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Stablecoin issuer Tether has formed a strategic partnership with global exchange CoinW and officially launched the 'Tether’s Ark' initiative. The project centers on XAUT, or Tether Gold, Tether’s real-world asset token pegged one-to-one to physical gold. Amid rising volatility in the digital asset market following major security breaches and broader macroeconomic uncertainty, the two companies plan to offer users an onchain hedging tool with safe-haven characteristics and expand access to gold-based financial products.

Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said market reaction to Binance’s $6 billion breach showed a fundamentally different level of maturity from the response to FTX’s collapse. He pointed to the fact that the losses were only 25% smaller than FTX’s funding shortfall, which previously helped push the market into disarray, yet major assets including Bitcoin posted only single-digit declines and held up relatively well on the downside. Amid broader macroeconomic tightening pressure, large-scale capital outflows remained limited, while dip buying and the rebound resilience of directly affected tokens also stood out, Qureshi said. He added the market was showing firm confidence in Binance’s financial soundness and ability to cover losses, and said close coordination among industry partners and Binance’s pledge to repurchase tokens on a one-to-one basis helped contain fear early. Qureshi said the industry’s ability to absorb and cushion a single negative shock that in the past might have led to systemic collapse marked a watershed in the digital asset ecosystem’s development.

Seven brokerages, including Jefferies, Mizuho, Barclays and Wells Fargo, lowered their price targets on Coinbase (COIN), according to Walter Bloomberg. - Jefferies: $183 to $174 - Mizuho: $145, with the previous target not disclosed - Barclays: $149 to $120 - Wells Fargo: $200 to $174 - Canaccord: $300 to $275 - Needham: $205 to $197 - Compass Point: $187 to $165

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said on X that, aside from the coin recovery effort already underway, Binance naturally accumulates all listed tokens because users pay trading fees in the coins they trade. Zhao added, "SAFU!," indicating user funds are safe.

Bitcoin network mining difficulty rose 5.54%, pushing mining profitability to its lowest level since August, CryptoSlate reported. The network’s 14-day average hash rate fell 23% from its October 2025 peak through February 2026, then rebounded about 21% over the following 102 days to recover to within 6% of its all-time high. Higher mining power raises the cost of attacking the Bitcoin network, strengthening security.

Large institutions and professional traders rushed to buy put options as short-term downside hedges immediately after Binance’s $6.3 billion on-chain breach, according to a CoinDesk analysis. Derivatives liquidity network Paradigm said a block trade for 250 BTC put option contracts with a $78,000 strike, worth about $20 million, was executed just 15 minutes after the first wallet outflow from Binance and before any official announcement. Three minutes later, the same contract traded again at a 35% higher premium, indicating concentrated demand for downside insurance. Over the eight hours following the incident, BTC options block-trade volume on Paradigm reached $590 million, about half of the volume on Deribit, the world’s largest options exchange. Experts focused on the fact that the buying was concentrated in puts with strikes between $74,000 and $78,000, just below the spot price of around $80,000, with expiries in late October and mid-November. CoinDesk said this suggested practical "Conviction hedging" against a short-term correction rather than positioning for an extreme crash.

Zcash said it plans to implement the NU7 network upgrade on Nov. 6. The upgrade is set to reduce block generation time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and more than double shielded transaction throughput. Zcash also urged wallet updates. Vizor said it has completed preparations for NU7 support and users should use the latest version.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said on X that traditional finance, or "TradFi," fell much more sharply than crypto today, while Bitcoin’s resilience was striking. Zhao said traditional market sell-offs often spill into crypto as investors sell assets to raise cash, but BTC’s ability to hold up was remarkable.

A cutting-edge AI security audit of the Bitcoin protocol found only a small number of vulnerabilities, according to Trustnodes. Coinbase Chief Security Officer Jeff Lunglhofer said AI models identified two minor issues, while a separate research team at Block, led by Jack Dorsey, used AI to find one medium-severity vulnerability. The vulnerability reportedly works only on non-Linux platforms and involves a malicious peer sending TCP urgent out-of-band data to exhaust a node’s memory. The other two issues involved higher memory usage caused by a peer queue while a node is paused and a rare problem during blockchain reorganization, or reorg, according to the report. The audit used multiple AI models, including Kimi K3, Mythos 5.1, OpenAI’s Daybreak Red and Cyber Unlocked Fable. All findings were cross-validated using different models, and candidate vulnerabilities were further tested by linking attack scenarios, developing exploits and verifying them.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the war with Iran will end soon, "one way or another."

HTX DeepThink columnist and HTX Research analyst Chloe said short-term risk appetite in the crypto market has weakened as concerns over macroeconomic tightening coincided with the Binance hack. Chloe added political uncertainty ahead of next week’s U.S. midterm elections could heighten market volatility. Chloe expects Bitcoin to trade in a volatile range with a weaker bias next week, with $77,000 as a key level to watch in the short term. If uncertainty tied to the hack eases and net ETF inflows continue, BTC could attempt a rebound toward $80,000-$82,000. If panic selling persists and leveraged liquidations spread, however, Bitcoin could fall to $75,000 or lower.

Jupiter Lend, a major DeFi lending protocol in the Solana ecosystem, is experiencing delayed USDC withdrawals as market jitters following Binance’s $6.3 billion hack triggered a sharp liquidity squeeze, The Defiant reported. According to an on-chain API snapshot, USDC deposit claims in Jupiter Earn totaled about 418.5 million USDC including accrued interest, while the balance available for immediate withdrawal fell to just 3.35 USDC. The report said a wave of large withdrawal requests amid broader market fear temporarily drained available liquidity from the lending pool. Through its official channels, Jupiter said, "바이낸스에 직접 예치된 자금은 일절 없으며 익스포저는 0(제로)으로 모든 자금은 안전하다". Jupiter said the bottleneck reflects a temporary liquidity shortfall caused by DeFi’s structural mechanics, with most deposits tied up in active loans through borrow and leverage products, rather than any transmission of exchange losses.

Ethereum’s EIP-7702 upgrade was likely not the direct cause of Binance’s $6.3 billion hack, but it may have been used to streamline the attacker’s asset theft and bypass security checks, Cointelegraph reported. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Blockaid co-founder and CEO Ido Ben-Natan said the attack could have happened without EIP-7702, but the feature may have enabled multiple transactions to be executed at once. EIP-7702 was introduced with Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade in May 2025. It allows standard wallets to use smart contract functions, supporting bundled transaction execution and sponsored gas fees. Security concerns emerged soon after its launch. In May 2025, Wintermute said most early EIP-7702 delegation cases were tied to malicious contracts designed to automatically drain assets from compromised wallets. In September that year, holders of World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens also reported losses linked to malicious EIP-7702 delegations. The main cause of the Binance attack may have been a compromise of the transaction-signing system. Binance said its initial investigation found signs an engineer’s laptop may have been hacked, and the company later discovered additional points of compromise. Ben-Natan said the attacker may have used a developer’s computer to access Binance’s wallet-signing infrastructure and propose malicious transactions to the signing system that approves hot wallet transactions.

The BTC holdings tied to the hacker behind the unprecedented Binance hot wallet breach, valued at $6.3 billion, have surpassed the corporate reserves held by Coinbase, the largest publicly listed U.S. exchange, Cointelegraph reported. According to on-chain analysis from blockchain forensics platform Bitquery, wallets linked to the attacker hold a combined 18,270 BTC, worth about $1.4 billion, across 19 addresses. That is 199 BTC more than Coinbase’s corporate reserve of 18,071 BTC for investment and operational purposes, as disclosed on Sept. 30. Coinbase ranks eighth among publicly listed companies worldwide in Bitcoin holdings. The attackers also increased their Ethereum holdings to 508,621 ETH after carrying out stablecoin swaps to avoid asset freezes, on top of the initial 200,000 ETH stolen, according to the report. That amount exceeds the holdings of The Ether Machine, the third-largest publicly listed corporate holder of Ethereum.

Bitcoin treasury companies are accumulating 1.6 times more BTC than the amount being mined, creating a supply shock, BitcoinTreasuries reported, citing Strategy founder Michael Saylor. Saylor said Bitcoin accumulation companies were collaborators rather than competitors and were joining forces in a virtuous cycle.

TRON recorded record on-chain throughput, surpassing 11.31 million daily transactions and $33.3 billion in transfer volume amid some network delays and congestion, Cointelegraph reported.

Crypto trader Doctor Profit reaffirmed a bullish outlook for Bitcoin after the recent Binance hot wallet breach, arguing the exchange’s need to replenish lost assets could turn into strong market buying pressure. Doctor Profit estimated that of the roughly $6.3 billion in total losses, about $3.0 billion has been frozen. Even after the reissuance of frozen assets by Tether and Circle for USDT and USDC, a shortfall of about $3.3 billion, or roughly 2.05% of Binance’s total assets, would remain, according to the analysis. Doctor Profit said Binance had pledged one-for-one reimbursement for affected tokens, and if no additional recoveries are made, the exchange would need to repurchase large cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin through the open market and OTC channels. From a macro perspective, Doctor Profit said this would amount to net liquidity inflows. Doctor Profit also said the trader had prepared thoroughly in advance for short-term volatility and entered the market accordingly, while continuing to hold a leveraged Bitcoin long opened around $80,400 and spot holdings with an average entry price of $60,000.

Binance said it has urgently earmarked $6.34 billion in company funds in response to a hot wallet breach and has begun fully reimbursing affected user assets. In an official statement, the exchange said user losses would be covered 100% with company capital, as previously announced. Binance added that $5 billion of the allocated funds has already been secured in the form of the same token assets affected in the incident. For the remaining shortfall, Binance said it is directly purchasing the affected tokens on exchange and through OTC channels to match the assets on a one-to-one basis, with purchases to be completed in stages in consideration of liquidity and settlement schedules. The $3 billion in assets frozen on-chain through coordination with industry partners and issuers is not included in the allocation, Binance said. Binance added it is working with U.S. judicial authorities and blockchain forensics firms to recover the frozen assets, and said it would use its proof-of-reserves system to transparently verify the full soundness of customer assets once all recovery procedures are complete.

Binance is working with the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service in connection with a $6.3 billion hacking incident, Reuters reported. North Korea is currently suspected of being behind the attack.

CNBC Crypto Trader host Ran Neuner said on X, "the only person who actually made money on Ethereum is the Binance hacker."

Synthetix said its protocolDAO recovered SNX that had been stolen from Binance. The tokens are being held in the protocolDAO’s Safe and will be returned if Binance requests them, Synthetix said, adding it has informed Binance of the recovery.

Layer-1 blockchain Internet Computer said a connector has been added to Claude. Once users connect the connector, they can develop directly on Internet Computer within the same conversation, including by using prompts to configure an enterprise cloud engine or launch a customer portal, the project said.

Aave plans to lower borrowing caps in key lending markets to prevent the Binance hacker from building large positions after a phased unfreezing of Aave V3 and V4, according to DeFi risk and transparency provider LlamaRisk. LlamaRisk said on Aave’s governance forum it plans to use the Risk Steward mechanism to reduce unused borrowing capacity ahead of the phased lifting of the freeze. The move is intended to stop the attacker, who still holds sizable amounts of ETH, stablecoins and governance tokens, from using remaining borrowing headroom to build large positions immediately after the unfreezing. According to LlamaRisk, the attacker has already borrowed 19,762 WETH on Aave V3 Core. The adjustment is expected to reduce unused borrowing capacity by about $3.7 billion on Aave V3 and about $130 million on V4. The affected markets include WETH, USDT and USDC across several Aave V3 deployments, including Core, Base, Arbitrum and Plasma. LlamaRisk added borrowing caps can be raised again through governance procedures if borrowing demand recovers.

Standard Chartered has officially launched digital asset custody services for institutional investors under the jurisdictions of Luxembourg and the Dubai International Financial Centre, or DIFC. Through a partnership with global forex and cryptocurrency trading platform LMAX, the bank is offering authorized custody solutions via its Luxembourg entity and Dubai branch. The service also supports an independent collateral link mechanism, allowing institutional clients to keep assets in the bank’s custody while using those tokens as trading margin and collateral.

Major U.S. media outlets including CNN, CBS News, CNBC and Dow Jones have entered commercial partnerships with prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket to use related prediction market data in election coverage ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. CBS News announced it had selected Kalshi as a prediction market sponsor. CNBC said its partnership with Kalshi includes revenue sharing tied to customer referrals and a minority equity investment. The Wall Street Journal has set aside a front-page section showing Polymarket’s election odds.