

Stablecoins can potentially reduce some of the friction involved in moving dollar-denominated value across borders, particularly where access to conventional dollar banking is limited.

That does not remove the regulatory layer.

Shiga says it is completing the final stage of approval for a Digital Asset Intermediary licence in Nigeria.

The licence has not yet been granted.

If approved, it would allow the company to provide regulated dealing, broking and custody services there.

The partnership is also broader than USDT.

Including Bitcoin and XAUT gives users access to three very different types of digital asset: a dollar stablecoin, a volatile decentralized asset and tokenized gold.

Tether has spent much of the year expanding WDK as infrastructure that other businesses can build on.

Shiga gives that strategy a concrete deployment.

Instead of asking users to download a Tether-branded wallet, Tether is providing the components for local companies and financial institutions to build their own.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Cosmos Labs has announced connectivity between its Tokenization Suite and Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger.
• Banks can use Cosmos infrastructure to run tokenized-deposit ledgers and connect them with Swift and other networks.
• The system is designed to work with existing banking cores including Fiserv, FIS, Jack Henry, Temenos and Hogan.

Cosmos Labs is joining the race to connect traditional bank infrastructure with Swift’s blockchain ledger.

The company announced on September 28 that its Tokenization Suite can provide financial institutions with a route between their internal banking systems, tokenized deposits and Swift’s shared ledger.

The objective is straightforward: let banks use blockchain settlement without rebuilding their entire core.

Existing Bank Ledgers Can Stay In Place

Cosmos says its infrastructure can synchronize with common banking-core systems including Fiserv, FIS, Jack Henry, Temenos and Hogan.

A bank can then operate its own tokenized-deposit ledger while connecting that system to external networks.

Those connections can include Swift’s ledger, Canton, Partior, Ethereum and Solana.

Swift provides the shared coordination layer for payments between institutions.

Cosmos provides the software that connects a bank’s internal records and tokenized money to that environment.

The company says its stack can support EVM and Hyperledger Besu deployments, giving institutions flexibility around the ledger technology they use internally.

Banks Are Building Multiple Routes Into The Same New Network

Cosmos is not the only technology provider announcing Swift ledger connectivity.

Oracle and Chainlink have both unveiled their own integrations around the same infrastructure.

That is significant in itself.

When several enterprise software providers build connections into a new payment network at the same time, it suggests banks want optionality rather than a single proprietary route into tokenized deposits.

The models differ.

Cosmos emphasizes connecting bank core systems with institution-controlled tokenized ledgers.

Swift’s ledger then coordinates obligations between participating banks.

The underlying deposits remain liabilities of the banks themselves.

That makes tokenized deposits fundamentally different from public stablecoins issued by non-bank companies.

Both can move on blockchain infrastructure.

The legal claim behind the digital money is different.

Banks increasingly appear interested in supporting both.

The technology layer is becoming crowded as a result.

Cosmos has historically been associated with interoperability between blockchain networks.

Its Tokenization Suite takes that experience into a much more traditional environment.

Instead of connecting two crypto chains, the problem is now connecting bank cores, private ledgers, public blockchains and Swift.

For institutional tokenization to scale, all of those systems eventually need to understand each other.

Cosmos wants to sit in the middle.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Verona has launched verUSD, a dollar-denominated stablecoin designed around payments made by AI agents.
• The project says it has more than $100 million in launch commitments from ecosystem investors and partners.
• verUSD is launching across Ethereum, Solana and several EVM networks rather than beginning on a single chain.

A new dollar stablecoin is targeting a payment market that barely existed a few years ago: software agents spending money on their own.

Verona launched verUSD on September 28 with more than $100 million in institutional launch commitments.

The stablecoin is designed specifically for machine-to-machine and AI-agent payments.

verUSD Starts As A Multichain Asset

Verona is launching the token across multiple networks from day one.

Those include Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, Arbitrum and Celo.

Additional networks are planned.

The project says its ecosystem commitments include participation from Animoca Ventures, Figment Capital, Sfermion, Pentos, Ero and Arkstream, among others.

A commitment is not the same thing as circulating stablecoin supply.

The $100 million figure should therefore not be read as $100 million of verUSD already issued and trading.

It represents committed participation around the launch.

That distinction matters for a new stablecoin where actual supply and usage will need to develop over time.

AI Payments Need Different Infrastructure

Most stablecoins are designed primarily around human or corporate users.

AI agents create a different set of requirements.

Software may need to pay for data, computing resources, APIs or other services in tiny amounts and at very high frequency.

Opening a bank account, using a conventional card or waiting for normal settlement rails is awkward in that environment.

Blockchain payments are easier to automate.

Verona says it has spent the past several years settling payments in USDC across projects using its infrastructure.

verUSD is an attempt to move from using somebody else’s stablecoin to operating a payment asset designed specifically around its own network of machine transactions.

The concept still has plenty to prove.

AI-agent commerce is an emerging market, and stablecoins already face intense competition from established products such as USDT and USDC.

A new token needs liquidity, integrations, reliable reserves and actual transaction demand.

Launching on many chains does not solve those problems by itself.

But the use case is worth watching.

Stablecoins have already become a popular way for people and businesses to move dollars onchain.

If autonomous software becomes a meaningful economic participant, those same rails may end up moving money for machines too.

Verona is betting that market deserves a stablecoin of its own.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• BIX says its crypto-enabled Visa card is currently available to eligible users in 29 U.S. states.
• The company is targeting expansion to 49 states within six to eight months, subject to approvals and partner readiness.
• The card links spending to USDC or USDT held through a self-custody wallet, while merchants receive fiat.

Crypto card provider BIX is planning a significant U.S. expansion, aiming to take its payment product from 29 supported states to 49.

The company says it wants to reach that coverage within six to eight months, although the timetable remains dependent on regulatory approvals and the financial institutions supporting the card program.

The Stablecoins Stay Behind The Payment Experience

BIX combines a self-custody crypto wallet with a Visa card.

Eligible users can hold supported USDC or USDT balances while using the card for ordinary purchases.

The merchant still receives fiat through the conventional Visa payment system.

That structure is becoming increasingly common across crypto cards.

The customer keeps value in a blockchain-based asset.

The merchant does not need to accept crypto or operate blockchain infrastructure.

BIX says supported stablecoin and network combinations include infrastructure across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Base, Solana and Optimism.

The product is therefore less about convincing shops to accept USDT directly and more about using existing card rails as the final step between a stablecoin balance and a conventional purchase.

State Coverage Is A Regulatory Problem More Than A Technology Problem

The reason BIX is not already available nationwide has little to do with whether its app works in another state.

U.S. crypto-linked card programs rely on regulated banking, issuing and payments partners whose permissions and requirements vary across jurisdictions.

That makes geographic expansion partly a compliance exercise.

BIX says it expects to add another 20 states as its partners and approvals allow.

The company currently offers a free standard membership, with virtual cards available to eligible users.

Additional products under development include physical cards and account functionality intended to connect stablecoin balances with conventional systems such as ACH, SEPA and SWIFT.

Those plans remain future products rather than features every user can access today.

Crypto cards have been around for years, but stablecoins have made the proposition simpler.

Instead of spending a volatile token and triggering a conversion at checkout, a user can keep a dollar-denominated balance and treat the card as an interface into it.

For BIX, the product already exists.

The next challenge is getting permission to offer it across almost the entire United States.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Circle Foundation has announced grants supporting digital-payment projects at the United Nations Development Programme and World Food Programme.
• The initiatives will examine how regulated payment stablecoins can improve the speed, cost and transparency of aid distribution.
• WFP plans to test two to three payment corridors over three years, while UNDP will build a Digital Asset Innovation Pool.

Circle’s philanthropic arm is putting money behind an experiment with unusually real-world consequences: whether stablecoins can make humanitarian aid easier to deliver.

Circle Foundation has announced separate initiatives supporting the United Nations Development Programme and World Food Programme as both organizations expand their work around digital payments.

The projects are not simply about sending USDC from one wallet to another.

They are designed to test whether digital payment infrastructure can work inside the governance, compliance and local financial systems required for large-scale international aid.

UNDP Wants To Turn Small Pilots Into Repeatable Infrastructure

UNDP plans to establish a Digital Asset Innovation Pool using support from Circle Foundation.

The goal is to help country offices take lessons from earlier digital-payment pilots and use them across a wider range of development programs.

Previous work has included projects in countries such as Syria, Haiti, Guatemala and Gambia.

The new program is intended to address the less glamorous parts of deploying digital payments at scale: regulatory requirements, operating procedures, beneficiary protection and integration with local financial systems.

UNDP is not replacing traditional banking channels.

The initiative is intended to add another option where digital infrastructure can improve delivery.

WFP Will Test Payment Corridors Over Three Years

The World Food Programme initiative focuses more directly on humanitarian payments.

Circle Foundation funding will support the governance, risk management, compliance, reconciliation and technical systems needed to test stablecoin-based transfers.

WFP plans to evaluate two to three payment corridors connecting its systems with local financial-service providers and markets over the next three years.

The idea is straightforward.

Aid organizations often need to move money into countries where banking infrastructure can be slow, expensive or difficult to access.

Stablecoins can settle quickly and operate across borders.

The difficult part is making that speed compatible with beneficiary protection, sanctions controls, local regulation and the practical reality of converting digital value into something people can actually spend.

That is what these programs are intended to test.

Circle Foundation itself is supported through Circle Internet Group’s commitment of 1% of its equity.

The announcement does not mean the United Nations is replacing its payment systems with USDC.

It does mean regulated stablecoins are moving into another serious trial environment.

If they can reduce the cost and delay involved in getting aid to recipients, that is a much more consequential use case than making crypto trading faster.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Tether says assets held with offshore banking partner EQIBank represent less than 0.034% of its total group assets.
• U.S. authorities are seeking forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars tied to EQIBank payment processor Capstone.
• Tether says it had no knowledge of the conduct alleged by prosecutors and has not disclosed the exact amount it holds with the bank.

Tether is trying to contain concerns around one of its banking counterparties after U.S. authorities seized assets connected with EQIBank’s payment infrastructure.

The USDT issuer says its exposure to EQIBank amounts to less than 0.034% of Tether’s total group assets.

Based on Tether’s latest reported asset base of roughly $187.75 billion, that percentage would imply a ceiling below approximately $64 million.

The company has not disclosed the actual figure.

The Seizure Is About EQIBank’s Payment Processor

The legal action involves Capstone Limited, a payment processor used by EQIBank to move customer funds through U.S. banking channels.

Federal authorities have sought forfeiture of assets held in accounts associated with Capstone, with court filings identifying roughly $83 million in bank accounts alongside approximately 1.18 million USDT from cryptocurrency addresses.

EQIBank has separately described the affected amount as roughly $89 million and warned that losing access to the funds could put pressure on its ability to continue operating.

Tether has confirmed that EQIBank provided banking services connected with USDT purchases and redemptions.

It also says it had no knowledge of the conduct U.S. prosecutors have alleged against Capstone.

No finding has established that Tether participated in the alleged misconduct.

Stablecoin Reserves Still Depend On Traditional Counterparties

The episode highlights a less visible part of stablecoin infrastructure.

USDT moves across public blockchains, but the reserves and fiat flows behind the token still interact with banks, custodians, payment processors and other conventional financial institutions.

That creates counterparty risk even when the token itself operates normally.

Tether has spent years diversifying its reserve portfolio and banking relationships, with much of its asset base now concentrated in highly liquid instruments including U.S. Treasury bills.

The company’s stated EQIBank exposure is small relative to its overall balance sheet.

But the situation shows why the quality and legal position of banking partners still matter to stablecoin issuers.

A token can settle globally in seconds.

The dollars behind it still have to move through a financial system where accounts can be frozen, intermediaries can fail and courts can seize assets.

For Tether, the immediate message is that the exposure is limited.

For the wider stablecoin market, it is another reminder that blockchain settlement does not eliminate traditional financial counterparty risk.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Lido DAO Vote #214 has passed with 58.2 million LDO participating in favor.
• The vote implements Dual Governance V1 parameters, giving stETH holders a new mechanism to contest certain governance actions.
• The associated emergency governance delay has been extended to 14 days.

Lido’s long-running effort to give stETH holders more influence over protocol governance has moved another step forward.

Onchain Vote #214 has passed, implementing parameters associated with Lido’s Dual Governance system on Ethereum mainnet.

The vote received support from 58.2 million LDO participating tokens.

Dual Governance Creates A Second Check On LDO Holders

Traditional DAO governance gives voting power to holders of the governance token.

For Lido, that means LDO.

The complication is that the people economically exposed to the staking protocol are not necessarily the same people holding large amounts of LDO.

stETH holders may have substantial value inside Lido while having little direct ability to stop governance decisions that affect the protocol.

Dual Governance is designed to narrow that gap.

The framework gives stETH holders a mechanism to contest or delay certain governance actions before they are executed.

That does not replace LDO voting.

It creates an additional check around it.

The idea is particularly important for a liquid staking protocol because governance controls smart contracts handling very large amounts of user-deposited ETH.

The Delay Window Is Part Of The Security Model

Vote #214 also extends the relevant emergency governance delay window to 14 days.

A longer delay gives stakeholders more time to respond when an action is disputed.

That can make governance slower.

It can also make a hostile or controversial change harder to rush through before affected users have time to react.

Lido has been developing Dual Governance as a way to reduce one of the structural risks around decentralized protocols: governance-token holders making decisions that may not align with the interests of users whose assets sit inside the system.

The latest vote does not make Lido governance perfectly decentralized or remove every governance risk.

It does change the balance.

LDO remains the governance token, but stETH holders now have a more meaningful role in the safety architecture around major decisions.

For a protocol whose main product represents staked ETH, that is a significant shift in who gets a voice when governance and user capital collide.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Magic Eden says old EVM marketplace approvals left more than $5.7 million worth of NFTs exposed to an exploit in Limit Break’s Payment Processor V2.
• A whitehat rescue operation moved 23,155 vulnerable NFTs before they could be stolen.
• Magic Eden says no live listings were affected, but users who interacted with the old marketplace should revoke lingering approvals.

An old smart contract can remain dangerous long after the product built around it has disappeared.

Magic Eden is dealing with exactly that problem after legacy approvals from its former EVM marketplace left thousands of NFTs exposed to a vulnerability in Limit Break’s Payment Processor V2.

The marketplace says more than $5.7 million worth of NFTs were at risk.

The Marketplace Was Closed, But The Approvals Were Still Live

Magic Eden stopped using Payment Processor V2 in October 2024 and later shut down its EVM marketplace.

That did not automatically revoke permissions users had previously granted to the contract.

When an attacker exploited the processor this week, those old approvals became relevant again.

The initial theft included assets from collections such as Meebits, Otherdeeds and World of Women.

Security researchers then realized a much larger number of wallets remained exposed.

A whitehat rescue operation ultimately secured 23,155 NFTs worth more than $5.7 million before they could be taken.

Users are expected to reclaim rescued assets after revoking the vulnerable approval.

Magic Eden says no active listings on its current products were affected.

Token Approvals Can Outlive The App That Asked For Them

The incident is a useful reminder of how wallet permissions work.

When a user gives a marketplace or protocol permission to transfer assets, that authorization can remain valid until it is explicitly revoked.

Closing a website does not necessarily remove it.

Changing marketplaces does not necessarily remove it.

Even abandoning a wallet interface does not alter what has already been approved onchain.

Magic Eden says users who interacted with its EVM marketplace during the affected period should revoke Payment Processor V2 permissions on supported networks including Ethereum, Polygon and Base.

Researchers also identified a related route that placed hundreds of WETH at risk, showing that the vulnerability was not limited to NFTs.

The technical exploit sits inside Limit Break’s processor rather than Magic Eden’s live marketplace.

But old Magic Eden approvals dramatically expanded the number of users potentially exposed.

Crypto security often focuses on what somebody is signing today.

This incident shows why the permissions granted years ago can matter just as much.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

• Bullish and Equiniti have created the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to develop standards for tokenized public securities.
• Early participants include Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth.
• The group wants tokenized stocks to preserve the direct relationship between public companies and their shareholders rather than creating disconnected synthetic representations.

**ID:** B25-10

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Tokenization

**Image Keyword:** Stocks

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Bullish, Equiniti, Tokenized Stocks, Securities, Markets

**Primary Source:** https://www.businesswire.com/

Tokenized Stocks Do Not All Work The Same Way

Putting a stock price onchain is relatively easy.

Preserving shareholder rights is much harder.

Some tokenized-equity products are structured as representations backed by securities held elsewhere.

Others provide synthetic economic exposure without making the token holder the registered shareholder of the underlying company.

The new coalition wants to develop a model where issuers participate directly in how their securities are tokenized.

Bullish and Equiniti say that approach should preserve the fundamental relationship between an issuer and its shareholders while still allowing blockchain-based trading and settlement.

Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth are among the first market-infrastructure companies joining the effort.

Standards Could Become More Important Than Individual Platforms

Tokenized stocks are expanding quickly across crypto exchanges and blockchain networks.

That growth has also created fragmentation.

Different providers use different custody structures, shareholder-record systems, settlement models and restrictions.

For investors, two tokens carrying the same stock ticker may therefore provide very different legal rights.

Issuer-sponsored standards could make that easier to understand.

A company could know how its shares are represented, while investors could have clearer rules around ownership, corporate actions and shareholder communication.

The coalition is not launching a single trading venue or token today.

It is establishing a working group around the infrastructure and operating standards needed for tokenized securities to coexist with conventional capital markets.

That may sound less exciting than another exchange listing.

It is arguably more important.

If tokenized equities are going to move beyond offshore crypto products and become part of mainstream securities markets, issuers, brokers, transfer agents and exchanges will eventually need to agree on what a tokenized share actually represents.

This coalition is an attempt to start defining that answer before the market grows around incompatible versions of it.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• Major UK banks have completed the first live customer transactions using tokenized sterling deposits on shared infrastructure.
• Participants include Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander.
• The project is using real commercial-bank money and is testing payments including person-to-person transfers and remortgage transactions.

**ID:** B25-09

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Tokenization

**Image Keyword:** Sterling

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** UK Finance, Tokenized Deposits, Sterling, Banks, Payments

**Primary Source:** https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insight/press-release

The Money Is Still A Bank Deposit

That distinction is central to the project.

A tokenized deposit is not a privately issued stablecoin and it is not a digital pound issued by the Bank of England.

It is a digital representation of money already held as a commercial-bank deposit.

The aim is to retain the legal and regulatory protections attached to ordinary bank money while adding blockchain-style programmability and faster settlement.

Banks participating in the project include Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander.

Quant built the platform, while EY is providing project management and Linklaters developed legal advice and the rulebooks.

The Pilot Is Testing Real Consumer And Financial Use Cases

The project includes person-to-person transfers and remortgage transactions.

UK Finance says digital-asset settlement will also be tested over the coming months.

That makes the experiment broader than sending a token from one test wallet to another.

The industry is trying to show that tokenized bank money can work across institutions and support transactions customers already understand.

Interoperability is the harder part.

Individual banks can build tokenized deposit systems relatively easily.

The real value emerges when a deposit issued by one institution can move across common infrastructure without breaking the protections or controls associated with the banking system.

The project is therefore a useful counterpoint to stablecoins.

Stablecoin companies are increasingly trying to make blockchain dollars look more like regulated bank money.

Banks are moving in the opposite direction, trying to make regulated deposits gain the programmability of blockchain assets.

The two models may eventually meet somewhere in the middle.

For now, the UK pilot shows tokenized deposits moving beyond demonstrations.

Actual customers have now used them to complete live sterling transactions.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• Bitwise and Vise have launched diversified crypto model portfolios for financial advisers using the Vise platform.
• Vise says its network covers more than 135,000 accounts and over $140 billion in platform assets.
• Crypto allocations can now sit inside the same portfolio-management, rebalancing and tax framework as equities, bonds and alternatives.

**ID:** B25-08

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Bitwise

**Image Keyword:** Fund

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Bitwise, Vise, Crypto ETFs, Financial Advisors, Portfolios

**Primary Source:** https://bitwiseinvestments.com/newsroom

Crypto Stops Being A Separate Portfolio

That is the main selling point.

Crypto allocations have often been managed in isolation.

An adviser may hold a Bitcoin ETF or another digital-asset product for a client, but the position can sit outside the normal process used to rebalance stocks, bonds and alternative investments.

Vise wants to remove that separation.

The Bitwise models can be placed inside the same household portfolio as equities, fixed income and other assets.

From there, Vise handles ongoing allocation, rebalancing and tax-management work alongside the rest of the account.

Bitwise provides the crypto research and model construction.

Vise provides the adviser-facing portfolio infrastructure.

The platform says it supports more than 135,000 accounts across wealth-management firms representing over $140 billion in platform assets.

Bitwise says it manages more than $9 billion in client assets.

Model Portfolios Could Make Crypto Easier To Scale Across Adviser Books

Model portfolios are already common in traditional wealth management.

Instead of every adviser independently selecting and weighting individual funds, a model provides a standardized allocation that can then be adjusted around client risk and objectives.

Bitwise is applying that structure to crypto-themed exchange-traded products.

That potentially makes digital-asset exposure easier for advisers to manage across hundreds or thousands of client accounts.

The timing matters.

Third-party model portfolio assets have grown rapidly, while spot crypto ETFs have given advisers regulated products that fit far more naturally into existing brokerage infrastructure.

The remaining problem is portfolio integration.

A Bitcoin or Ethereum allocation still needs sizing, monitoring and rebalancing.

Bitwise and Vise are essentially trying to turn that work into another routine part of portfolio management.

That is a quieter form of crypto adoption than somebody opening an exchange account.

It may also be the version that reaches far more conventional investors.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• Swift, Wells Fargo and 13 other organizations have joined LF Decentralized Trust.
• The organization has also launched Panarus, a new tokenization project, and CLPR, a cross-ledger protocol research lab.
• The additions bring more traditional financial institutions directly into open-source blockchain infrastructure development.

**ID:** B25-07

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Swift

**Image Keyword:** Blockchain

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Swift, Wells Fargo, Linux Foundation, Blockchain, Tokenization

**Primary Source:** https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/blog

The New Members Are Joining More Than A Trade Group

LF Decentralized Trust sits underneath a collection of open-source projects used across enterprise and blockchain systems.

Its portfolio includes technologies such as Hyperledger Fabric and Besu, along with broader identity, interoperability and tokenization tooling.

That makes membership more practical than simply signing up to an industry association.

Members can contribute engineering resources, governance and funding to infrastructure intended to remain openly available.

Swift joining is particularly notable.

The global financial messaging network is already experimenting with shared-ledger infrastructure and tokenized bank deposits.

Wells Fargo brings another major regulated financial institution into the same open-source environment.

Their arrival reflects how blockchain adoption inside large financial firms is changing.

Institutions are increasingly interested in shared standards and neutral infrastructure rather than proprietary experiments that cannot easily connect to one another.

Tokenization And Cross-Ledger Connectivity Get New Projects

LF Decentralized Trust is also launching two new initiatives.

Panarus is focused on tokenization infrastructure, while the Cross-Ledger Protocol Research lab, or CLPR, will explore ways for separate ledger systems to communicate and coordinate.

Interoperability is becoming one of the central problems in institutional tokenization.

Banks can create tokenized deposits.

Asset managers can issue tokenized funds.

Exchanges can build digital-asset venues.

Those systems become much more useful when value can move between them without every pair of institutions building a custom connection.

That is why open standards matter.

The 15 new members do not mean Swift or Wells Fargo is moving its entire business onto a public blockchain.

It means institutions that once treated distributed ledgers as an outside technology are increasingly helping shape the infrastructure themselves.

That may ultimately matter more than another isolated blockchain pilot.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• Payward Services has opened non-binding indications of interest for Ōura’s expected IPO through the xStocks ecosystem.
• Eligible Kraken users and customers of xStocks Alliance partners in more than 110 countries can register interest before the Nasdaq listing.
• On listing day, Payward says Ōura exposure is expected to become available as the tokenized ŌURAx product, subject to eligibility and the IPO proceeding.

**ID:** B25-06

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Oura

**Image Keyword:** Tokenization

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Oura, Kraken, xStocks, IPO, Tokenization

**Primary Source:** https://www.businesswire.com/

The Pre-IPO Step Is An Indication Of Interest

Eligible users can register a non-binding indication of interest ahead of Ōura’s planned Nasdaq listing.

That wording is important.

Registering does not guarantee an allocation, and users are not buying Ōura shares simply by submitting interest through Kraken or another xStocks Alliance platform.

If the IPO proceeds, Payward says Ōura will become the fourth company to move through its IPO Access pipeline this year.

The previous offerings covered SpaceX, Bending Spoons and Jersey Mike’s.

Eligible users in more than 110 countries can participate through Kraken and other supported xStocks partners.

The Tokenized Product Comes After The Listing

Payward says Ōura will be tokenized as ŌURAx on listing day.

That would turn the newly public stock into an xStocks product designed for round-the-clock blockchain-based trading.

The model extends what crypto exchanges have been doing with existing public stocks into the IPO process itself.

Instead of waiting for shares to begin trading and then creating tokenized exposure later, Payward is trying to connect the pre-IPO allocation process directly with the tokenized secondary market.

There are still several layers of eligibility and regulation involved.

An xStock is not the same thing as directly holding a conventional brokerage share, and tokenized equities are unavailable in a number of jurisdictions.

The pre-IPO indication is also explicitly non-binding.

Still, the product shows how quickly the line between crypto exchanges and conventional brokerage infrastructure is disappearing.

Kraken increasingly wants users to access crypto, tokenized stocks and now IPO-linked products through the same broader ecosystem.

If Ōura completes its listing as planned, the transition from private-company exposure to a tokenized public-market instrument could happen almost immediately.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• Tether has expanded its Wallet Development Kit with a command-line wallet and MCP interface that can be used by AI agents.
• The same local wallet daemon can be controlled by a human through the terminal or by compatible AI software through the Model Context Protocol.
• The tooling is currently beta software and Tether explicitly recommends testing with limited funds.

**ID:** B25-05

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Tether

**Image Keyword:** Wallet

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Tether, AI, Wallet, MCP, Payments

**Primary Source:** https://docs.wallet.tether.io/

One Wallet Can Be Controlled Through Two Interfaces

The WDK CLI gives developers a local wallet that can create named accounts, derive addresses, read balances, inspect transaction history and send supported assets.

Alongside that sits an MCP server.

MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is increasingly used to let AI assistants interact with external tools and data sources through standardized interfaces.

In Tether’s implementation, an AI agent can connect to the same local wallet daemon used by the human operator.

That means an agent can potentially inspect balances or prepare wallet actions without requiring a separate custodial service.

The underlying private keys remain within the local self-custodial setup.

Tether is positioning this around agentic payments: software that can pay for services, move funds or interact with financial protocols as part of an automated workflow.

Giving An Agent A Wallet Creates A New Security Problem

The obvious challenge is permissions.

An AI system capable of moving money needs much tighter controls than one simply generating text.

Tether’s wider WDK stack includes modular support for gasless transactions, swaps, bridges, lending and fiat ramps, creating a potentially broad range of actions an agent could eventually initiate.

That makes policy design critical.

Developers need to control which networks an agent can use, what assets it can send, how much it can move and when a human needs to approve the transaction.

The CLI is also still beta software.

Tether’s documentation currently describes version `1.0.0-beta.3` and recommends using dedicated wallets with limited funds during testing.

That caveat is important.

AI agents controlling money are still experimental infrastructure.

But the direction makes sense.

If autonomous software begins buying API access, compute and other services for itself, it will need payment rails.

Tether is trying to make a self-custodial wallet one of those rails rather than forcing every agent through a centralized account.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• 0G has introduced a “Compute Finance” framework designed to financialize access to AI compute.
• Its Ascend liquid-staking product is already live, while the iAI compute-focused asset is scheduled to launch on September 29.
• The model is designed to let users hold, earn and eventually spend claims linked to AI-compute capacity rather than treating compute purely as a service purchased on demand.

**ID:** B25-04

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** 0G

**Image Keyword:** AI

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** 0G, AI, Compute, DeFi, Staking

**Primary Source:** https://0g.ai/blog

Ascend Is Live, While iAI Comes Next

The first part of 0G’s system is already running.

Ascend lets users stake 0G and receive a liquid staking asset called a0G, allowing them to retain DeFi flexibility while the underlying tokens remain staked.

The next layer is scheduled for September 29.

Infinite AI, or iAI, is designed as a compute-focused digital asset that can be minted using a0G.

Eligible iAI can then be staked to receive compute credits usable across supported 0G AI products, including its Private Computer environment and consumer-facing applications.

0G says the initial parameters are designed around compute-credit usage worth more than $1 per day for eligible staked iAI, subject to product terms.

That wording matters.

The asset is not live yet, and the planned compute value should not be treated as guaranteed cash yield.

Crypto Is Starting To Financialize Infrastructure Itself

The broader concept is more interesting than the individual token.

Cloud computing already has spot pricing, long-term contracts and increasingly sophisticated markets around capacity.

AI has made that infrastructure much more valuable.

0G’s thesis is that blockchain can add another layer: transferable claims that connect capital directly with compute usage.

In theory, that creates a market where users can hold exposure to future AI infrastructure, earn compute capacity and let autonomous agents pay for their own processing from onchain balances.

There is still a lot to prove.

Ascend is live, but iAI and the larger Compute Finance model remain partly a roadmap.

That makes this less a finished financial market and more a public attempt to define one.

Crypto has spent years turning assets into programmable capital.

0G is betting the same model can eventually be applied to the machines doing the computation too.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*

• OpenZeppelin has launched TRON-specific versions of its smart contract libraries, upgrade tooling and Contracts Wizard.
• The stack supports TRC-20 tokens, upgradeable contracts, role-based permissions and passkey authentication.
• The tools are audited, but OpenZeppelin still recommends project-specific review and testing before production deployment.

**ID:** B25-03

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** OpenZeppelin

**Image Keyword:** TRON

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** OpenZeppelin, TRON, Smart Contracts, Security, Developers

**Primary Source:** https://www.openzeppelin.com/news

TRON Gets More Than A Port Of The Contracts Library

The release includes audited building blocks for token contracts, access control and upgradeable architecture.

OpenZeppelin has also introduced TRON-focused upgrade plugins covering TronBox, Hardhat and Foundry workflows.

Its Contracts Wizard can generate TRON-compatible contract boilerplate, while an MCP server supports AI-assisted development.

The suite also takes account of network-specific features.

Upgradeable contracts can use UUPS patterns and TRC-1967 proxies, while passkey-based account systems can use secp256r1 signatures.

Where TRON supports the relevant native precompile, the tooling uses it directly.

Where it does not, OpenZeppelin says the contracts can fall back to Solidity-based verification.

Security Infrastructure Matters More As TRON Expands Beyond Transfers

TRON is already heavily used for stablecoin settlement, particularly USDT.

The network is now trying to support a wider range of DeFi, payments and application infrastructure.

That increases the value of standardized development tools.

A large part of smart contract security comes from not reinventing common components unnecessarily.

Token logic, upgrade patterns and role-management systems have all produced expensive failures when developers build them badly from scratch.

OpenZeppelin’s libraries are intended to give teams tested primitives instead.

The company says its broader contracts infrastructure has supported $37 trillion in transferred value and that its security teams have completed more than 900 engagements.

That history does not make every TRON application automatically secure.

OpenZeppelin itself makes that clear.

Projects still need to review dependencies, validate storage layouts, configure permissions correctly and test the exact application being deployed.

But the new integration reduces the amount of security-critical infrastructure TRON developers need to invent themselves.

For a network increasingly trying to position itself as a serious financial settlement layer, that is useful plumbing to have.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*