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Polymarket has investigated dozens of bets tied to the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections and referred at least two of those cases to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, NPR reported. Shana Bautista, Polymarket’s head of global intelligence and investigations, said the platform is operating a 16-member investigations team and a new surveillance system ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms to monitor insider trading and market manipulation. Bautista said the system analyzes data from social media, the Federal Election Commission, crypto firms and partner banks, and receives hundreds of unusual-trading alerts each day. Bautista added that when patterns emerge such as the rapid creation of multiple accounts for concentrated trading or the use of several new wallets on the same device, the findings are fed back into the detection system.

Stablecoin payment infrastructure provider Interlace said on X it has entered into a partnership with cryptocurrency exchange Echobit. Through the collaboration, Interlace will use its card issuance API to provide stablecoin payment cards and customized ceramic cards on the Echobit platform.

Binance has applied to Brazil’s central bank for a license to continue operating its cryptocurrency business in the country, Cointelegraph reported. Brazil requires existing operators to submit license applications by Oct. 30. In line with local regulations, Binance will restrict some services, including crypto lending and margin trading, starting today, and will also delist 22 cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin hybrid layer-2 network BOB said support for oUSDT on the BOB network is scheduled to end on Oct. 31. Holders of the asset must transfer it through a bridge by that date.

A brutal year is beginning for Bitcoin, U.S. Silicon Valley angel investor Jason Calacanis said on X, arguing spot ETF net outflows are only a signal and will continue. Calacanis said BTC will retest its $57,000 low within the next year, citing more opportunities to invest in assets he sees as creating greater value, Bitcoin’s network offering little beyond a store of value, and the disappearance of people, memes, and NFTs that once persuaded others to buy BTC. Calacanis added nobody now says BTC can change the world because it cannot, and argued AI has done that instead. He urged investors to sell BTC immediately and switch to AI, saying BTC creates little or no value while AI offers unlimited potential for humanity, and predicted Bitcoin will never break its all-time high again. Calacanis also questioned Bitcoin’s price in April and July. He is known as an early investor in Uber and Robinhood and has more than 1.8 million followers on X.

Whale Alert reported that 6,325 BTC has been transferred from Binance to an unknown wallet. The transaction is valued at about $504 million.

Financial strains at AI companies could also weigh on the crypto market, including BTC, CoinDesk said in an analysis. The outlet said the AI industry has been one of the key drivers of risk-asset sentiment, including for BTC, since late 2022, and rising financial risks among AI-related companies could ripple into crypto as well. According to CoinDesk, concern over AI companies' ability to repay debt has recently intensified, with credit default swap trading surging as investors hedge against default risk. Justin Bimonte of JPMorgan Private Bank said rising CDS prices do not necessarily mean a crisis is imminent, but they are a warning sign for risk. Unlike large AI companies with solid cash flow, some debt-reliant firms are now facing a significantly higher risk of default, Bimonte said.

Layer-1 blockchain Initia (INIT) said it has completed a patch for a security vulnerability identified on Oct. 23 and is now undergoing audits by its security partners. Once the audits are complete, Initia plans to share detailed steps for restoring affected assets and resuming normal operations on the Initia L1 and rollup networks. The process is expected to be completed within days.

Whale Alert reported that 5,000 BTC has been transferred from Binance to an unknown wallet. The transaction is valued at about $399 million.

South Korea’s Democratic Party and the government are expected to discuss delaying the planned January implementation of taxation on virtual assets, also referred to as digital assets, at a policy coordination meeting on Oct. 28, Digital Asset reported. The report came after opinions were raised at the Democratic Party’s general meeting that the tax, scheduled to take effect in January next year, should be postponed. Hwang Jong-seop, an aide in the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Han-kyu, said a party-government meeting is set to be held tomorrow and the issue of delaying digital asset taxation is also expected to be on the agenda, according to the report.

Firedancer’s development team has changed its rules to require users to burn one SOL for each bug report in an effort to curb indiscriminate submissions, CoinDesk reported. Firedancer, software developed by Jump Crypto, is used to validate and process Solana transactions. Under the new policy, a reporter becomes eligible for a bug bounty only after burning one SOL, and the burned token will not be returned even if the submission is duplicate or invalid. The move comes as a surge in bug reports generated with artificial intelligence has made it harder to verify genuine vulnerabilities. Jump Crypto also decided to double rewards for eligible bug reports through Nov. 20 and to pay triple rewards for bugs tied to Alpenglow, Solana’s new voting system, according to the report.

Binance announced it will delist 10 cross-margin trading pairs at 6:00 a.m. UTC on Oct. 30: RE/USD1, 币安人生/U, KAT/U, BTC/USDS, ETH/USDS, AVNT/U, FET/U, TRUMP/U, APT/U and WLFI/U.

South Korean exchange Bithumb announced it will temporarily suspend HBAR deposits and withdrawals starting at 11:00 a.m. UTC on Oct. 28 to support the Hedera network upgrade.

Matthew Driver, head of services for Asia-Pacific at global payments company Mastercard, said faster stablecoin payments require infrastructure to support conversions between fiat currencies and stablecoins. In an interview with CNBC, Driver said stablecoins could be useful for some cross-border remittance corridors and thinly traded currency pairs, but if conversions between fiat and stablecoins are slow, faster blockchain transfers in the middle of the process may not improve overall payment speeds. Driver added that in markets where retail payment systems are already efficient, such as Singapore, stablecoins may have greater potential in business payments than in consumer payments.

Ethereum developers fixed a flaw in the Glamsterdam upgrade that could have allowed validator deposits to be credited to a builder, CoinDesk reported. According to Ethereum researcher avsetsin, the issue could arise if an operator registered as a builder with a specific public key and a staking service then deposited ETH to launch a validator using the same key, causing both deposits to be credited to the builder. Avsetsin said the finding involved conditional code, with no confirmed real-world exploitation and no reported losses. Glamsterdam is now live on the Sepolia testnet, while deployment on the Hoodi testnet has been delayed once. The upgrade aims to improve block production, state growth and execution limits while laying the groundwork for expanding Layer 1 capacity.

South Korean exchange Upbit announced the addition of NIL, Nilion, for KRW trading at 7:40 a.m. UTC today.

On-chain credit assessment platform Hybnomic said on Oct. 27 it had secured the position of largest shareholder in Guardian Holdings, the operator of South Korean virtual asset service provider Oasis. Hybnomic, which was already a major shareholder, said it joined Guardian Holdings' third-party allotment capital increase on Oct. 26, strengthening its management control by becoming the top shareholder. Oasis is one of 28 VASPs that have completed business registration acceptance with South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit. Through the stake acquisition, Hybnomic plans to introduce its on-chain data analytics technology into Oasis’ infrastructure and expand advanced infrastructure businesses, including digital asset settlement, conditional asset transfers, and trust-linked custody.

South Korean exchange Bithumb announced it will temporarily suspend Cosmos (ATOM) deposits and withdrawals at 10:00 a.m. UTC on Oct. 28 due to a network upgrade.

At a general meeting of lawmakers from South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party, some members voiced support for delaying virtual asset taxation scheduled to take effect in January next year, Digital Asset reported. Jeon Eun-su, the Democratic Party’s floor spokesperson, said in a back briefing after the meeting at the National Assembly’s main building on Oct. 27 that views were expressed in favor of a delay, although no decision was made that day. According to Jeon, Democratic Party lawmaker Ahn Do-geol argued at the meeting that it would make sense to first enact a basic law on digital assets and then implement taxation alongside it. Jeon added that the party would gather more views before making a decision and aims to reach one soon, with about 60 days left before the measure is set to take effect.

South Korean exchange Upbit announced it will temporarily suspend deposits and withdrawals for NEAR at 12:00 a.m. UTC on Nov. 4 due to a network upgrade for Near Protocol.

The following are the 24-hour long/short ratios for BTC perpetual futures on the world’s three largest crypto futures exchanges by open interest: Overall: 50.64% long, 49.36% short - Binance: 50.5% long, 49.5% short - OKX: 49.96% long, 50.04% short - Bybit: 50.32% long, 49.68% short

South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb announced it will temporarily suspend deposits and withdrawals for VERONA at 9:00 a.m. UTC on Oct. 28 to support the token’s network upgrade.

Former New York Stock Exchange Group President Thomas Farley said in a recent interview with Crypto in America that tokenization of U.S. stocks could happen sooner than expected. Farley said issuers’ rights must be respected throughout the tokenization process, adding that there are currently around 2,500 issuers and that their rights, benefits and control over the stocks and tokens they issue must be guaranteed. Farley also said U.S.-listed shares had previously shifted from paper stock certificates to electronic book-entry records, and the same principle applied at that time.

A wallet believed to be owned by UK alternative asset manager Fasanara Capital holds roughly $123 million in short crypto positions, with unrealized profit standing at about $6.49 million, BlockBeats reported. The address, which begins with 0x7fda, currently holds about $125 million in futures positions, of which around 98.4% ($123 million) are shorts. Its largest position is an Ethereum short worth about $60.82 million, using 25x leverage. Unrealized profit on that position stands at about $3.91 million, accounting for more than 60% of the wallet’s total unrealized gains.

IBM, Oracle, Intel and IonQ have formally exercised their right to block stock tokenization listings through OKXICE, a joint platform between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange. That brings the number of companies opposing stock tokenization listings on the OKXICE platform to 26.