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A CryptoQuant analysis said Tether's USDT circulation has fallen by about $1 billion recently, adding pressure to Bitcoin's recovery at a sensitive time. Crypto analyst MorenoDV said Bitcoin has been moving sideways, and if USDT supply keeps shrinking, recovery momentum could weaken before demand becomes strong enough to absorb new selling pressure.

Mastercard is building an AI agent payment system with Cloudflare. The service,

Nectar Group, the developer of Bitcoin yield platform HoneyB, has raised $5 million in funding, The Block reported. The round was led by Portal Ventures, with participation from Peer Venture Partners and Anchorage Digital Ventures, and was structured as a SAFE that grants investors the right to receive tokens tied to a future investment. The company was valued at $30 million.

Asset manager Vanguard has bought an additional 639,000 shares of Strategy stock, MSTR, through the Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund (VMCIX), according to BitcoinTreasuries. The purchase was worth about $92.7 million. The fund’s Strategy holdings have now increased to about 7.8 million shares, valued at roughly $1.13 billion.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown has sued prediction-market platform Kalshi and two Susquehanna-affiliated trading firms over alleged illegal online gambling, The Block reported. Brown argued Kalshi continued offering betting services after losing a federal court case over Utah gambling laws. More than 32,000 Utah residents currently hold verified Kalshi accounts, according to the report. Prosecutors are seeking to halt betting services in the state and recover related revenue.

Crypto media company Blockworks submitted a comment letter on the U.S. SEC’s proposed crypto issuance rules, Crypto Briefing reported. Blockworks proposed allowing token projects to post disclosure information on-chain and introducing a system that would let qualified third parties file disclosures on behalf of projects. It also argued regulators should require disclosure of market-making agreements, liquidity provision commitments, token loans, and promotional compensation payments. The proposal is intended to incorporate Blockworks’ Token Transparency Framework, or TTF, into the regulatory framework. The framework is backed by a transparency coalition that includes Coinbase and Kraken, according to the report.

NEAR Protocol has launched NEAR Business, a treasury management platform for companies, CoinDesk reported. The platform supports fund management across more than 35 blockchains without disclosing transaction details. Built around multisignature functionality, it can handle payroll, vendor payments and capital allocation, with crypto-native businesses and teams as its main target customers.

Crypto bank Anchorage Digital said it has partnered with Securitize to offer direct stablecoin issuance and redemption services to institutional investors trading tokenized assets, according to Crypto Briefing. Under the agreement, Securitize will be able to use the service without going through a third-party intermediary.

Coinbase has joined a pilot test of Mastercard’s AI agent payment service, 'Agent Pay for Machines,' The Block reported. The service allows AI agents to autonomously purchase and pay for goods or services within a user-approved budget. The test used Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol, while the Coinbase Developer Platform provided wallet infrastructure and Base served as the onchain payment settlement network.

Stellar (XLM) has unveiled the Protocol 30 upgrade, 'Bell,' for its blockchain-based payments network. The upgrade is designed to support enterprise-scale smart account use and begin work on quantum-resistant signatures and faster ledger processing. The testnet upgrade is scheduled for Nov. 3, with the mainnet upgrade set for Nov. 23.

About 1.7 million BTC is held in addresses with exposed public keys, leaving those holdings potentially vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks, Cointelegraph reported, citing an analysis by Starknet. Starknet said estimates for the resources needed to carry out such an attack using quantum computers have fallen to about one-twentieth of previous levels.

Coinbase announced the addition of AXIS for spot trading.

USDC issuer Circle has formed a strategic partnership with Argentine financial firm Allaria to provide two-way bid and ask quotes between USDC and the Argentine peso for eligible institutional investors in the local market, Crypto Briefing reported. The arrangement is intended to expand USDC liquidity and improve institutional access. Circle had previously partnered in July with Argentine financial group Grupo BIND to expand USDC payment and treasury management services for institutional clients.

The Starknet Foundation has launched Bramble, a self-custody wallet designed with a focus on privacy, Crypto Briefing reported. The wallet supports STRK20, Starknet’s privacy framework, allowing users to manage private balances on the network.

Crypto lending platform Nexo said its NEXO token will be listed on crypto exchange Kraken, with trading set to begin on Oct. 22.

Bitcoin has continued trading sideways in the short term without breaking through resistance in the $87,000-$87,800 range, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode said on X. Glassnode had identified the range as a key resistance zone in a report published jointly last month with Coinbase Institutional. Glassnode said volatility could increase significantly if BTC breaks out of its current range, while additional selling pressure is also clustered near $90,000.

OpenZeppelin said it will apply Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP, and compliance tools across its smart contract platform as it builds an integrated security and interoperability stack for institutional onchain operations. OpenZeppelin, which provides security standards for onchain finance, was recently acquired by global credit ratings and financial information provider S&P Global.

Crypto-related stocks were trading higher in the U.S. stock market. Strategy (MSTR) rose 7.69%, Coinbase (COIN) gained 3.98%, Circle (CRCL) advanced 6.18%, SharpLink Gaming (SBET) climbed 7.37%, Bitmine (BMNR) increased 8.18%, and Robinhood (HOOD) was up 4.13%.

OKX has launched OKX Shield, a service that provides up to $500,000 in compensation if U.S. user accounts are attacked, including through hacking. Former New York Governor and OKX board member Andrew Cuomo said the service shows the company’s confidence in OKX’s systems and puts that confidence into action.

Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, said on X that more than 12% of LAPTOP’s total token supply has been permanently burned. He said 30% of the total supply is tied to predicting the outcome of real-world events, with tokens burned when predictions are correct and donated to charities when they are not. He added the latest burn reflected the outcome of a Nobel Peace Prize-related prediction and unclaimed airdrop allocations.

Forty-two percent of U.S. adults would be willing to open new accounts or expand their activity if banks or credit unions offered cryptocurrency services, Crypto Briefing reported. The finding came from a survey of 2,017 adults conducted by Harris Poll for the National Cryptocurrency Association, or NCA, and would equate to about 112 million adults if applied to the broader U.S. adult population. The survey also found 59% of respondents were open to using crypto custody services from their primary bank, while 60% expected most U.S. banks to offer crypto services within the next 10 years.

Layer-1 blockchain Solana said its next-generation consensus mechanism, Alpenglow, is pending activation on mainnet beta and is scheduled to go live at around slot 459,653,000 at 2:00 p.m. UTC on Oct. 21. Once Alpenglow is applied, the existing consensus mechanism, TowerBFT, will shut down within one slot.

Tether led a $15 million Series A funding round for New York-based payments startup Mural, Fortune Crypto reported. North Island Ventures also joined the round, bringing Mural’s total funding to $28 million. Founded in 2022 by former Palantir engineers, Mural operates a payments platform that lets companies manage dollars, local currencies and stablecoins from a single account.

Swiss financial services intermediary Bitcoin Suisse has launched trading, custody and staking services in Portugal, Crypto Briefing reported. The services target high-net-worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors rather than retail investors. Earlier this year, the company obtained a Liechtenstein license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, regulation.

A Bitcoin address dormant for about 10.7 years has been activated, Whale Alert reported. The address holds 500 BTC, currently worth about $41.54 million. The BTC was worth about $195,000 in 2016 and has risen about 213-fold since then. On-chain analysis account Lookonchain said the address is linked to Clifton Collins, an Irish drug dealer previously known for losing the private keys to 6,000 BTC, and that 500 BTC, worth about $41.52 million, was transferred to Coinbase Prime. The actual party behind the transfer and whether the private keys were recovered have not been confirmed.